On September 8 Canada’s counter-tariffs took effect on $27.6 billion of American goods, matching Washington’s rates product by product. The same day the President signed five proclamations that go past taxing Canadian goods to barring some of them from entering the United States at all. Those import bans start on September 29.
Canada Backs the Fight; the Bill Falls Hardest on the Young
In Youngstown, Ohio, a homebuilder reports three or four planned houses that have not gone ahead this year, and an aluminum fabricator has shelved its expansion into Ontario and Quebec. Across the border, most Canadians back standing firm against U.S. tariffs even if it costs them, but that resolve is not evenly held: it is strongest among older, financially secure Canadians and weakest among the young. Canada’s own counter-tariffs land at one minute past midnight on September 8, the point where that resolve first meets a bill of its own making.
Canada Walks; Talks Collapse
Canada suspended trade talks with the United States late on Friday, August 21, after Prime Minister Mark Carney said Washington’s last-hour demands touched Canadian sovereignty, the French language and the auto sector. A 50 percent U.S. tariff on a defined list of Canadian goods took effect hours later. Carney has set September 8 for dollar-for-dollar retaliation. The product list and rates are not yet published.
US OKs Venezuela Telecom Repairs. Investment Talks Open, Not Investment.
Two licenses issued the same day let U.S. companies sell equipment and negotiate investment with Venezuela’s state telecom system, eight months after Maduro’s removal and eight weeks after an earthquake that cost the sector an estimated five billion dollars. The sourced chain stops at the wholesale authorization; no source connects it yet to a household phone or internet bill.
Treasury Extends Lukoil’s Sale Deadline to September 19
A licence to negotiate Lukoil’s foreign refineries and filling stations has been renewed on a rolling basis since November, as Bulgaria and Romania post the EU’s steepest June fuel-price increases.
Hizballah Cash-Courier Network Targeted
Ten people named for moving cash to Hizballah between Lebanon, Turkiye, the UAE and Iran, as Treasury ties the group’s re-designation directly to Iran’s Qods Force.
Canada Warns Washington: Don’t Push Us Off the Cliff
Six days before a 50 percent tariff is due to take effect, Canada’s chief trade negotiator has warned Washington that more pressure will not buy concessions and could end the talks meant to prevent it instead, according to sources briefed on the exchange. Washington has not said it will change course.
The dairy dispute comes down to who is allowed to hold a cheese licence
The proclamation that names dairy runs to nine numbered findings and does not mention supply management once. What it objects to is a single eligibility rule deciding which Canadian businesses may use a cheese quota.
An order in January, a blackout in August, 96,000 surgeries waiting
On 29 January 2026 the United States signed an order making the supply of oil to Cuba cost a third country its access to the American market. Six months later the island’s hospitals are postponing operations and the United Nations calls it energy starvation.
Treasury rewrote the record on sanctioned people twice in two days, and explained neither
On 5 August 2026 the US Treasury lifted the Fly Baghdad sanctions and, in the same document, changed the Iraqi airline chief executive’s entry so that it no longer rested on the airline. Nothing in the published record says why.









