US Canada Resume Trade Talks Days After Trump Ended It Over Tax On Tech Firms
Toronto:
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said late Sunday trade talks with US have resumed after Canada rescinded its plan to tax US technology firms.
US President Donald Trump said Friday that was suspending trade talks with Canada over its plans to continue with its tax on technology firms, which he called "a direct and blatant attack on our country."
The Canadian government says "in anticipation" of a trade deal "Canada would rescind" the Digital Services Tax. The tax was set to go into effect Monday.
Carney's office said Carney and Trump have agreed to resume negotiations.
"Today's announcement will support a resumption of negotiations toward the July 21, 2025, timeline set out at this month's G7 Leaders' Summit in Kananaskis," Carney said in a statement.
Carney visited Trump in May at the White House, where he was polite but firm. Trump traveled to Canada for the G7 summit in Alberta, where Carney said that Canada and the US had set a 30-day deadline for trade talks.
Trump, in a post on his social media network last Friday, said Canada had informed the US that it was sticking to its plan to impose the digital services tax, which applies to Canadian and foreign businesses that engage with online users in Canada.
The digital services tax was due to hit companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb with a 3% levy on revenue from Canadian users. It would have applied retroactively, leaving U.S. companies with a $2 billion US bill due at the end of the month.
Trump's announcement Friday was the latest swerve in the trade war he's launched since taking office for a second term in January. Progress with Canada has been a roller coaster, starting with the US president poking at the nation's northern neighbor and repeatedly suggesting it would be absorbed as a US state.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Economic Times
29 minutes ago
- Economic Times
OpenAI says it has no plan to use Google's in-house chip
OpenAI said it has no active plans to use Google's in-house chip to power its products, two days after and other news outlets reported on the AI lab's move to turn to its competitor's artificial intelligence chips to meet growing demand. A spokesperson for OpenAI said on Sunday that while the AI lab is in early testing with some of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), it has no plans to deploy them at scale right now. Google declined to comment. While it is common for AI labs to test out different chips, using new hardware at scale could take much longer and would require different architecture and software support. OpenAI is actively using Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), and AMD's AI chips to power its growing demand. OpenAI is also developing its chip, an effort that is on track to meet the "tape-out" milestone this year, where the chip's design is finalized and sent for manufacturing. OpenAI has signed up for Google Cloud service to meet its growing needs for computing capacity, Reuters had exclusively reported earlier this month, marking a surprising collaboration between two prominent competitors in the AI sector. Most of the computing power used by OpenAI would be from GPU servers powered by the so-called neocloud company CoreWeave. Google has been expanding the external availability of its in-house AI chips, or TPUs, which were historically reserved for internal use. That helped Google win customers, including Big Tech player Apple, as well as startups like Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence, two ChatGPT-maker competitors launched by former OpenAI leaders.
Hindustan Times
30 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Bush, Obama, singer Bono rebuke Trump for dismantling USAID on agency's last day
Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush delivered rare open criticism of the Trump administration — and singer Bono recited a poem — in an emotional video farewell Monday with staffers of the US Agency for International Development. USAID logo and US flag are seen in this illustration.(REUTERS) Obama called the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID 'a colossal mistake.' Monday was the last day as an independent agency for the six-decade-old humanitarian and development organization, created by President John F. Kennedy as a peaceful way of promoting U.S. national security by boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered USAID absorbed into the State Department on Tuesday. The former presidents and Bono spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference, which was billed as a closed-press event to allow political leaders and others privacy for sometimes angry and often teary remarks. Parts of the video were shared with The Associated Press. They expressed their appreciation for the thousands of USAID staffers who have lost their jobs and life's work. Their agency was one of the first and most fiercely targeted for government-cutting by President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk, with staffers abruptly locked out of systems and offices and terminated by mass emailing. Trump claimed the agency was run by 'radical left lunatics' and rife with 'tremendous fraud.' Musk called it 'a criminal organization.' Obama, speaking in a recorded statement, offered assurances to the aid and development workers, some listening from overseas. "Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,' he told them. Obama has largely kept a low public profile during Trump's second term and refrained from criticizing the monumental changes that Trump has made to US programs and priorities at home and abroad. 'Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,' Obama said. He credited USAID with not only saving lives, but being a main factor in global economic growth that has turned some aid-receiving countries into US markets and trade partners. The former Democratic president predicted that 'sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed." Asked for comment, the State Department said it would be introducing the department's foreign assistance successor to USAID, to be called America First, this week. 'The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,' the department said. USAID oversaw programs around the world, providing water and life-saving food to millions uprooted by conflict in Sudan, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, sponsoring the 'Green Revolution' that revolutionized modern agriculture and curbed starvation and famine, preventing disease outbreaks, promoting democracy, and providing financing and development that allowed countries and people to climb out of poverty. Bush, who also spoke in a recorded message, went straight to the cuts in a landmark AIDS and HIV program started by his Republican administration and credited with saving 25 million lives around the world. Bipartisan blowback from Congress to cutting the popular President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, helped save significant funding for the program. But cuts and rule changes have reduced the number getting the life-saving care. 'You've showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart,'' Bush told USAID staffers. 'Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you," he said. Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former Colombian President Juan Manual Santos and former US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield also spoke to the staffers. So did humanitarian workers, including one who spoke of the welcome appearance of USAID staffers with food when she was a frightened 8-year-old child in a camp for Liberian refugees. A World Food Program official vowed through sobs that the US aid mission would be back someday. Bono, a longtime humanitarian advocate in Africa and elsewhere, was announced as the 'surprise guest,' in shades and a cap. He jokingly hailed the USAID staffers as 'secret agents of international development' in acknowledgment of the down-low nature of Monday's unofficial gathering of the USAID community. Bono spoke passionately as he recited a poem he had written to the agency and its gutting. He spoke of children dying of malnutrition, in a reference to people — millions, experts have said — who will die because of the U.S cuts to funding for health and other programs abroad. 'They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,' Bono said.
Hindustan Times
33 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Iran-linked hackers threaten to leak emails of Trump aides; FBI launches probe
Iran-linked hackers have threatened to disclose more emails stolen from U.S. President Donald Trump's circle, after distributing a prior batch to the media ahead of the 2024 U.S. election. The hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone(Kacper Pempel/Reuters) In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone and porn star-turned-Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels. Robert raised the possibility of selling the material but otherwise did not provide details of their plans. The hackers did not describe the content of the emails. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi described the intrusion as "an unconscionable cyber-attack." The White House and the FBI responded with a statement from FBI Director Kash Patel, who said: "Anyone associated with any kind of breach of national security will be fully investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." Halligan, Stone, a representative for Daniels and the U.S. cyberdefense agency CISA did not respond to requests for comment. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not return a message seeking comment. Tehran has in the past denied committing cyberespionage. Robert materialized in the final months of the 2024 presidential campaign, when they claimed to have breached the email accounts of several Trump allies, including Wiles. The hackers then distributed emails to journalists. Reuters previously authenticated some of the leaked material, including an email that appeared to document a financial arrangement between Trump and lawyers representing former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - now Trump's health secretary. Other material included Trump campaign communication about Republican office-seekers and discussion of settlement negotiations with Daniels. Although the leaked documents did garner some coverage last year, they did not fundamentally alter the presidential race, which Trump won. The U.S. Justice Department in a September 2024 indictment alleged that Iran's Revolutionary Guards ran the Robert hacking operation. In conversations with Reuters, the hackers declined to address the allegation. After Trump's election, Robert told Reuters that no more leaks were planned. As recently as May, the hackers told Reuters, "I am retired, man." But the group resumed communication after this month's 12-day air war between Israel and Iran, which was capped by U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear sites. In messages this week, Robert said they were organizing a sale of stolen emails and wanted Reuters to "broadcast this matter." American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan, who has written about Iranian cyberespionage, said Tehran suffered serious damage in the conflict and its spies were likely trying to retaliate in ways that did not draw more U.S. or Israeli action. "A default explanation is that everyone's been ordered to use all the asymmetric stuff that they can that's not likely to trigger a resumption of major Israeli/U.S. military activity," he said. "Leaking a bunch more emails is not likely to do that." Despite worries that Tehran could unleash digital havoc, Iran's hackers took a low profile during the conflict. U.S. cyber officials warned on Monday that American companies and critical infrastructure operators might still be in Tehran's crosshairs.
