分类： business

One week after a deadly cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport left five people dead and five more injured, e-commerce behemoth Amazon has announced it will pause all operational partnerships with 21 Air, the aviation firm that operated the Boeing 767-300 jet involved in the incident. A company spokesperson confirmed the decision in a statement Sunday, noting that the move came after a preliminary review of circumstances surrounding the tragedy and ongoing coordination with official investigators.

The September 6 crash unfolded when the cargo plane, which had departed from Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport bound for Miami, overshot the runway during landing. The jet smashed into several civilian vehicles on surrounding roads before coming to a stop, leaving a scene that National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy described as “utter devastation”. Last week, local authorities released the identities of the five victims: Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.

Early investigative updates from the NTSB, which is leading the probe into the crash, have revealed key preliminary findings. One of the two pilots on board flagged multiple times that the aircraft was traveling at excessive speed as it approached the runway, according to the agency. Multiple safety alerts, including an altitude alarm and other electronic landing warnings, activated during the final approach, but investigators noted that the second pilot did not provide a consistent verbal response to the speed warnings. Investigators have already recovered the plane’s flight data and voice recorders to conduct deeper analysis of the factors that led to the accident.

21 Air, an all-cargo air carrier that contracts its services to global logistics giants including Amazon and DHL, has publicly expressed grief over the tragedy. In a previous statement, the company’s CEO Keith Winters said the firm was “devastated by the accident”, extended deepest condolences to the families of the deceased, and confirmed that the company was fully cooperating with NTSB investigators to clarify the root cause of the crash. The BBC has reached out to 21 Air for additional comment on Amazon’s decision to pause their partnership, and no further statement has been released from the carrier as of press time.

In Amazon’s official announcement, the company emphasized that safety has remained its non-negotiable top priority across all of its internal operations and third-party partnerships. “After the tragic incident last weekend, we’ve spent time supporting the investigation and reviewing some of the surrounding circumstances, and we’ve decided to pause our operations with 21 Air,” the spokesperson said, adding that Amazon will continue to support the ongoing investigation and all parties impacted by the crash.

Eighteen months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a striking declaration: the decades-long tight economic and military alliance that defined Canada’s relationship with the United States was effectively over. That break has been fueled by a rapid escalation of tensions: collapsed bilateral trade talks, escalating tit-for-tat tariffs, and inflammatory rhetoric from former U.S. President Donald Trump, including his infamous suggestion that Canada could become America’s 51st state. What began as simmering friction has grown into a full-blown trade feud that is forcing Canada to fundamentally reimagine its economic future.

Now, leaning on his decades-long career at the upper echelons of global finance, Carney is launching a high-stakes gambit to build that new future. For two days, Toronto is playing host to more than 100 of the world’s most powerful institutional investors, who collectively oversee a staggering C$100tn ($72tn) in assets under management. Billed as a first-of-its-kind national investment summit, the event is Carney’s push to forge new global economic ties that can insulate Canada from today’s increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape.

Ahead of the summit’s opening, Carney framed Canada as an under-tapped opportunity for global capital, telling attendees: “Canada has what the world wants.” The guest list reflects the scale of Carney’s ambition: it includes leaders of top sovereign wealth funds from nations including Norway and the United Arab Emirates, alongside chief executives of the world’s largest asset managers, such as BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Blackstone President Jon Gray. During the summit, Carney plans to pitch investors on opportunities across Canada’s key sectors: from the country’s abundant energy and natural resource holdings to its growing technology ecosystem, highlighting political stability as a core advantage. The prime minister is specifically targeting new investment for high-priority projects in artificial intelligence, national defense, transportation, and national infrastructure.

The strategy is rooted in a clear goal: to build a “more independent, more resilient economy” for Canada, after the breakdown of trade relations with its largest and closest trading partner. Tensions in the ongoing trade war have climbed to new highs in recent weeks, leaving little hope of an immediate reset with Washington.

But Carney’s pitch faces significant headwinds. One longstanding structural barrier to large-scale investment in Canada is the country’s notoriously slow regulatory approval process for major projects, which has deterred global capital for decades. A pre-summit analysis from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investment Board), a co-host of the event, warned that the lack of scalable, ready-to-invest opportunities is Canada’s greatest weakness when competing for global capital. “Global capital is looking for opportunity, but opportunity alone does not make a market investible,” explained Naomi Powell, director of the CPP Investments Insight Institute.

Unlike many other sitting heads of government, Carney brings a unique advantage to the table: decades of personal relationships with the world’s top business leaders, built during his time as Governor of the Bank of Canada, Governor of the Bank of England, and a senior leader at Goldman Sachs. Most invites to the summit were extended personally by Carney himself, according to Goldy Hyder, president and chief executive of the Business Council of Canada. Miville Tremblay, who worked alongside Carney at the Bank of Canada for multiple years and witnessed his crisis leadership during the 2008 global financial crash, says this personal network and deep financial fluency sets this outreach apart from previous Canadian trade missions. “It’s not a group of politicians inviting financiers, it’s a group of former financiers and investment people inviting their former buddies,” Tremblay noted. He added that Carney’s grasp of global finance puts him a step ahead: “He understands finance very deeply. He would know when they are bluffing and when the understatement meant that something really bad was happening.”

For a quarter century, Canada’s core pitch to foreign investors centered on one key selling point: access to the U.S. consumer market. That line no longer works, Tremblay says, forcing a complete rebrand of Canada as an investment destination. The new framing, which Carney has fully embraced, is simple: “Canada has stuff that the world needs” – from critical natural resources to stable regulatory governance and cutting-edge innovation.

While Carney is pushing to diversify Canada’s economic ties away from the U.S., analysts warn that severing ties entirely would come at a massive cost to Canada: exports to the U.S. still account for nearly 20% of Canada’s total GDP, one of the highest bilateral trade dependency ratios in the world. Most economic analysts agree that even as Canada courts new global investment, a long-term resolution of the trade dispute with Washington remains the critical foundation for sustained economic stability. Bradley Saunders, North America economist for Capital Economist, explains that for Carney’s investment push to succeed long-term, he will ultimately need to secure a stable new trade framework with the U.S. “If Carney wants to attract long-term investment… he wants this to go well, he has to try and provide a stable environment – and that won’t come until Canada has a certain trading relationship with the U.S,” Saunders said. Even if Canada continues to reduce its trade reliance on the U.S. over the coming decades, Tremblay notes that both nations will eventually need to return to the negotiating table to reach a compromise.

Investors in attendance are also looking for Carney to address other domestic barriers to investment, including the need to build consensus for major projects with Indigenous communities and provincial governments, who often hold the power to delay or cancel large resource and infrastructure developments. Beyond attracting overseas capital, the summit also has a quiet secondary goal: encouraging Canada’s own large pension funds, which currently allocate the majority of their capital to overseas investments, to increase their domestic holdings.

Carney’s supporters frame this moment as a perfect fit for his proven track record as a crisis manager. “He’s a crisis manager. He managed the financial crisis, he managed Brexit, and now he’s got a super crisis for Canada,” Tremblay said. Carney has been open about the challenges ahead, acknowledging that shifting Canada’s economy away from decades of reliance on the U.S. will be a long, difficult road. So far, a majority of Canadian voters have backed his approach, though the prime minister has faced criticism for shifting away from previous climate commitments and pursuing closer resource ties with controversial nations including Saudi Arabia and China.

The biggest long-term risk, according to some analysts, is the mismatch in timelines: building new trade and investment partnerships across the globe takes years, while the rift with the U.S. has happened far more rapidly. Drew Fagan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, warns that this gap creates a dangerous “valley of death” in the interim that could hurt Canada both economically and politically. For Carney, the summit this week is the first major step on a uncertain path that will define Canada’s economic trajectory for generations.

U.S. inflation remained stuck at 3.4% in the 12 months ending August 2026, matching July’s reading as soaring energy costs pushed the nation’s cost of living higher, new official government data reveals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the stubborn reading comes just one week ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated monetary policy meeting, where market analysts and investors have increasingly priced in an interest rate increase. Policymakers are widely expected to lift borrowing costs to cool persistent upward price pressure and bring inflation back down to the central bank’s longstanding 2% target.

American household finances have been squeezed tighter by the ongoing price acceleration, with pain particularly acute at fuel pumps across the country. On Friday alone, the national average price for a gallon of diesel hit an all-time record high, crossing the $6 threshold for the first time in U.S. history. The sharp jump in retail fuel prices traces directly to skyrocketing global crude oil costs, which have been pushed up by widespread supply disruptions stemming from the escalating U.S.-Iran conflict. Global benchmark Brent crude has held steadily above the $100 per barrel mark in recent trading sessions as conflict tensions have intensified.

The impact of elevated oil prices extends far beyond direct fuel costs for consumers. Higher crude rates raise transportation expenses for every sector of the economy, from grocery distributors to retail shipping networks. These added operational costs are almost always passed downstream to end consumers, resulting in steeper prices for everyday goods including groceries, household products and other basic staples. This secondary ripple effect further amplifies upward pressure on the overall U.S. cost of living.

BLS data breaks down the contributors to August’s inflation, showing that gasoline prices alone jumped 3.9% month-over-month. This single category accounted for more than one-third of the overall monthly increase in consumer prices, underscoring the outsized role that the global energy market shock is playing in the current inflationary environment.

As summer draws to a close, two interconnected economic pressures – soaring energy costs and the looming prospect of tighter borrowing conditions – have moved to the top of the global policy agenda, bringing central banks across major Western economies into a high-stakes balancing act. For months, skyrocketing crude oil prices have already inflated fuel costs for motorists and eroded disposable household income, and growing uncertainty over the economic fallout of the ongoing US-Iran conflict has fanned fresh fears that cost-of-living pressures will climb even higher in the coming months.

The first major policy move came from the European Central Bank, which recently lifted its benchmark interest rate to 2.5%, justifying the hike by pointing to persistent inflation spurred by Middle East tensions, with officials warning price growth will remain well above the ECB’s 2% target for an extended period. Now, all eyes are turning to the United States and the United Kingdom, where the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are set to announce their latest interest rate decisions next week, starting with the Fed’s announcement on Wednesday.

The Fed has held interest rates steady at between 3.5% and 3.75% for five consecutive policy meetings, with its last adjustment being a rate cut back in December. But shifting economic and political conditions have reshaped market expectations: a persistently robust US job market, paired with comments from former President Donald Trump suggesting oil prices will not fall until the US-Iran conflict concludes – a outcome he predicts will not come until after November’s general election – has led most Wall Street analysts to price in a rate increase at this month’s meeting.

Newly appointed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has declined to publicly signal his policy preference, but his repeated public remarks emphasizing that the central bank’s top priority is taming stubborn inflation have only reinforced expectations of a hike. Economists at Deutsche Bank recently concluded that a rate increase is “the most likely policy outcome” based on comments from Warsh and other Fed voting members. While there is some dissent – Grace Zwemmer, a US economist at Oxford Economics, still forecasts rates will hold steady – nearly all analysts agree that a rate cut is off the table for the foreseeable future. That puts the Fed on a collision course with Trump, who has publicly pushed for lower borrowing costs and took to social media last week to pressure the central bank, writing: “The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart – BE PATRIOTS for a change.”

The root of the current inflation anxiety is the disruption to global energy markets caused by the US-Iran conflict. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for oil and natural gas shipments, has seen restricted traffic amid the fighting, pushing Brent crude prices to around $105 per barrel, nearing the multi-year highs hit when the conflict first broke out. Higher energy costs do not just increase direct utility and fuel bills for households and businesses: they also raise transportation costs for all goods, a burden that is ultimately passed to consumers in the form of higher prices for food and other essential consumer staples.

Central banks traditionally rely on higher interest rates to cool inflation: by raising the cost of borrowing for mortgages, loans and credit cards, policymakers aim to slow overall consumer spending, which in turn eases upward pressure on prices. Higher rates also create an incentive for households to save rather than spend, further cooling demand. But the policy carries major risks: tighter monetary policy can also discourage businesses from investing in expansion and new hiring, potentially dragging overall economic growth lower and raising recession risks. That makes the current decision a delicate balancing act for policymakers.

When the Bank of England announces its policy decision later next week, analysts broadly expect it to leave rates unchanged at 3.75%, even as it faces its own set of inflation pressures driven by higher energy costs. Heading into the winter heating season, millions of UK households are set to see their energy bills jump to the highest level in three years, and UK natural gas prices have already climbed above 200p per therm for the first time since the end of 2022. UK inflation currently stands at 2.9%, and most economists predict it will tick up sharply in the coming months due to higher energy costs.

Despite these inflation headwinds, analysts say there is little pressure on the Bank of England to hike immediately, thanks to key differences between current conditions and the 2022 global inflation shock. Unlike 2022, when the UK economy was rebounding from Covid-19 lockdowns and hiring was booming, the current labour market is far cooler: hiring activity is well below average, and employers face far less pressure to fill vacant roles, which means workers have far less leverage to demand large pay increases. Oxford Economics economist Alexander Harvey notes there is “no sign” of the so-called second-round inflation effects that worried policymakers in 2022 – where price shocks lead to wage-price spirals as workers demand higher pay and businesses pass those costs on to consumers. That gives the Bank of England “some breathing space,” Harvey said.

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, added that outside the United States, economies like the UK are already far weaker than they were in 2022, when the last major energy-driven inflation shock hit. Consumers, still reeling from previous rounds of price hikes, have already adjusted their spending habits, and interest rates are already much higher than they were four years ago. “That’s in stark contrast to the current labour market,” Harvey said of the 2022 conditions, when post-Covid reopening left businesses scrambling to hire and gave workers unprecedented bargaining power to push for big pay gains. Today, those conditions no longer exist, giving UK policymakers room to hold off on further tightening for now.

Global trade policy shifts are forcing major consumer goods companies to restructure their cross-border supply chains, and leading Japanese brewing giant Sapporo is the latest firm to make significant operational changes in response. After the United States imposed a new 50% tariff on Canadian-sourced beer that went into effect on September 2 this year, the company has confirmed it will relocate production of beer bound for U.S. consumers from its Canadian facilities to domestic sites within the U.S.

The new levy has drastically inflated operational costs for breweries that ship products across the U.S.-Canada border. In comments to Bloomberg, Sapporo Chief Strategy Officer Rieko Shofu framed trade tariffs as an external, unmanageable factor for the business, noting that the company’s path forward centers on expanding localized production in key target markets. The company did not issue an immediate additional response to requests for comment from the BBC when contacted for further details.

Per Sapporo’s current timeline, production of its non-alcoholic beer line – which currently serves U.S. customers from Canadian manufacturing sites – will be fully transitioned to U.S. facilities by the first half of 2027. As one of the Japanese brewer’s largest and most strategically critical overseas markets, changes to North American production will directly impact operations at Sleeman Breweries, Sapporo’s Canadian subsidiary.

To offset the cost increases triggered by the new tariffs and support expanded domestic output for the U.S. market, Sapporo is actively evaluating multiple options to add production capacity along the U.S. West Coast, which is its largest regional market in the country. These potential moves include constructing a new purpose-built brewery, acquiring an existing manufacturing facility, or entering a contract production partnership with an established local brewer.

Sapporo has spent decades building its footprint in the U.S. market, and today it claims its namesake flagship Sapporo beer is the top-selling Asian beer brand in the country. For years, the company has prioritized aggressive overseas expansion to counteract stagnant domestic alcohol sales in Japan, where a steadily shrinking population has created persistent headwinds for revenue growth. To support this global growth push, Sapporo has earmarked up to ¥400 billion ($2.6 billion) in total investment by 2030, with roughly 30% of that capital allocated to developing overseas markets.

The company’s expansion strategy is not limited to North America. Earlier this summer in July, it announced a strategic partnership with global brewing conglomerate Carlsberg to grow its market share across Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region with rising demand for international beer brands.

Sapporo’s production relocation is far from an isolated case. As governments around the world increasingly implement new trade barriers, multinational companies are actively re-evaluating their manufacturing footprints to reduce cost exposure. The July 2025 U.S. tariff announcement that included new levies on dozens of trade partners, Canada included, has already squeezed margins for hundreds of businesses that rely on integrated cross-border North American supply chains. Sapporo’s decision underscores a broader global trend: as trade barriers raise the cost of serving international customers from offshore production sites, more companies are shifting toward localized manufacturing to maintain competitiveness.

A full-blown trade conflict between North America’s two largest economies entered a new tense phase on Tuesday, as Canada’s sweeping retaliatory tariffs on close to C$28 billion ($20 billion) worth of U.S. goods officially came into force. The move comes weeks after trade talks between the two nations collapsed in late August, with no resumption of negotiations in sight and escalating rhetorical and policy threats from both sides.

The counter-tariffs, which Prime Minister Mark Carney has framed as a “dollar-for-dollar” response to new U.S. import taxes, will hit hundreds of American products with rates as high as 50%. The original tariff list included everything from U.S.-produced steel, furniture and cotton apparel to fresh fish and lobster, but Canadian officials ultimately removed seafood items after widespread pushback from the country’s domestic seafood industry. The last-minute change underscores the delicate balancing act Ottawa faces as it pushes back against its largest single trading partner, where nearly three-quarters of Canada’s exports historically headed before the current trade dispute.

While both U.S. and Canadian officials have publicly stated they remain open to reaching a mutually beneficial trade agreement, no substantive progress has been made to restart negotiations since talks fell apart last month. Carney told reporters last week that Canada remains committed to securing a durable deal that serves the interests of both nations, adding: “We’re ready to sit down and strike that deal when the Americans are ready.”

But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has rejected the framing that Washington bears responsibility for the stalled talks. Speaking to Fox News last Thursday, Greer claimed the U.S. had tabled its best possible offer, which Canada outright rejected. He added that communication between the two sides has been nearly non-existent since talks collapsed, and warned Canada in a separate interview with Canadian public broadcaster CBC that further retaliation could prompt the U.S. to expand its own trade restrictions, including potential bans on certain Canadian imports.

The escalation has been fueled in large part by aggressive rhetoric from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has ramped up pressure on Canada in recent weeks. On Monday, Trump threatened to cut off all U.S. business with leading Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier unless the company shifts all its manufacturing operations to the U.S. A 2024 report commissioned by Bombardier from global accounting firm PwC found the company contributes more than C$7 billion annually to Canada’s GDP, making it one of the country’s largest private sector employers. Over the weekend, Trump also took aim at Canada’s currency exchange rate in a Truth Social post, calling it “unacceptable”, and shared a viral graphic showing Canada, Mexico and Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag that stoked fears of further expansionist trade and political pressure.

The current trade dispute is layered on top of pre-existing trade frictions between the two neighbors. The U.S. already imposes a 25% tariff on Canadian-made cars and trucks, as well as import taxes on Canadian steel, aluminum and softwood lumber. In late August, Trump expanded these tariffs, adding a new 25% levy that hits C$28 billion worth of Canadian goods including dairy, alcohol, hockey sticks and perfume. Canada’s new counter-tariffs add to existing retaliatory measures Ottawa already put in place against non-compliant U.S. finished vehicles under the USMCA/CUSMA free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Canada and the U.S. share the world’s largest bilateral trading relationship, with total two-way trade hitting nearly $900 billion in 2025. Now that both new U.S. tariffs and Canadian countermeasures are in effect, businesses on both sides of the border are rushing to adapt to the new trade landscape and mitigate cost increases.

Public opinion in Canada largely backs the government’s retaliatory approach, with recent polling showing a majority of Canadians support the counter-tariffs. But economic analysts and business groups have warned of unavoidable harm to consumers. Economists point out that the new tariffs will drive up prices for everyday household goods ranging from clothing and groceries to furniture, hitting lower-income households the hardest. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has urged the Carney government to adopt a targeted, narrow approach to retaliation to avoid unnecessary economic damage. “Businesses understand retaliation but don’t want to see endless escalation,” Chamber CEO and President Candace Laing told the BBC in a statement Friday, though she acknowledged businesses are already planning for the trade dispute to drag on for months.

The removal of lobster and other fresh seafood from the tariff list highlights the risk of unintended harm to Canada’s own economy from cross-border tariffs. The lobster industries on both sides are deeply integrated: U.S.-caught lobster is often shipped to Canada for processing before being re-exported back to the U.S. for retail sale, meaning tariffs on American seafood would have disrupted Canadian processing jobs as much as U.S. producers.

Before the latest escalation of the trade war, Canada’s economy showed surprising resilience: GDP grew 3.3% in the second quarter of 2025, and the country added 181,000 new jobs between April and July. But the onset of new U.S. tariffs and the collapse of trade talks coincided with a sudden reversal in August, when Canada lost 41,000 jobs over the month. One bright spot has been domestic manufacturing, which saw modest growth that the Canadian government attributes to a shift toward domestic goods by consumers and businesses looking to avoid cross-border tariff costs.

Carney has made diversifying Canada’s trade relationships away from over-reliance on the U.S. a central policy goal amid the dispute. July 2025 trade data already shows a marked shift: the share of Canadian exports headed to the U.S. dropped to 66%, down from an average of 75% before the current trade war began.