HEADLINES

Greer: USMCA Talks Could Stretch Into Next Year

The renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement could stretch into 2027, the U.S. trade chief told senators Wednesday, though the Trump administration hopes for some partial agreements with Canada and Mexico by the end of this year.

The U.S. wants to have separate interim agreements with Mexico and Canada ready for President Trump to review by the end of this year, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told the Senate Finance Committee. But talks on other issues, like how much American content must be in automobiles and other products, could take more time.

"I would love to have, between now and the end of the year, at least some arrangements-one with Canada, one with Mexico," Greer said. But other "really important issues," like rules of origin and labor and environment standards, may "take a little more time to have further discussion, including with Congress, in the following year."

Apotex Shares Drop as Trump Tariff Threat Targets Overseas-Made Generic Drugs

Shares of Canadian generic drugmaker Apotex fell sharply Wednesday after President Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 200% on generic drugs made outside the U.S., a move that could hit the manufacturer's largely overseas production base.

Shares trading in Toronto fell 7.9% to C$36.55.

Trump said the levies would start at 100% in August 2028 and rise a year later, giving drugmakers two years to shift manufacturing. The plan targets generic medicines largely produced in India and China, raising pressure on companies with limited U.S. manufacturing, such as Toronto-based Apotex.

Rogers Communications Logs Second-Quarter Loss on Maple Leafs, Raptors Buyout Charge

Rogers Communications swung to a loss in the second quarter after booking a large accounting charge tied to its deal to buy the remaining stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.

The telecommunications company posted a net loss of C$665 million, or C$1.37 a share, compared with a profit of C$148 million, or C$0.29 a share, in the comparable quarter a year ago.

The loss was largely due to a C$1.03 billion accounting adjustment to the value of the company's obligation to buy the final stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.

Shares of Rogers Communications fell 4.6% to C$46.36 on Wednesday.

NovaGold Consolidates Ownership of Alaska's Donlin Gold Project in $4.2 Billion Deal

NovaGold Resources has struck a deal to take full ownership of the Donlin Gold project by buying investment firm Paulson's 40% stake, consolidating control over what is slated to become America's largest gold mine.

The all-share transaction will create a new U.S.-domiciled parent company, NovaGold Corporation, valued at roughly $4.2 billion and owned 65% by existing NovaGold shareholders and 35% by Paulson.

Shares of NovaGold rose 10.1% to C$8.74.

Canada Housing Agency Downgrades Real-Estate Outlook, Anticipates Further Price Weakness

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. downgraded its housing-market outlook for the remainder of the year, citing trade-policy uncertainty, a halt in population growth and a rise in borrowing costs.

The country's main housing agency, known as CMHC, said that activity in the residential real-estate market has turned out weaker than anticipated. Existing-home prices have weakened but not enough to trigger new buyers to enter the housing market, the agency said, due to underlying weak economic conditions, modest income growth and a pickup in mortgage rates.

"We expect conditions to improve over the medium-term -- however, housing construction should remain suppressed as the industry factors in today's elevated inventories and weaker demand," said Kevin Hughes, deputy chief economist at CMHC.

Scotiabank Expects C$82 Million Contribution From KeyCorp Stake to Third-Quarter Profit

Bank of Nova Scotia expects its investment in KeyCorp will contribute about C$82 million to net income in the fiscal third quarter.

The Canadian financial institution said the figure is net of the bank's associated funding costs and is reported on a one-month lag.

Adjusting for the amortization of acquired intangible assets of about C$8 million, Scotiabank said the adjusted net-income contribution will be roughly C$90 million.

Manulife Expands Microsoft Partnership to Scale AI Across Operations

Manulife Financial is deepening and expanding its partnership with Microsoft in a five-year deal aimed at accelerating its shift into an artificial intelligence-powered financial services organization.

The companies said that Manulife will adopt Microsoft's Frontier Suite, deploy Microsoft Agent 365 to oversee enterprise AI systems, and extend Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 employees.

The deal gives the Canadian insurer and financial institution access to a next-generation platform that provides a control plane for governing, monitoring, and securing AI agents at enterprise scale.

TALKING POINT

Trump's Tariffs Enter New Phase, Ending Months of Calm

By Gavin Bade and Matt Grossman

WASHINGTON-President Trump is preparing to reshape the legal justification for his tariff regime this week and push negotiations with North American trading partners into high gear, setting off a new phase of trade uncertainty for businesses after months of relative calm.

When the Supreme Court in February struck down most of Trump's second-term tariffs, he immediately replaced the illegal duties with a temporary 10% tariff that applied to nearly all U.S. imports. That 10% duty is legally limited to 150 days, which ends early Friday. The interim period ushered in relative stability in trade policy as officials crafted a new set of levies to replace it-a welcome relief for trade-reliant firms buffeted by constant policy shifts over the past year.

The calm is ending. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on CNBC on Tuesday that he expects new tariff action soon, previewing replacement tariffs for the ones that expire Friday. And a day earlier, Trump said he would impose additional 50% tariffs on certain goods from Canada, a move that pressures America's northern neighbor to renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The Canada tariffs were separate from the sweeping global levies Trump is trying to rebuild after the Supreme Court ruling.

"We're three days out from the page being turned," said Drew DeLong, a former State Department official now at consulting firm Kearney. Many companies "have been kind of lulled to sleep on the tariff front for the last five months," he added.

After the Supreme Court said Trump overstepped his authority last year by using a 1970s emergency law to impose levies, the president's trade team is expected to impose duties under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Those are widely seen as more legally durable, but trade observers expect that overall U.S. tariff rates won't change much in the short term under the new legal regime. In crafting the replacement tariffs, administration officials have said they would devise levies at similar levels to the expiring levies.

In March, Greer's office opened a tariff investigation into 60 economies it accused of not prohibiting the use of forced labor in supply chains. Early this month, it issued a preliminary finding in the investigation, proposing 10% tariffs on more than a dozen U.S. trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union, and 12.5% tariffs on over 40 nations, including China, India, Japan and South Korea. All told, Greer has said the tariffs would cover 99% of U.S. trade.

Trump can keep Section 301 levies in place indefinitely. But before that can happen, USTR must issue its final report in the tariff investigation, taking into account more than 1,500 comments from U.S. companies, many of which pleaded for exemptions from the coming levies.

The timeline is "incredibly tight" for USTR to issue the final report and provide guidance to Customs and Border Protection on how to implement the tariffs, said Ryan Majerus, a former Commerce Department trade official now at King & Spalding.

Though the scope of the levies could change from the preliminary report, Majerus said Trump is unlikely to initially impose forced-labor tariffs higher than levels he agreed to in a series of trade agreements struck with major economies last year. Deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea capped most U.S. tariffs at 15%.

USTR has also opened a separate Section 301 investigation into industrial overproduction from China and more than a dozen other nations. The preliminary tariff proposal in that probe hasn't been released, but people familiar with the planning say that it could come as early as next month, which would set in motion a new comment period before tariffs would be imposed.

Once in place, the totality of the Section 301 tariffs could return the U.S. to an average tariff level similar to before the Supreme Court decision, said DeLong, the former State official. That would mean an average U.S. tariff of about 17%, up from about 11% today under the temporary measures.

Greer's office is also overseeing a high-stakes renegotiation of the USMCA, its largest trade deal.

The U.S. is actively engaged in talks with Mexico, with U.S. officials traveling to Mexico City this week for a third round of negotiations. Talks with Canada, however, haven't officially been opened yet, and the new tariffs Trump imposed Monday injected new tension into the relationship.

America's role as a large buyer of Canadian goods adds leverage. Even before the latest round of tariffs, Canada's central bank projected in January that growth would be about 1.5 percentage points lower this year versus a pre-tariff forecast, leaving projected growth at just 1.1%.

While the scope of the tariffs is relatively modest-$20 billion out of more than $380 billion of Canadian exports to the U.S.-the legal justification raised eyebrows in trade circles.

Trump proposed the new Canada tariffs under a never-before-used portion of U.S. trade law-Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which covers alleged discrimination on U.S. goods. That provision could give him more flexibility to impose tariffs on a whim, rather than the months of investigations required by Section 301.

Unlike previous Trump administration tariffs against Canada, the new duties override the protection offered by the USMCA, which makes them more impactful but also more vulnerable to legal challenges, said Abigail Watt, an economist at UBS. Thanks largely to the trade deal, about 85% of American imports from Canada were tariff-free last year, Watt said.

The new Canada tariffs could be averted if relations improve. On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he and Trump would accelerate trade talks in the coming weeks, ahead of the Aug. 19 deadline when the new U.S. tariffs would be imposed.

For most Americans, the most tangible impact of Trump's trade war has been higher prices. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the administration's tariffs raised consumer prices for so-called core goods by about 3.4% through February, Federal Reserve economists have estimated-pushing the overall core inflation rate up by about 0.8 percentage point.

"There's a great deal of support among businesses for the Administration's goal to encourage more production in the United States, " said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, "but frequently changing the rules and ramping up new tariffs every few weeks isn't the way to do it."

Write to Gavin Bade at [gavin.bade@wsj.com] and Matt Grossman at [matt.grossman@wsj.com]

Expected Major Events for Thursday

06:45/FRA: Jul Monthly business survey (goods-producing industries)

10:00/UK: Jul CBI Industrial Trends Survey

12:30/CAN: May Employment Insurance

12:30/CAN: May Retail trade

12:30/US: Jun Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI)

12:30/US: 07/18 Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report - Initial Claims

12:30/US: U.S. Weekly Export Sales

13:00/RUS: Weekly International Reserves

14:30/US: 07/17 EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report

15:00/US: Jul Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Survey of Tenth District Manufacturing

20:30/US: Foreign Central Bank Holdings

20:30/US: Federal Discount Window Borrowings

23:01/UK: Jul UK Consumer Confidence Survey

23:30/JPN: Jun CPI (Nation), CPI ex-food (Nation)

23:30/JPN: May Final Labour Survey - Earnings, Employment & Hours Worked

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Expected Earnings for Thursday

Acme United Corp (ACU) is expected to report $0.40 for 2Q.

Albertsons Cos Inc $(ACI)$ is expected to report $0.46 for 1Q.

Amalgamated Financial Corp (AMAL) is expected to report $1.00 for 2Q.

American Airlines Group Inc $(AAL)$ is expected to report $0.04 for 2Q.

Ameriprise Financial Inc $(AMP)$ is expected to report $10.83 for 2Q.

Blackstone Inc (BX) is expected to report $1.38 for 2Q.

Bread Financial Holdings Inc $(BFH)$ is expected to report $2.74 for 2Q.

Cass Information Systems Inc $(CASS)$ is expected to report $0.72 for 2Q.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc $(CLF)$ is expected to report $-0.21 for 2Q.

Dime Commercial Bancshares Inc $(DCOM)$ is expected to report $0.79 for 2Q.

Dover Corp $(DOV)$ is expected to report $2.35 for 2Q.

FirstCash Holdings Inc $(FCFS)$ is expected to report $2.20 for 2Q.

FirstService Corp (FSV,FSV.T) is expected to report $1.30 for 2Q.

Freeport-McMoRan Inc $(FCX)$ is expected to report $0.55 for 2Q.

Heartland Express Inc $(HTLD)$ is expected to report $-0.03 for 2Q.

Heritage Financial Corp $(HFWA)$ is expected to report $0.45 for 2Q.

Honeywell International Inc $(HON)$ is expected to report for 2Q.

Huntington Bancshares Inc $(HBAN)$ is expected to report $0.36 for 2Q.

Independent Bank Corp (Michigan) $(IBCP)$ is expected to report $0.84 for 2Q.

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT) is expected to report $7.22 for 2Q.

Mullen Group Ltd (MLLGF,MTL.T) is expected to report $0.33 for 2Q.

Nasdaq Inc $(NDAQ)$ is expected to report $0.89 for 2Q.

Old Republic International Corp (ORI) is expected to report $0.77 for 2Q.

Pool Corp $(POOL)$ is expected to report $5.33 for 2Q.

Popular Inc $(BPOP)$ is expected to report $3.73 for 2Q.

Quest Diagnostics Inc $(DGX)$ is expected to report $2.57 for 2Q.

RTX Corp $(RTX)$ is expected to report $1.36 for 2Q.

Roper Technologies Inc $(ROP)$ is expected to report $3.68 for 2Q.

Ryder System Inc $(R)$ is expected to report $3.48 for 2Q.

S&T Bancorp Inc $(STBA)$ is expected to report $0.92 for 2Q.

Snap-On Inc (SNA) is expected to report $4.91 for 2Q.

Southwest Airlines Co $(LUV)$ is expected to report $0.47 for 2Q.

T-Mobile US Inc $(TMUS)$ is expected to report $2.59 for 2Q.

Teck Resources Ltd - Class B (TECK,TECK.A.T,TECK.B.T) is expected to report $1.08 for 2Q.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc $(TMO)$ is expected to report $4.92 for 2Q.

Tractor Supply Co $(TSCO)$ is expected to report $0.83 for 2Q.

Union Pacific Corp $(UNP)$ is expected to report $3.21 for 2Q.

Valley National Bancorp $(VLY)$ is expected to report $0.31 for 2Q.

West Bancorp $(WTBA)$ is expected to report $0.63 for 2Q.

West Pharmaceutical Services Inc (WST) is expected to report $2.07 for 2Q.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 22, 2026 16:31 ET (20:31 GMT)

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