Click-clack comeback: Toronto shop thriving amid typewriter renaissance

By John Vennavally-Rao
September 01, 2025 

Martin Howard poses with some of his typewriters from the late 1800s.

In an age dominated by social media, emails and text messages, the sharp click-clack of steel keys striking paper may seem like a relic of the past. But at a Toronto shop, typewriters are in demand and business is booming.

“When we first started this, we would sort of be excited and happy to sell maybe one every couple of weeks,” said Chris Edmondson, who launched Toronto Typewriters about a decade ago. “Now, in a given week, we probably sell 5 to maybe 10. It depends on the season.”

Toronto Typewriters is one of the few remaining typewriter stores in the country.

His small shop is packed with machines that may once have been tossed in the trash. Today, some of those typewriters are considered treasures. Prices range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. Edmondson repairs, restores and even 3D-prints ribbon spools for clients around the world. He also rents out typewriters to film and TV productions, including one that matches the model featured in The Shining.

For many, Edmondson says, the appeal comes down to focus.

“There’s no distraction, like with a computer,” Edmondson said as he showed CTV News around his shop. “It’s just you and the machine, and you’re sort of creating thoughts on paper in a linear way.”


He also says people really love the sound.

“I think the click clack and the bell is a very familiar and enjoyable sound. A lot of people resonate with that sound.”

Even Taylor Swift used a vintage Royal 10 typewriter in the music video for her song “Fortnight."

“When Taylor Swift got a typewriter, they want to have a typewriter,” said Edmondson, adding he has rented out the same Royal model to plenty of younger customers.

Typerwriters like this vintage one from Royal can sell for more than $5,000.

Parents are also buying them for kids as young as five hoping to get them to write without spellcheck.

“Parents kind of see it as a way to disconnect their kids from the tablet world and the YouTube generation sort of approach to learning.”

The resurgence is part of a wider embrace of analog technology, from vinyl records and cassette tapes to film cameras.

Actor Tom Hanks is one of the best-known typewriter fans. He owns hundreds and often speaks of his affection for them.

Toronto collector Martin Howard is also pleased with the renewed attention. In the basement of his home, he displays his collection of vintage machines, the largest in Canada. He began collecting 37 years ago and proudly displays them in a lit-up cabinet.


“They’re all different styles in the 1880s and 1890s, so you get the incredible range of brilliant mechanical objects,” said Howard.

His oldest machine is a Remington Perfected 4 built in 1879. He owns 75 typewriters and enjoys restoring them to working condition.

“I love having them as my personal possessions,” he said adding that he also loves to share his collection with others.

Howard bought his first typewriter at 29. At a junk shop in Aurora, Ont., he found a Caligraph 2 from 1886. The machine had no shift key, instead using separate black keys for uppercase and white keys for lowercase.

This Caligraph 2 typewriter from 1886 had no shift key. Instead it features separate black keys for uppercase characters and white keys for lower case.

He said interest in typewriters started to rise around 2012, and demand surged during the pandemic.

“During COVID, as you can imagine, it was a very popular thing for people. When people were looking for new things to do at home, portable typewriters were really popular.”

As for Taylor Swift’s influence, Howard sees it as a good thing.

“It makes it hip is what it does. Makes it really hip.”



John Vennavally-Rao
Senior Correspondent, 

CTV National News

Trump plans a hefty tax on imported drugs, risking higher prices and shortages

By The Associated Press
 September 01, 2025 

Pharmaceuticals are seen in North Andover, Mass., on June 15, 2018. AP Photo/Elise Amendola, file)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has plastered tariffs on products from almost every country on earth. He’s targeted specific imports including autos, steel and aluminum.

But he isn’t done yet.

Trump has promised to impose hefty import taxes on pharmaceuticals, a category of products he’s largely spared in his trade war. For decades, in fact, imported medicine has mostly been allowed to enter the United States duty free.

That’s starting to change. U.S. and European leaders recently detailed a trade deal that includes a 15 per cent tariff rate on some European goods brought into the United States, including pharmaceuticals. Trump is threatening duties of 200 per cent more on drugs made elsewhere.

“Shock and awe’’ is how Maytee Pereira of the tax and consulting firm PwC describes Trump’s plans for drugmakers. “This is an industry that’s going from zero (tariffs) to the potentiality of 200 per cent.’’


Trump has promised Americans he’ll lower their drug costs. But imposing stiff pharmaceutical tariffs risks the opposite and could disrupt complex supply chains, drive cheap foreign-made generic drugs out of the U.S. market and create shortages.

“A tariff would hurt consumers most of all, as they would feel the inflationary effect ... directly when paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy and indirectly through higher insurance premiums,’’ Diederik Stadig, a healthcare economist with the financial services firm ING, wrote in a commentary last month, adding that lower-income households and the elderly would feel the greatest impact.

The threat comes as Trump also pressures drugmakers to lower prices in the United States. He recently sent letters to several companies telling them to develop a plan to start offering so-called most-favored nation pricing here.

But Trump has said he’d delay the tariffs for a year or a year and a half, giving companies a chance to stockpile medicine and shift manufacturing to the United States — something some have already begun to do.

Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said in a July 29 note that most drugmakers have already increased drug product imports and may carry between six and 18 months of inventory in the U.S.

Jefferies analyst David Windley said in a recent research note that tariffs that don’t kick in until the back half of 2026 may not be felt until 2027 or 2028 due to stockpiling.

Moreover, many analysts suspect Trump will settle for a tariff far lower than 200 per cent. They also are waiting to see whether any tariff policy includes an exemption for certain products like low-margin generic drugs.

Still, Stadig says, even a 25 per cent levy would gradually raise U.S. drug prices by 10 per cent to 14 per cent as the stockpiles dwindle.

In recent decades, drugmakers have moved many operations overseas – to take advantage of lower costs in China and India and tax breaks in Ireland and Switzerland. As a result, the U.S. trade deficit in medicinal and pharmaceutical products is big -- nearly $150 billion last year.

The COVID-19 experience – when countries were desperate to hang onto their own medicine and medical supplies — underscored the dangers of relying on foreign countries in a crisis, especially when a key supplier is America’s geopolitical rival China.

In April, the administration started investigating how importing drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients affects national security. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 permits the president to order tariffs for the sake of national security.


Marta Wosińska, a health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, says there is a role for tariffs in securing U.S. medical supplies. The Biden administration, she noted, successfully taxed foreign syringes when cheap Chinese imports threatened to drive U.S. producers out of business.

Trump has bigger ideas: He wants to bring pharmaceutical factories back to the United States, noting that U.S.-made drugs won’t face his tariffs.

Drugmakers are already investing in the United States.

The Swiss drugmaker Roche said in April that it will invest US$50 billion in expanding its U.S. operations. Johnson & Johnson will spend $55 billion within the United States in the next four years. CEO Joaquin Duato said recently that the company aims to supply drugs for the U.S. market entirely from sites located there.

But building a pharmaceutical factory in the United States from scratch is expensive and can take several years.

And building in the U.S. wouldn’t necessarily protect a drugmaker from Trump’s tariffs, not if the taxes applied to imported ingredients used in the medicine. Jacob Jensen, trade policy analyst at the right-leaning American Action Forum, notes that “97% of antibiotics, 92% of antivirals and 83% of the most popular generic drugs contain at least one active ingredient that is manufactured abroad.’’

“The only way to truly protect yourself from the tariffs would be to build the supply chain end to end in the United States,’’ Pereira said.

Brand-name drug companies have fat profit margins that provide flexibility to make investments and absorb costs as Trump’s tariffs begin. Generic drug manufacturers do not.

Some may decide to leave the U.S. market rather than pay tariffs. That could prove disruptive: Generics account for 92 per cent of U.S. retail and mail-order pharmacy prescriptions.

A production pause at a factory in India a couple years ago led to a chemotherapy shortage that disrupted cancer care. “Those are not very resilient markets,” Brookings’ Wosińska said. “If there’s a shock, it’s hard for them to recover.”

She argues that tariffs alone are unlikely to persuade generic drug manufacturers to build U.S. factories: They’d probably need government financing.

“In an ideal world, we would be making everything that’s important only in the U.S.,’’ Wosińska said. “But it costs a lot of money ... We have offshored so much of our supply chains because we want to have inexpensive drugs. If we want to reverse this, we would really have to redesign our system ... How much are we willing to spend?’’

Murphy reported from Indianapolis. AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

Paul Wiseman And Tom Murphy, The Associated Press

Tariffs cause ‘unprecedented’ disruption to global trade rules, WTO chief says

By Reuters
September 02, 2025 

President Donald Trump holds an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Washington. (Pool via AP) (AP)

The share of global trade done on WTO terms has fallen to 72 per cent and could fall further, amid the biggest disruption to the international trading system in the past 80 years, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization said on Tuesday.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump started imposing higher import tariffs this year on most of the United States’ trading partners, the share of global trade conducted under the WTO’s ‘most favored nation’ (MFN) terms is down from about 80 per cent, WTO data shows. The principle requires WTO members to treat others equally.

“We’re experiencing the largest disruption to global trade rules, unprecedented in the past 80 years,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters in an interview at the start of her second term at the helm of the Geneva-based trade watchdog.

“So it’s not surprising that some would question the global trading system... and predictability,” she said, adding: “As long as the majority of trade is taking place on MFN terms, I think we should celebrate that. We’re a long way from 50 per cent.”

Okonjo-Iweala warned that world trade could experience the effects of tariffs “later down the line” into 2026 as the recent surge in global commerce - driven by frontloading of goods during the first half of the year - begins to subside.

This contributed to the WTO raising its global trade growth forecast from 0.2 per cent to 0.9 per cent in August.

“Possibly down the line, we’ll begin to see some other impacts, as the goods in the warehouses are exhausted, and impacts begin to come in, but we’ll see next year. We still anticipate some growth,” she said.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin and Emma Farge; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Trump says he’s looking for swift Supreme Court ruling on most tariffs

By The Associated Press
September 02, 2025 

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event about the relocation of U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is indicating that he’ll ask the Supreme Court tomorrow to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that found many of his tariffs are illegal.

Trump says he’ll ask the court for an expedited ruling and claims that if the duties are removed, it could be devastating for the United States.

Last Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and his fentanyl-related duties exceeded his powers under the national security statute he used to impose them.

Trump used the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to hit much of the world with duties, even though the statute does not include the word “tariff” or its synonyms.

The appeals court said that the tariffs could stay in place while the Trump administration takes the case to the Supreme Court.


Trump increased tariffs on Canada to 35 per cent at the start of August, citing fentanyl and retaliatory tariffs as justification for the increase.

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press

Judge orders search shakeup in U.S. Google monopoly case, but keeps hands off Chrome and default deals

By The Associated Press
Updated: September 02, 2025 a

A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, on Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus,File)

SAN FRANCISCO - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine in an attempt to curb the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government’s attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.

The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence -- including conversational “answer engines” as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google’s long-held position as the internet’s main gateway.

The innovations and competition being unleashed by generative artificial intelligence, or “GenAI,” have reshaped the judge’s approach to remedies in the nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department during President Donald Trump’s first administration and carried onward by President Joe Biden.

“Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” Mehta wrote.

The judge is trying to rein in Google by prohibiting some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. The handcuffs will prevent Google from negotiating contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices.


The handcuffs being slapped on Google will preclude contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices.

But Mehta stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of more than $26 billion annually, were one of the main issues that prompted the judge to conclude Google’s search engine was an illegal monopoly, but he decided banning them in the future would do more harm than good.

The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding it was an unwarranted step that “would be incredibly messy and highly risky.”

Partially because he is allowing the default deals to continue, Mehta is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine’s secret sauce -- the data stockpiled from trillions of queries that it used to help improve the quality of its search results. That is a measure that Google had also fiercely opposed, contending it was unfair and would raise privacy and security risk for the billions of people who have posed questions to its search engine -- sometimes delving into sensitive issues.

The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, hailed the decision as a “major win for the American people,” even though the agency didn’t get everything it sought. “We are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough,” Slater wrote in a post.

In its own post, Google framed Mehta’s ruling as a vindication of its long-held position that the case never should have been brought. The decision “recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs. “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want.”

The Mountain View, California, company has already vowed to appeal the judge’s monopoly findings issued 13 months ago that led to Tuesday’s ruling.

“You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,” said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project.

Investors seemed to interpret the ruling as a relatively light slap on the wrist for Google, as the stock price of its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., surged more than 7% in extended trading. That would translate into a nearly $200 billion increase in Alphabet’s market value, if the shares follow a similar trajectory in Wednesday’s regular trading session.

Allowing the default search deals to continue is more than just a victory for Google. It’s also a win for Apple, which receives more than $20 billion annually from Google, and other recipients of the payments.

In hearings earlier this year, Apple warned the judge that banning the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own innovative research. The Cupertino, California, company also cautioned that the ban could have the unintended consequence of making Google even more powerful by pocketing the money it had been spending on deals while most consumers will still end up flocking to Google’s search engine anyway.


Others, such as the owners of the Firefox search engine, asserted that losing the Google contracts would threaten their future survival by depriving them of essential revenue.

Apple’s shares rose 3% in extended trading after the ruling came out.

Mehta refrained from ordering a sale of Chrome because he decided there wasn’t adequate proof the browser served as an essential ingredient in Google’s search monopoly, making a divestiture “a poor fit for this case.”

Chrome would have been a hot commodity had the judge forced Google to put it on the auction block. Perplexity submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to buy Chrome last month. And during court testimony earlier this year, a ChatGPT executive left no doubt that service’s owner, OpenAI, would be interested in be interested in buying Chrome, too.

But the judge decided forcing Google to open up parts of its search data to rivals such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, and others will offer he best and fairest way to foster more compelling competition. In doing so, Mehta still narrowed the scope of the Justice Department’s request and will limit the access to Google’s search index and query histories.

While the wrangling over Mehta’s ruling continues, Google is facing another potentially debilitating threat in another antitrust case brought by the Justice Department targeting the digital ad empire that was built up around its search engine. After different federal judge in Virginia declared that some of the technology underlying the ad network to be an illegal monopoly earlier this year, the Justice Department plans to make its case for another proposed breakup in a trial scheduled to begin later this month.

By Michael Liedtke.

Quebec ends funding for Northvolt battery factory after losing $270M investment

By The Canadian Press
 September 02, 2025


THE PHOTO IS FRANCOPHONE IRONY

The entrance to Northvolt, the new EV battery plant being built by the Swedish manufacturer in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, east of Montreal, Que.,Thursday, May 16, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

The Quebec government is pulling the plug on a $7-billion electric-vehicle battery project near Montreal and trying to recoup some of its investment.

Economy Minister Christine Fréchette announced Tuesday that the government is cutting its losses on the planned Northvolt battery factory after spending $510 million on the troubled venture, once touted as the largest private investment in the province’s history.

The Quebec government pledged up to $2.9 billion in financing for the project, while Ottawa committed up to $4.4 billion. But construction of the plant never got underway.



“Since the company did not present a satisfactory plan with respect to Quebec’s interests, we are asserting our rights to recover the maximum amount of our investment,” Fréchette said in a statement. “This adventure has proven unsuccessful, and we are obviously disappointed.”

Plans for the battery plant have been up in the air since Northvolt’s Swedish parent company filed for bankruptcy in March. Last month, American battery startup Lyten announced it was acquiring Northvolt’s assets in Sweden and Germany and hoped to buy the Northvolt Six project in Quebec’s Montérégie region.


Catherine Pelletier, a spokesperson for Fréchette, said government representatives met with Lyten in July and August, but the company wanted more government funding that Quebec was unwilling to offer. She said Lyten made “disproportionate demands,” though she would not provide figures.

Pelletier said the government was concerned about risking more taxpayer money on another relatively new company.

In a statement, Northvolt Batteries North America said it found the decision “regrettable,” and said it had been in contact with potential buyers until this week. “It is important to remember that (the North American subsidiary) is not bankrupt and still had solid financial resources to relaunch the project,” the company said. “It was a great project, and our team still believed in it.”

Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief marketing officer, said the company accepts Quebec’s decision. “We have been clear with our desire to acquire the site to build a North American gigafactory, and if given the opportunity, we would be happy to work with the Quebec government to develop the site,” he said in a statement.

The Northvolt project was unveiled to great fanfare in September 2023, at an event attended by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, who called it a “historic and transformative” announcement.

Quebec’s pension fund manager, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, had also invested $200 million in the company.

The province’s funding of the Northvolt project included a $270-million investment in the Swedish parent company that was lost when it went bankrupt.

However, Quebec is hoping to recover a $240-million guaranteed loan issued to purchase the land for the plant. Pelletier said the government filed documents in court on Tuesday under creditor protection legislation and said a judge will have to authorize a process for the sale or repossession of the land.

“Given our existing security interests on our debt, we are well positioned to recover the full value of our debt at the end of this process,” she said.

Fréchette said the failure of the project does not spell the end for Quebec’s battery industry.


“On the contrary, our sector is very much alive with several companies active in this ecosystem,” she said. “We remain convinced that it has a bright future.”

Fréchette said nearly 3,000 people are working on the construction of battery factories in Bécancour, Que.

But Quebec Liberal Leader Pablo Rodriguez was quick to accuse the government of mishandling the project. “We’ve put all our eggs in one basket,” he told reporters in Ste-Foy, Que. “It’s a failure both in terms of planning and execution.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2025.

– With files from Caroline Plante in Quebec City

Canadians begin receiving payments from $78M auto parts class-action settlement

By Daniel Otis

September 02, 2025 

Volkswagen cars for sale are on display on the lot of a VW dealership in Boulder, Colo. 

(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

Canadians have begun receiving payments from a massive $78-million auto parts class-action settlement.

The settlement relates to allegations of illegal price fixing for automotive parts installed in new vehicles that were purchased or leased between 1998 and 2016. Affected automakers include BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Jaguar, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

The automakers are not accused of wrongdoing and were not defendants in the class actions. As part of the settlement, the parts manufacturers accused of price-fixing were able to avoid admitting to wrongdoing or liability.

The price-fixing allegations have led to criminal investigations and several class actions around the world. The Canadian settlement relates to 23 related class actions in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec that were led by law firms Siskinds, Sotos, Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman (CFM) and Siskinds Desmeules.

“The Class Action Settlements are in response to the Defendants’ alleged conspiracy to fix the price of approximately 45 automotive parts, which allegedly caused Settlement Class Members to pay too much for automotive parts and eligible brand vehicles,” the law firms stated.

Affected parts include hoses, sensors, radiators, spark plugs and windshield wipers.

“Price-fixing conspiracies are prohibited by the Competition Act,” CFM partner David Jones said in a previous news release. “They are harmful to the Canadian marketplace, causing businesses and consumers to pay too much for goods and services. The settlements seek to redress that harm.”

Payments of at least $25 per claim were sent out via e-transfer and cheque starting on Aug. 28. The deadline for filing a claim has passed. More details and contact information are available on the Auto Parts Class Action website.

Daniel Otis
CTVNews.ca Journalist

Canadian Public policy expert concerned Visa and Mastercard are monopolizing transactions

By Joshua Santos
Published: September 02, 2025 


Vass Bednar, Managing Director at Canadian SHIELD Institute for Public Policy, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the growing power of credit card giants.

Credit card companies offer a convenient way to facilitate payments between consumers and merchants, but a public policy expert is concerned the two biggest players in the space are extending their power as global regulators, censoring content, influencing markets and sparking international disputes.

Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute warns the federal government should be ready for pushback from financial service corporations as Ottawa attempts to reclaim digital sovereignty in an effort to reduce reliance on U.S. infrastructure.

“People are talking about digital sovereignty in big ways and small ways,” Bednar told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview. “I think it’s something we need to make more tangible and kind of more real.”

She highlighted a case where Visa, Mastercard and other payment processers stopped facilitating financial transactions from gaming platforms after an Australian advocacy group pressured the financial giants to remove games that featured explicit content. The case highlighted the power financial institutions have when a widely accessible payment platform cuts ties with merchants.Latest updates on company news here

“I actually have no problem with content moderation and content regulations,” Bednar said. “I just think it’s interesting that it’s coming from these payment service platforms instead of governments.”

She said she noticed gaming companies express concern on social media that the standard would be set for financial firms to go after them.

“What mechanisms do we have to report these elements?” said Bednar. “Was it kind of arbitrary? Is that a risk? I mean, that’s just, it’s one form of power that they exerted recently.”

She also referenced a program from Brazil’s central bank; Pix, an instant no-fee payment system used by three quarters of Brazilians in four years. Bednar argued the program undercuts American corporations, such as Visa and Mastercard’s high-cost models with merchants passing high swipe fees to consumers.

“There are lots of ways to pay for things,” said Bednar. “It’s not just Visa and Mastercard, by any means, but they have set a norm of sorts in terms of facilitating credit card payments and the amount that they take on the business end for the privilege and the benefit of accessing their infrastructure for payments, for smaller firms can be close to make or break.”

The program offers instant, free transfers between bank accounts, mobile apps and even street vendors, using QR codes. Surging consumer demand for real-time, seamless, and cost-effective transactions has catapulted Pix, other account-based transfers, and debit cards to record adoption rates, establishing them as the fastest-growing payment methods for purchases in emerging markets, according to EBANX’s Beyond Borders 2025 study.

The U.S. Trade Representative meanwhile launched an investigation into the Brazilian government to determine whether the country’s payment services pose a ‘discriminatory’ barrier to U.S. commerce.

“Are we seeing the U.S. kind of include Pix in that investigation as a way to protect Visa and Mastercard and say there’s an alternative, there’s more competition, which people are always saying that we need,” said Bednar. “Easier said than done. How does that affect Brazil’s sovereignty, their ability to build something new that is a competitor?”

Canada is developing a program like Pix. The Real-Time Rail (RTR) will allow Canadians to send and receive payments in real-time 24/7, 365 days a year. “As Canada continues with its Real-Time Rail, or maybe other innovations, should we expect to be punished through the U.S. administration, through trade leavers, for daring to either assert our ability to build a new competitor, or just having a successful company that’s here that challenges that U.S. dominance,” said Bednar.

The RTR will be established by Payments Canada under the Department of Canada and Bank of Canada. It will provide businesses and individuals with greater payment flexibility rather than relying on monopolized financial firms.


Joshua Santos
Journalist, BNNBloomberg.ca

U.S. records highest ever LNG exports in August

By Reuters
September 02, 2025 

The U.S.-based Dominion Energy's Cove Point LNG Terminal is shown in Lusby, Md.

 (AP / Cliff Owen)

HOUSTON — U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) reached an all-time high in August as plants exited planned maintenance programs and Venture Global’s Plaquemines facility continued to increase output, preliminary data from financial firm LSEG show.

August exports totaled 9.33 million metric tons, beating the previous monthly record set in April of 9.25 million tons and higher than the 9.1 million tons exported in July, according to LSEG data.

Plaquemines is the second-largest LNG plant in the U.S. with a capacity of 27.2 million tons per annum (MTPA) and has increased production every month since it started up in December 2024, helping the country to remain the world’s largest LNG exporter. Plaquemines sold 1.6 million tons in August, or 17 per cent of total U.S. exports, LSEG data showed.

Plaquemines is still under construction but is expected to produce from all its 18 plants in September, potentially increasing output further, according to regulatory filings.

Europe still top destination for U.S. LNG

Natural gas storage levels have been lower in Europe this year compared with 2024, without the usual rush to stockpile the fuel before the upcoming winter period as lower Asian imports create breathing room for European traders and governments.

With little or no arbitrage between European and Asian gas prices, Europe continues to be the biggest destination for U.S. LNG exports with 6.16 million tons, or 66 per cent of the total. That’s up from 5.25 million tons, or 58 per cent, sold to the continent in July, LSEG ship tracking data showed.

European gas prices fell in August to $11.13 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), down from $11.56 per mmBtu in July, according to LSEG data.

In August, gas prices were also lower in Asia, as the benchmark Japan Korea Marker fell to $11.63 per mmBtu from $12.18 per mmBtu in July, LSEG data showed.

Exports to Asia declined slightly during August to 1.47 million tons, down from 1.8 million tons in July, according to LSEG data.

Egypt continues to buy U.S. LNG

Egypt has been facing falling natural gas production, declining as low as 3,485 million standard cubic meters in April 2025 compared with a peak of 6,133 million standard cubic meters in March 2021. In June, the country announced it would ramp up LNG imports to meet power demand.

Egypt in August bought nine cargoes of LNG that totaled 0.57 million tons, or six per cent of total U.S. LNG exports, compared with the 0.59 million tons it bought in July, LSEG ship tracking data showed.

Exports to Latin America fall

U.S. LNG exports to Latin America fell in August to 0.69 million tons, or seven per cent of total U.S. exports, down from 1.03 million tons in July. The region was well-supplied from Trinidad and Tobago as the Shell and BP-owned Atlantic LNG plant has been producing at higher rates since June, exporting 0.8 million tons in August, according to LSEG data.

Shell’s LNG Canada plant at Kitimat on Canada’s West Coast continued to increase exports from its Train 1, with five shipments totaling 0.4 million tons in August, up from 0.3 million tons in July, LSEG data showed.


Four percent of U.S. LNG exports, or 0.37 million tons, that left U.S. ports had no clear destinations listed, signaling they were available for orders, LSEG ship tracking data showed.

(Reporting by Curtis Williams in Houston; Editing by Nathan Crooks and Edmund Klamann)

Enbridge to go ahead with Algonquin gas transmission pipeline expansion project

By Reuters
September 02, 2025



Enbridge said on Tuesday it has reached a final investment decision to go ahead with Algonquin gas transmission (AGT) pipeline expansion to capitalize on the growing natural gas demand in the United States.

Even as oil production starts to plateau, gas production in the U.S. is predicted to increase to meet increased electricity use and a surge in liquefied natural gas exports.

U.S. pipeline firms, including Kinder Morgan, Williams and Energy Transfer, are spending billions to build hundreds of miles of new pipelines, including in the Northeast, to meet the increasing demand.

Once completed, the expanded pipeline will deliver about 75 million cubic feet per day of incremental natural gas under long-term contracts in the U.S. Northeast. Natural gas is a key component of the energy mix in the region.

Enbridge expects to invest US$300 million in system upgrades and fully complete AGT enhancement in 2029.

Companies typically reach an FID on projects once they have secured enough supply deals to obtain the necessary financing for construction.

Last month, Enbridge, through its Matterhorn joint venture, reached FID for the construction of the Eiger Express Pipeline.

(Reporting by Sumit Saha in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)

 Trade War

Alberta eyes investment in Japan’s refining to boost oil exports, Reuters sources say

By Reuters
August 25, 2025 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during a press conference in Edmonton on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Canada’s main oil-producing province of Alberta is considering a financial investment in Japan’s refining sector, two sources familiar with the matter said, an attempt to reduce its overwhelming dependence on top trade partner the United States for oil exports.

Alberta’s government is in early-stage talks with several Japanese crude oil refiners to explore a joint venture in which it could help fund the construction of a coker unit that would enable one or more Japanese companies to process heavy crude produced in Alberta’s oil sands, the sources said.

Any deal would be unprecedented for Alberta, which has not previously made energy infrastructure investments in foreign countries but which is keen to increase its oil exports since the opening of last year’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which increased Canada’s capacity to ship oil via the Pacific Coast.

A deal with Japan would help bolster oil flows on Trans Mountain — Canada’s only east-west oil pipeline — and would also help make the case for a new export pipeline that the Alberta government is lobbying for.

Canada and Japan’s talks about an investment are in very early stages, and nothing has been finalized, one of the sources said.


For Japan, a coker would buoy the amount of heavy crude, like Canadian oil, that can be processed in the country. Heavy, high-sulfur Canadian crude is currently incompatible with most of Japan’s existing refining facilities, and the country now imports the bulk of its oil from the Middle East.

Higher purchases of Canadian crude that can transit straight across the Pacific Ocean would also cut Japan’s dependence on shipments through the South China Sea, a maritime choke point if regional tensions arise.

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, but its main oil-producing province of Alberta is landlocked, with limited access to tidewater ports. That means the bulk of Canadian oil — about 4 million barrels per day or 90 per cent of its total exports — is sent to the U.S. via pipelines that run north-south.

Alberta government representatives have made several trips to Asia, in particular Japan and South Korea, with the aim of drumming up interest in Canadian oil.

“Alberta is exploring opportunities in Japan to sell our light and heavy oil,” said Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean in an emailed statement. He declined to comment on whether Alberta’s government was in talks to invest in Japan’s refining sector.

Canada’s federal government is aware of current opportunities for Japan to purchase additional volumes of Canadian oil, a spokesperson for federal Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said.

“Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) is closely monitoring developments and remains open to partnering with provinces and industry to support strategic energy projects that advance Canada’s national interests,” the spokesperson said in an email.
New opportunities

An expansion to the Trans Mountain pipeline last year tripled its capacity to 890,000 barrels per day and opened opportunities for Canadian oil along the U.S. West Coast and in Asian markets.

China has emerged as the top buyer of Canadian crude shipped via the Trans Mountain pipeline, followed by the U.S. West Coast. South Korea has recently stepped up purchases, cinching the third spot, while Japan, India, Singapore, Brunei and Taiwan have bought cargoes on rare occasions.

Since the expansion, Japan’s Eneos Holdings bought one 250,000-barrel cargo last year and so far this year has bought one 550,000-barrel cargo, according to Kpler ship tracking data.

The operator of the Trans Mountain pipeline is also eying a series of projects aimed at increasing the system’s capacity by 200,000 to 300,000 bpd.

Meanwhile, the Alberta government is keen to increase the province’s oil production and has been lobbying pipeline companies in hopes of enticing a private-sector company to build a new crude oil export conduit to Canada’s northwest coast. Canada exported an average of 4.2 million bpd of oil in 2024, about 80 per cent of its total production.

(Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary and Arathy Somasekhar in Houston. Additional reporting by Jekaterina Gulobkova in Tokyo; Editing by Matthew Lewis)