The cuts will bring relief to a wide range of goods, from billiard balls to dolphins, although experts caution it’s not a major breakthrough in trade relations.

The 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) concluded on Monday with artificial intelligence (AI), the Israel-Palestine conflict and the US-Israel war on Iran dominating world leaders' addresses during the general debate. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his final address before his term ends, warned that the future of the world would be shaped by four tests: AI, climate change, wars and inequality. That is why the UN Charter - and the work of the United Nations - matter more than ever," Guterres said. Speeches ranged from calls to reform the UN to appeals for upholding international law, as the global body has been undermined by the unilateral foreign policy pushed by United States President Donald Trump. Here are the biggest takeaways from this year's summit: The situation in Palestine was a key issue among members amid Israel's ongoing genocidal war on Gaza despite the so-called "ceasefire" and escalating settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank.

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China bogeyman looms large over American firms' AI doomsday scenario Silicon Valley China hawks, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei among them, fear the country surpassing US's AI lead as much as superintelligence destroying humanity "We're leading China in AI," Trump said. "We're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins." Trump was echoing a message the AI industry has put out for years. The US is in a heated technological race with China, companies including Anthropic and OpenAI have argued, and any regulation that would cede the contest risks incalculable economic and political harm. Even as Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, led an industry-wide call this week to "pace the frontier", he declared that the US could only slow down to the point where China could not catch up.

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Carney's new love-in with EU has everything to do with Trump Wouldn't it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States? The question was rather tongue-in-cheek. US President Donald Trump, who is currently locked in an escalating tariff tussle with Ottawa, has, on a number of occasions, declared his ambition to make Canada the 51st American state - causing deep offence amongst many Canadians. Finland is one of the EU's 27 member states and a close ally of Canada as a fellow Arctic nation. Teasing tones aside, President Stubb put his finger squarely on the pulse of deepening EU-Canadian relations. Canada is more Europe-minded than most Europeans! is a smiling retort you often hear in Brussels at the moment.

For decades, one of Canada's biggest selling points to foreign investors was its access to the world's largest economy next door. Prime Minister Mark Carney is now trying to sell something bigger -- to bet on Canada itself. The invitation-only meeting will bring some of the world's largest pension and sovereign wealth funds and asset managers together with corporate executives, Canadian premiers and federal officials. Carney, a former central banker with deep ties to the global investment world, wants them to put money into everything from mines and pipelines to ports, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing. It is part of a much bigger push to catalyse $1 trillion in investment in Canada over the next five years, with about $280bn in public investment and government incentives to help draw in private and institutional capital.

Donald Trump's son-in-law represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth. "Kushner is plagued with conflicts of interest," Virginia Canter, a former White House counsel, said. "He is supposed to be working for the American people, but in fact he has tremendous financial incentives to further the interests of his investors." In the waning hours before the U.S. went to war with Iran, this February, Jared Kushner held a meeting with Iranian negotiators in Geneva--one last chance to avoid a conflict that would plunge the region into chaos and shock the world economy. Afterward, Kushner dismissed his counterparts as unworthy of his time. "Lots of tricks," he told reporters. Kushner, the boyish-looking son-in-law of Donald Trump, has been given an extraordinary brief in recent years. Along with Steve Witkoff, the President's special envoy, he has been charged with ending wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and just about anywhere else they might break out. Kushner, who is forty-five, has little regard for the craft of diplomacy. In his view, it is less important to know a region's history or the details of the partisans' negotiating positions than to simply hear the sides out and split the difference. Peace deals are like real-estate deals, he has said. Both involve hard bargaining and, at times, bluffing. The fact that so many diplomats before him have struggled is a testament not to the intransigence of international problems but to the mediocrity of his predecessors. "I've been getting criticized for the last couple of years, by all the people who have tried and failed, for not doing this the same way that they have," he said in 2020, after Trump unveiled his first Middle East peace plan. "If somebody was successful, I wouldn't be dealing with this." When Kushner and Witkoff began meeting with the Iranian negotiators, in February, the two countries were on the brink of war. In 2025, American and Israeli forces had bombed Iran's nuclear-enrichment facilities, which Western leaders said were engaged in a decades-long drive to develop a nuclear weapon. Afterward, Trump declared that Iran's capability to enrich uranium had been "obliterated." Yet Trump and other Western officials wanted further concessions. The Iranians maintained a large stockpile of lower-grade uranium. It was buried under rubble from the bombing in 2025, but Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, insisted that the Iranians give it up and forswear any intention of enriching uranium in the future. Trump sent Kushner and Witkoff to present the Iranians with what amounted to a binary choice: turn over their entire stockpile or expect an attack. To emphasize his threats, he had dispatched an armada to the Middle East. "We have to have a meaningful deal, otherwise bad things happen," he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has championed the "Buy Canadian" movement, saying the power lies in "decisions taken at the kitchen table, not the boardroom table." Canadians are responding en masse, embracing patriotic shopping, even with the challenges it can present.