Nation & World Business

Canada’s point person for U.S-Canada relations says she shares U.S. concerns about Mexico serving as as back door for China into the North American market as a review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement looms. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says members of the outgoing Biden administration and supporters and advisers of President-elect Donald Trump have expressed “very grave” concerns to her about the issue and that Canada shares them. Canada announced this year it is launching a 100% tariff on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, matching U.S. tariffs imposed over what the countries say are China’s subsidies that give its industry an unfair advantage. Canada has also imposed a 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum.

A congressional panel has recommended that the U.S. toughen its trade relationship with Beijing. That would roll back a nearly 25-year-old decision that helped bring about China’s rapid economic growth but that many in Washington now see as hurting U.S. interests. In its annual report to Congress released on Tuesday, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission called for the first time for ending permanent normal trade relations with Beijing. It echoes moves by prominent Republican lawmakers as the trade war with China is expected to intensify under President-elect Donald Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump's choice for secretary of state, has called the favorable trading relationship with China “one of the most catastrophic decisions” the U.S. has made.

From foster grandparents who volunteer at an early child care center to citizen scientists who collect water quality data in remote locations, nonprofit volunteers have come back after the pandemic. A new survey released Tuesday from the U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps shows 28.3% or 75.8 million people in the U.S. volunteered with a nonprofit between Sept. 2022 and Sept. 2023. That is a rebound since COVID-19 public health shutdowns tanked participation by almost 7 percentage points to 23.2% in 2021, the last time the survey was conducted. It is not a full return to pre-pandemic rates of volunteerism.

Figuring out what to do with a small business when an owner is ready to retire can be difficult, but it’s best to have a plan well in advance of making a big change. Most people in the U.S. retire in their 60s, and about 51% of small business owners over the age of 55, according to the U.S. Census. The most common options include creating a succession plan for a family member or someone already involved in the business, selling the business to an outsider or simply winding down the business and shuttering it.

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his nominee for commerce secretary. Trump made the announcement Tuesday on his social media platform, Truth Social. Lutnick is a co-chair of Trump’s transition operation helping to find the team that will work in the next administration. Here are five things to know about the billionaire who made the cut to lead Commerce.

Building the current crop of artificial intelligence chatbots has relied on specialized computer chips pioneered by Nvidia, which dominates the market and made itself the poster child of the AI boom. But the same qualities that make those graphics processor chips, or GPUs, so effective at creating powerful AI systems from scratch make them less efficient at putting AI products to work. That’s opened up the AI chip industry to rivals who think they can compete with Nvidia in selling so-called AI inference chips that are more attuned to the day-to-day running of AI tools and designed to reduce some of the huge computing costs of generative AI.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told customers at a conference in Chicago on Tuesday that the company is teaching a new set of artificial intelligence tools how to “act on our behalf across our work and life.” AI developers are increasingly pitching the next wave of generative AI chatbots as AI ‘agents’ that can do more useful things on people’s behalf. But the cost of building and running AI tools is so high that more investors are questioning whether the technology’s promise is overblown. Microsoft said last month that it’s preparing for a world in which “every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous.”

Reuters has hired Sally Buzbee, former executive editor of the Washington Post and Associated Press, to be its top news editor in the United States and Canada. She will replace Kieran Murray, who will run the news agency's live events business. Buzbee left the Post in June rather than carry out a new publisher's reorganization plan that would have effectively demoted her. She led the Associated Press' news operation before leaving for the Post in 2021. A longtime AP editor, she had run the outlet's Washington bureau before becoming senior vice president and executive editor in 2017.