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President Donald Trump said in a letter that he will raise taxes on many imported goods from Canada to 35%, deepening a rift between two North American countries that have suffered a debilitating blow to their decades-old alliance.The Thursday letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is an aggressive increase to the top 25% tariff rates that Trump first imposed in March after months of threats. Trump’s tariffs were allegedly in an effort to get Canada to crack down on fentanyl smuggling despite the relatively modest trafficking in the drug from that country. Trump has also expressed frustration with a trade deficit with Canada that largely reflects oil purchases by America.“I must mention that the flow of Fentanyl is hardly the only challenge we have with Canada, which has many Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter.The higher rates would go into effect Aug. 1, creating a tense series of weeks ahead for the global economy as recent gains in the S&P 500 stock index suggest many investors think Trump will ultimately back down on the increases. But stock market futures were down early Friday in a sign that Trump’s wave of tariff letters may be starting to generate concern among investors.In a social media post, Carney said Canada would continue to work toward a new trade framework with the U.S. and has made “vital progress to stop the scourge of fentanyl.”“Through the current trade negotiations with the United States, the Canadian government has steadfastly defended our workers and business,” Carney said.While multiple countries have received tariff letters this week, CanadaAmerica’s second largest trading partner after Mexicohas become something of a foil to Trump. It has imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods and pushed back on the president’s taunts of making Canada the 51st state. Mexico has also faced 25% tariffs because of fentanyl, yet it has not faced the same public pressure from the Republican U.S. president.Carney was elected prime minister in April on the argument that Canadians should keep their “elbows up.” He has responded by distancing Canada from its intertwined relationship with the U.S., seeking to strengthen its links with the European Union and the United Kingdom.Hours before Trump’s letter, Carney posted on X a picture of himself with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying, “In the face of global trade challenges, the world is turning to reliable economic partners like Canada.” Implied in his statement was that the U.S. has become unreliable because of Trump’s haphazard tariff regime, which has gone through aggressive threats and reversals.When Carney went to the White House in May, the public portion of their meeting was cordial. But Trump said there was nothing the Canadian leader could tell him to remove the tariffs, saying, “Just the way it is.”Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said Trump’s latest move will make it more difficult for Canada and the U.S. to reach a trade deal, Beland said.“It doesn’t mean a new trade deal between Canada and the United States is impossible, but it shows how hard it is for the Canadian government to negotiate with a U.S. president who regularly utters threats and doesn’t appear to be a reliable and truthful interlocutor,” he said.Trump has sent a series of tariff letters to 23 countries. Those form letters became increasingly personal with Canada as well as a Wednesday note that put a 50% tariff on Brazil for the ongoing trial of its former President Jair Bolsonaro for trying to stay in office after his 2022 election loss. Trump was similarly indicted for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.Trump administration officials have said that Trump was seeking to isolate its geopolitical rival China with the tariffs, but the latest tariffs have undermined that message. Brazil’s largest trading partner is China, not the U.S., and Chinese government officials have framed his import taxes as a form of bullying.“Sovereign equality and non-interference in internal affairs are important principles of the U.N. Charter and basic norms governing international relations,” said Mao Ning, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman. “Tariffs should not be used as a tool for coercion, bullying and interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”The letters reflect the inability of Trump to finalize the dozens of trade frameworks that he claimed would be easy to negotiate. Shortly after unveiling his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs, a financial market selloff caused Trump to announce a 90-day negotiating period during which a 10% baseline tariff would be charged on most imported goods.But Trump has indicated that the 10% tariff rates are largely disappearing as he resets the rates with his letters.“We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20% or 15%,” Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News.Trump has announced trade frameworks with the U.K. and Vietnam, as well as a separate deal with China to enable continued trade talks. Trump jacked up import taxes on Chinese goods to as much as 145%, but after talks he has said China faces total tariffs of 55%.In June, Trump said he was suspending trade talks with Canada over its plans to continue its digital services tax, which would hit U.S. technology companies. A few days later, talks resumed when Carney rescinded the tax.Under the current tariff structure, the 2020 United States Mexico Canada Agreement has protected eligible goods from Trump’s tariffs. But a review of the pact is scheduled for 2026. Jim Morris contributed to this report from Vancouver, British Columbia. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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Yet another company is reducing its workforce amid a broader shift toward artificial intelligence. Recruit Holdings, which owns the online jobs platforms Glassdoor and Indeed, has announced that it is laying off 1,300 employees in its HR Technology segment. The decision will impact about 6% of jobs on the teams. The layoffs are primarily in the job search companies growth, people and sustainability, and research and development teams, according to a memo cited by Reuters and other outlets. Affected employees are primarily U.S.-based but work across several countries. Fast Company has reached out to Recruit, Indeed, and Glassdoor for comment. In 2023, Indeed laid off about 2,200 employees15% of its workforcewith another 1,000 jobs cut last year. The current layoff round will see Glassdoors operations integrated into Indeed, with the formers CEO leaving on October 1. Despite releasing its FY2025 Consolidated Financial Guidance in early May, Recruit stated that the layoffs had been largely incorporated into its HR Technology segment outlook. Recruit’s CEO, Hisayuki Deko Idekoba, sent a clear message about AI’s role in the layoffs: AI is changing the world, and we must adapt by ensuring our product delivers truly great experiences for job seekers and employers, he said in the memo, according to Bloomberg. Doing the robot dance Many companies that are going all-in on generative AI have been simultaneously reducing their workforces. In February, Meta and Workday laid off about 4,000 people and 1,750 people, respectively, in the name of putting their resources toward AI. April saw Duolingo announce that it would reduce its use of contractors in cases where AI could do the joba move that months later still attracts negative comments on the companys social media postings. AI-related layoffs are also visible at companies outside of the tech industry. Business Insider cut about 21% of its workforce in June while stressing its desire for all employees to regularly use Enterprise ChatGPT. In some cases, these decisions have been met with regret. Two years ago, Klarna instituted a hiring freeze to focus on utilizing AI. But its CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has since announced a hiring spree. As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality, Siemiatkowski said. Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.
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In the early morning hours of high summers holiday, July 4, a Southern summer camp became the site of tragedy: At Camp Mystic in Central Texas, flash flooding from a rapidly rising Guadalupe River claimed the lives of 27 people, many of them young girls. Among them were eight-year-old twin sisters. As waters rose in the middle of the night, counselors wrote girls’ names on their arms in case the worst-case scenario happened. Some campers tried to hold hands. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/Two-Truths-single.png","headline":"Subscribe to Two Truths...","description":"a newsletter that explores the many truths of motherhood through news round-ups, trend reports, and expert-backed deep dives on topics that matter to moms. To learn more visit twotruths.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/twotruths.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} Some didnt make it. Its the kind of story that splits your heart open, especially if youre a parent packing your daughters trunk, labeling her socks, and reminding her to write. You let your child go just a little, trusting the world to hold her. To any parent who sends their child to overnight camp, this is unfathomable, says Toronto-based perinatal and child psychologist Tanya Cotler, Ph.D., who currently has two children at overnight camp. The words I can’t imagine it come to mindand yet we can imagine it, and it is our greatest fear. One of the most common sentiments weve heard from parents right now is “I cant stop thinking about those girls.” But how do we sit with the pain, without letting it swallow us, and how do we stay soft without hardening when the world feels anything but safe? Here, Cotler walks us through “collective grief” in parenthood, including how to channel it into healing action and support those walking through the deepest pain of all: losing a child. Two Truths (TT): We’re seeing a lot of moms struggle with the dichotomy of witnessing this ongoing collective tragedy while also trying to be present and joyful with their children. How can we hold both? Tanya Cotler, Ph.D. (TC): Collective grief is the emotional response that occurs when we experience a tragic event as a shared humanity. We feel sorrow as a community, as a nation, and as a world together, and that is exactly what we would expect. Even though it is so painful, it’s valid and it’s deeply human. One of the most important things is validating and normalizing what parents are feeling so that they dont feel shame. It’s okay to feel impacted even when you don’t know the victims personally; grief can still find its way in. That seems simple, but it’s actually one of the most important ways to cope: We cope via connection. The pain and anxiety of grief expand and multiply in aloneness. Grieve is a verb, and one of the necessary steps is: What can I do? TT: Lets follow that thread. What can we do when experiencing collective grief? TC: We may journal to express sorrow. We might write letterseven if you dont know a grieving parent personallyas a way to release emotions. If you know someone who has been impacted, you can reach out. The power of showing up is that we also heal in the process. We can also connect with someone who understands, or speak to a therapist who can validate how difficult it is to witness all this tragedy in our world. We should also manage our exposure to what we’re seeing and take breaks from social media and other forms of media. Images are very hard for the mind to unsee, and watching images repeatedly on a screen can increase anxiety; you’re sitting pretty helplessly and passively just consuming. In aloneness, these feelings grow and expand. In connection, they can settle. We want to lean into ways to cope with that helplessness and hopefulness; that is the action-based part of grief. Because grieve is a verb, actions are important, such as donating to relief funds, providing supplies to displaced families, and sending compassionate and loving messages to those who have been impacted. All of that can be immensely helpful, especially at times when we feel potentially helpless and hopeless. Land of Lovies is a group that helps match children who may have lost beloved lovies with replacements provided by donors. Another group, The Lost Stuffy Project, is trying to connect with every family thats been affected by the flooding in Texas. Losing a transitional object, such as a lovie, can be one of the most emotionally gripping experiences for a child. At an unsafe time, it can make the child feel even more unsafe, like they have lost their anchor. Being matched to help another parent find a lovie is a meaningful experience that can provide a small, tangible way to take action. TT: How do we grapple with collective grief and the reality that we need to continue to send our children out into the world and teach them that it is a safe place? TC: This is the space where anxiety lives: between what we can and can’t control, the known and unknown. One of the hardest parts of being human and a parent is learning how to live in the both/and, what we are able to know and what we don’t know, and what we can predict and what we cannot. We must have compassion for how hard it is to exist in this binary. When we focus on what we can control in grief, it can ease anxiety, and that can help when were sending our children out into the world. Orienting in the present can be helpful. You might say, I am safe now. My children are safe now. Rituals around routine and reunion can help; when I say goodbye to my child(ren), I say, “I will see you soon. Mommy always comes back.” Of course, that voice in the back of your mind might be, but that didn’t happen at Mystic, and that’s where we move to grief. Guilt can emerge here, too, specifically the guilt that my child is okay, and these children were not. Guilt gives us something to controlbut by blaming ourselves, our survivorship, or our children’s, we’re misusing it. Beneath guilt is often helplessness and heartbreak. We might need to allow ourselves to just feel that, without shutting it down, and validate the feeling. Permission to feel (without trying to fix) is one of the most powerful ways to cope. We can channel this into action when we have the space and capacity. TT: How do we connect with and support those directly impacted by this tragedy? TC: For parents carrying the most shattering gref of allthose grieving the loss of a childthis is a pain that will forever form the fabric of their being, but they will learn to bend as they break. They will learn to soften around it. When I support someone through the grief of losing a child, I remind them that I will continue to show up and be with them in their hardest, biggest, and most unbearable feelings. We learn to live in momentsto help them get their feet out of bed, to help them stand up, or to eat one meal. At first, its how do I get through this minute, this hour, this day? Most importantly, we let them continue to talk about the person they love and lost, to tell their story, and to be witnessed. When possible, we share our own memories of the person. We say their name. We allow the person to feel felt and known. We are so scared as humans to say the wrong thing or to sit at the bottom of the ditch with someone who is really in pain. We want to protect the other person, we want to protect ourselves. But this is what those grieving need: They need authentic emotion; they need to be asked again and again how they are. We won’t find words to fix itthat’s why people say, there are no words. Its not words that people need. In the face of unspeakable loss, our presence helps redistribute the weight of grief so it isnt carried alone. We must remember the importance and power of bearing witness: simply being there. To support the Texas Hill Country and all those affected, see this updated roundup of resources from Shannon Watts, organizer and founder of Moms Demand Action. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/Two-Truths-single.png","headline":"Subscribe to Two Truths...","description":"a newsletter that explores the many truths of motherhood through news round-ups, trend reports, and expert-backed deep dives on topics that matter to moms. To learn more visit twotruths.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/twotruths.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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