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EV sales are surging globally — but growth in North America is lagging

Business Insider »

EV sales are booming globally — but growth in North America lags the rest of the world.

Global EV sales jumped 29% to 5.6 million in the first four months of the year compared with the same period in 2024, according to data released Wednesday by EV research firm Rho Motion.

In April alone, 1.5 million EVs were sold worldwide.

However, EV sales in North America — the US, China, and Mexico — rose by just 5%, or 600,000 vehicles. Battery electric vehicle sales in the region rose 7%, while plug-in hybrid sales increased only 1%.

The Americans » May 16, 2025 » Their inability to admit they were wrong

Trump’s Worldwide Trade and Tariff War

Forget the trade talks

Quartz » Trump said his administration doesn’t have time to negotiate individual trade deals with scores of countries, so the administration will decide what the tariff rates will be “over the next two to three weeks.”

The president of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), Martin Schlegel, has warned of the huge financial uncertainties caused by recent US tariffs (SwissInfo)

US consumer sentiment slides to lowest in 3 years as trade war raises anxiety about inflation (AP)

The Ugly

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Attrition rate for new military recruits is double the average across Forces

Murray Brewster, CBC News »

“The highest attrition rates within the [Canadian Armed Forces] CAF are observed among its lowest ranks and newest members,” said the report, which pointed to the 2023-24 fiscal year where 9.4% of newly enrolled members quit, as opposed to 4.3% average across all of the Forces.

The reason new members are quitting: Training delays and difficulty adjusting to military life.

Canada’s Catholic PM will attend Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural liturgy alongside global leaders — and use the trip to prep for next month’s G7 summit

Politico »

For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Sunday Mass is a weekly ritual. But this weekend in Rome, it will be anything but routine.

Carney will join world leaders in St. Peter’s Square for the inaugural Sunday service of Pope Leo XIV — a moment his office is calling “defining” for the pontiff and a rare public intersection of the prime minister’s faith and political leadership.

For Carney, a practicing Catholic and former central banker, the trip is both spiritual and strategic. Carney’s office said that while he’s in Rome he “will also meet with other international leaders to discuss deepening trade, commerce and cultural ties” ahead of next month’s G7 leaders’ summit in Alberta.

Mexico’s Sheinbaum, Canada’s Carney discuss USMCA trade pact

On Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke with the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum.

President Sheinbaum congratulated Prime Minister Carney on his election.

The leaders discussed building on the strong trade relationship between the two countries, grounded in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the imperative to strengthen their respective economies against future shocks.

The leaders tasked their senior officials to immediately work to find opportunities to deepen bilateral relations and agreed to remain in close contact.

 

Loblaw CEO warns prices will spike on more than 3,000 products in the next week or two, and could reach 6,000 products within the next two months, blames tariffs

Sean Previl, Global News »

Companies like Loblaw and Walmart are reporting that they will need to increase prices for consumers, with the former noting that their pre-tariff inventory is set to run out, meaning those items will start seeing an increase.

A spokesperson for Loblaw told Global News that the increase could be up to 25%, depending on the product and tariff amount, and applies “entirely to products coming from the U.S.”

More » The Canadian Press // Video » CBC / Bloomberg

MAGA goes global » Trump’s plan for Europe

 Célia Belin, European Council on Foreign Relations »

Trump is eliminating the ties that bind the US to Europe, trying to transform Europe in his image and attempting to intimidate any transatlantic resistance into submission.

Europeans need to respond in kind. They should reshape the rules-based order to salvage what they can, fight back against the assault on their democratic model, resist coercion and diversify away from the US.

Volkswagen’s EV battery-maker charges ahead with $7 billion Ontario gigafactory as rivals’ plans stall

Darius Snieckus, National Observer »

PowerCo which has a $7 billion battery plant under construction in St, Thomas, Ontario credited a flexible technology manufacturing strategy with helping it weather regional sector uncertainties in Canada created by the combination of a slow-down in EV demand and the impact of US auto sector tariffs.

“Different companies will have different strategies for the markets and plants they serve. For PowerCo, Gigafactory St. Thomas is a strategic, long-term investment with strong fundamentals,” Tegan Versolatto, PowerCo’s Canada spokesperson, told Canada’s National Observer.

Our biggest (non-U.S.) trade partners are building their clean economies, and Canada can deliver

Rachel Doran, National Observer »

Canada woke up the day after Trump’s inauguration in unfamiliar territory. Our closest neighbour and biggest trade partner for the past century suddenly decided Canada was not, in fact, a friend — and furthermore, our trade agreements were not really binding. Whether and which tariffs come or go is impossible to predict at this point, but one thing has become clear: trust, that other important T word, has been shattered irreparably.

Fortunately, Canada has trade agreements with 60 per cent of the global economy, making us well-positioned to lessen our reliance on US markets. And, as a new Clean Energy Canada analysis finds, among our 10 largest non-US trade partners, all of them have net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems, and roughly half apply carbon border adjustments on imports and have domestic EV requirements reshaping their car markets.

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