Finance

Quebec Sounds Alarm Over Recession Risk Amid Trade Dispute

Canada is likely to experience an economic slowdown in the second quarter and could slide into a recession later this year if it fails to resolve its trade dispute with the United States, Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard warned Wednesday.

Speaking at the BNEF Summit in New York, Girard emphasized the growing risks tied to prolonged uncertainty. “The longer we wait, the more uncertainty slows the economy,” he said. “Resolving this sooner would ease concerns and reduce the risk of a recession.”

The dispute stems from tariffs imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, which have strained the U.S.-Canada trade relationship despite the existing free trade agreement that also includes Mexico.

“Why don’t we just settle this?” Girard asked. “It would help avoid the fallout from a deeper slowdown.”

Girard added that he doesn’t believe electricity exports from Quebec to the U.S. will be targeted with retaliatory tariffs. “We don’t set tariffs, by the way,” he joked, drawing laughter from the audience. He also expressed optimism that tariffs on Canadian aluminum — most of which is exported to the U.S. — would be reduced or removed entirely.

TECH

Silicon Valley’s Influence in D.C. Is Backfiring on American Prosperity

Basic research at American universities has long been the engine behind the country’s entrepreneurial success, especially in the tech and biotech sectors. A glance at the current White House underscores this: key advisers like David Sacks (Craft Ventures), Scott Kupor, and Sriram Krishnan (both from Andreessen Horowitz) have built their careers on innovations rooted in publicly funded science. Their industries depend on foundational breakthroughs such as the internet protocols developed by Stanford’s Vint Cerf and biotech advances made possible by the decoding of the human genome—a feat built on decades of university and government-backed research. From Nobel laureates like Marshall Nirenberg, Har Gobind Khorana, and Jennifer Doudna to institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley, academic research has laid the groundwork for the technologies and companies now shaping policy at the highest levels.

CRYPTO

Trump’s Crypto Empire: Built on Secrets, Global Cash, and Political Clout

Just days before Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration, a message arrived via the encrypted app Signal from someone calling himself “ZMoney.” It was Zachary Folkman—an entrepreneur formerly behind a company called Date Hotter Girls—now acting on behalf of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm recently launched by Trump and his sons. Folkman was reaching out to a crypto startup based in the Cayman Islands with a proposal: a partnership where the two firms would buy each other’s digital tokens, boosting the startup’s visibility. But as The New York Times uncovered, there was a hidden cost—the startup would need to quietly make a multimillion-dollar payment to World Liberty in exchange for the Trump association.