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Institutional investors such as Canada Pension Board protest a move by Gassled, Norwegian gas pipeline company, to cut rates it charges Statoil for gas transport to points in Europe by 90%. This cuts long term return by half say institutional investors, who plan legal action.

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Britain leaves the European Union on January 31, 2020, almost half a century after it joined the EU. There is a transition period till December 31, 2020 to work out the trading arrangements with the EU. Britain is asking for a trade deal similar to that which Canada signed with the EU recently. Boris Johnson says he would accept a "off-the-shelf" model first proposed by the EU negotiator Michael Barnier. 

The Canada model would mean an almost tariffs free trading arrangement which would include border checks, and which would exclude Britain's large services sector. This would be the ideal arrangement in the British view. The impact as estimated by the British Treasury is for the negative impact on the British economy to be minimal, for the British economy to be about 4.9% smaller over 15 years compared to having not left the EU. This might be offset by trade gains with trade deals made with other countries such as the U.S. and Japan.

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Netflix is expected to lose 2 million subscribers in the current quarter. It has reached its ceiling at 212 million subscribers worldwide. Netflix has followed a subscriber paid commercial free model. Passwords are being shared with an additional 100 million homes including 30 million in US and Canada. During the period of heady growth not much attention was paid to password sharing.

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Food inflation in Europe is much higher than in the US, 5-10% in the US, Canada and Japan compared to 15-20% in Europe.  UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt sees further interest rate increases better than the continuing instability and cost of living crisis from inflation in this report in The Guardian. A recent report in WSJ shows how this is a fourth shock in Europe after the supply chain bottlenecks, the jump in energy prices, the labor market shortages. Germany is in a mild recession.

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The Editorial Board of the WSJ says in this editorial that president Trump showed his negotiating skills to arrange the oil deal with the Saudis and Russia for cuts in production of 9.7 million barrels a day, including cuts by non OPEC G20 countries. The drop in U.S. production, cuts by Canada and the effects of sanctions on Venezuela and Iran should take out about 20 million barrels a day. Demand has fallen by 30 million barrels a day from the pandemic. This should help 11 million workers in the U.S. oil industry.

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NYT shows 17 year old Summer McKintosh of Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, swimming with the greats such as her idol Ledecky in the 400 metres at Paris Olympics with use of breast, freestyle, back and butterfly strokes. The swimmers routine starts at 4.15 am and no matter how she feels she gets up goes to swim and tries the hardest for two hours 6.30 to 8.30 am then exercise training on land followed by 3-5 pm another two hours in the afternoon. She keeps at it steadily day after day. 

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The new CEO of Stellantis, the company formed by Carlos Tavares with the merger of Chrysler-Fiat with Peugoet Citroen of France, is Antonio Filosa. Filosa was the head of Americas operations of Stellantis and is Italian from the Fiat operations. Stellantis faces a dropoff in sales in the US with 20% higher inventory and uncertainty about tariffs on production of cars in Canada and Europe. He succeeds Carlos Tavares in a changed environment for automobiles. Tavares had pushed ahead with plans for EV vehicles which now face considerable uncertainty.

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Under the coordinated action by central banks in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the ECB, the U.S. Federal Reserve lends dollars to the ECB, getting euros in return, and the ECB in turn provides European banks with the U.S. dollars. The European banks were facing a shortage of U.S. dollars in November 2011. Money market funds in the U.S. had pulled back from investing in eurozone bonds in the third quarter of 2011, adding to the shortage of dollars. This action eases liquidity concerns.

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Eighteen year old Bianca Andreescu of Canada wins the U.S. Open 6-3, 7-5 defeating 37 year old veteran Serena Williams as she attempted a comeback. The intelligent game with a whole range of shots and use of creative game mixing up the shots was a feature of Andrescu's style that made it fun to watch the game. Martina Navritolova says Andrescu's style is so creative that its great to have a new player like her in the game.

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Macroprudential policies of central banks in S. Korea, Indonesia, China, Canada, and other countries, as concerns grow about a housing and credit bubble.

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The declining popularity of prime minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in Canada in 2013. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau, son of a popular Liberal prime minister in the seventies, see an upsurge in their popularity as the Conservatives see a large dip in the polls. New elections are planned for 2015. Harper announces new proposals to help consumers in the new session of parliament.

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History will see the lack of working on a bipartisan basis from the beginning of the Trump and Biden terms to stop illegal migrants and fight CMC (Canada, Mexico and China) on fentanyl flows as a blot on both parties. A remarkable change has happened in a matter of 100 days in Canada's stance on immigration and fentanyl flows. Trudeau now calling for eradication of fentanyl, his deputy prime minister saying Canada has more fentanyl deaths per capita than the US because of smaller population, and the need to wipe it out off the face of North America. The Canada Conservatives generally support DJT. The Trudeau Liberals have shifted policy to support DJT policies on immigration and fentanyl flows. In general Canada is making a pronounced shift towards support of the US position on immigration.  It is not just DJT policy as closing the border was part of the agreement agreed by Biden in 2024 with Republicans in Congress led by Lankford-Graham-McConnell which was not passed because it was too close to the election. One can only say the Covid pandemic, vaccination shortfalls, failures of supply chain distracted Biden from acting early and similar to DJT on the first phase of immigration action on illegal migrants committing offenses. The release of illegal migrants across the US is something that Democrats will years from now see as a major error in its policies. History will see the lack of working on a bipartisan basis from the beginning of the Trump and Biden terms to stop illegal migrants and fight CMC (Canada, Mexico and China) on fentanyl flows as a blot on both parties. ...

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The G-7 leaders of US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and Japan along with invitees from India and Indonesia will meet at a resort hotel 62 miles south of Munich. Located in the Alps mountains near the Austrian border it has no air conditioning. The approach is to have as near as possible a natural setting with a stream that generates 20% of the energy and a rustic but refined setting. There are 5 rooms each for every country leader and a separate place for their staff. It was built between 1914-1916 by Johannes Muller, and reclaimed by his family in 1961 after being taken over by the US Army. His grandson Dietmar Muller-Elmau is the current owner. 

Elmau rebuilt the hotel in 2007 after a fire, with a 115 room building The Hideaway, and a separate building the Retreat nearby for the G-7 type gathering.

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On Canada's Justin Trudeau- looking back at his 10 years 2015-2025 mostly inherited the work of his father. He tackled Covid, improved childcare, tackled the renegotiation of trade with Republicans in the US, but lacked the major achievement of the 1970's of Pierre Trudeau setting up Canada as an independent state. The Washington Post looks at the political career of Justin Trudeau. He is the son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, a politician from Quebec, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1984 except for one year in 1979-1980. During that period Pierre Trudeau a lawyer practicing labour law in Montreal and educated at the University of Montreal had three significant accomplishments. Canada Act of 1982 passed into law by Queen Elizabeth and the British Parliament, set up Canada as a sovereign state. Prior to this only the British Parliament could amend the Canadian Constitution under the Dominion Act of 1867 under Queen Victoria. As a Quebeker Pierre Trudeau succeeded highly respected Lester Pearson as head of the Liberal Party, and held off the Party Quebecois's effort for separatism in the early 1980's. By 1981 the Canadian Supreme Court 9-0 rejected the Party Quebecois bills that conflicted with the Charter of Rights set up under the Canada Act which protected minorities in Quebec having education in English.   ...

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Netherlands is becoming a much more crowded country with housing scarcity and high rents with increasing immigration. At this pace the population which was only 10 million in 1950 and 14 million in 1980 is now 17.2 million and expected to hit 22 million. By 1950 Queen Juliana in her parliament speech was calling for migration to ease congestion, says The Times. 620,000 people migrated to Canada, Australia. and 450,000 returned from Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Most parties now oppose the high level of immigration into the urban sprawl of Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam home to about 9 million people.

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There is widespread belief in representative democracies that officials are out of touch, and that political parties do not represent the people. Pew Research also shows that about 50% of people believe that more women, more young people and people from poor backgrounds can make a positive difference. And about a third of people feel that business people, religious figures, and labor union members could make things worse. The intuitive sense of the US and also for Mexico and Canada is that more young people, more women and more people of poor backgrounds are needed for positive difference.

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German chancellor Scholz and Canadian prime minister Trudeau sign an agreement in Newfoundland for exporting Canadian green hydrogen energy to Germany in just 3 years. Canada is seen as a major supplier to Germany for energy in the medium term including LNG. Newfoundland is the base for a green hydrogen plant. Windy areas which are not densely populated are considered ideal for production of green hydrogen, which is why Newfoundland was chosen.

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Even though there is extensive financing it will take the global research community about one year to develop a good vaccine. There are so many labs and companies in China, USA, France, Germany, Australia, Canada doing the research that it is difficult to provide an overview.

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Mexico sends 80% of its exports to the US, and China a significant $439 billion in additional exports to US, which makes it incredible that for so long it did not take effective action to stop fentanyl flows, and Mexico allowed migrant trafficking across it's borders through 2016-2024. Even in the face of this becoming an explosive issue in the US with DJT elected in 2016 and the Border Wall being built. A silent but still existing in plain sight idea that the US would tolerate such flows became part of the culture in media outlets in the US and Europe and China and other parts of the world, even when there was a storm of discontent building about manufacturing shipped overseas hurting communities in the US since 2010, with added burden of safety endangered in these neighborhoods from fentanyl, drugs and illegal migrants. What worsened this situation and pain in the US was the idea that somehow it was the US's fault, an incomprehensible disdain for the US, US that enabled the modernization of China, Mexico, and Canada's economies. China sends $439 billion in exports more than the US does to China (US exports $143 billion China $582 billion in 2024). It is only surface presentation of indignation of face saving that these trading partners are showing when the real facts point to an extraordinary and incomprehensible disdain for the US as a nation in decline. There is a feeling in parts of Europe of American disdain for  Europe, without mention of the disdain for the US in Europe, China, Mexico and Canada and other parts of the world. Particularly disdain for neglected communities in the US that have suffered for far too long under previous administrations of Clinton-Bush-Obama with shipping of manufacturing and jobs overseas and inaction on drugs and illegal migrant flows. The EU Canada retaliatory approach has not worked. When DJT proposed doubling the tariffs imposed by US in the face of Canada EU retaliatory steps, the EU and Canada pulled back. Part of the reason is that in the case of Canada it is an economy one tenth the size of the US. The other is that there are real concerns on the US side that Canada EU are not playing fairly in trade. And Canada, Mexico, China, have not stopped the flow of fentanyl into the US.  ...

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Two weeks after his election Donald Trump says the U.S. will not join the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement during his term in office. Barack Obama took seven years to negotiate the trade agreement which was opposed by trade unions, the auto industry and was unpopular in the midwestern U.S. because of the impact of trade in hollowing out the manufacturing sector. Here Frank Sieren of the DW.com points out that the agreement was not really about trade, as most of the gains of trade had already been realized according to experts. It was part of the "pivot to Asia" to maintain American dominance in the region, says Sieren. After China pulled together some Asian and European countries into its trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the U.S. pushed for TPP as a counterweight to the China sponsored trade zone. China says it will try to integrate the countries in TPP into the trade zone it has sponsored. President Trump has said that the U.S. is better off negotiating agreements with each country and not getting into multilateral trade agreements. He fought the election campaign on the basis of the opposition to TPP and trade agreements that unfairly hurt American workers. This could have provided the 110,000 margin of victory in the states suffering from the hollowing out in manufacturing such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. A similar hollowing out in Ontario favored Justin Trudeau's Liberals against the Conservatives in Canada's election. ...

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Canada's foreign minister in a speech in parliament says Canada will now "set its own clear and sovereign course." This follows a speech by Angela Merkel of Germany saying " the times in which we could fully rely on others, they are somewhat over." Both countries plan to take a bigger role in international affairs as the U.S. under president Trump is seen as not being able to or not wanting to lead. The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate change accord has shaken confidence in the U.S. role in international affairs in 2017.

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The Trump administration's early proposal for NAFTA moves away from campaign pledges to completely renegotiate the treaty, instead taking the approach of working to improve the U.S. trade position in relation to Mexico and Canada. It includes seven objectives for tougher rules for labor and the environment favored by Democrats in Congress, and it also has support from Republicans with its effort to update NAFTA for changes in technology and in other areas since the accord was signed during the Clinton administration. The area in which U.S. and Mexican business are wary is one in which the Trump administration still seeks to keep the option of imposing protective tariffs, and a border-adjusted tax to level playing field for differences in taxes, as well as other measures to protect American jobs and interests. Because any renegotiated NAFTA also has to pass both houses of Congress this proposal took into account the different constituencies and interests for this issue. Robert Lighthizer, trade representative under president Reagan is likely to become the next U.S. Trade Representative and lead negotiator. We first profiled Lighthizer in a group in Lyrarc for pointing to the need for a level playing field in trade. As early as 2010 Lighthizer argued in op-ed articles that globalization and trade practices should ensure a level playing field for the U.S., and was covered in Lyrarc. ...

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Mr. Trump has given his personal cellphone number to some world leaders so he can talk directly with them, This comes from his business background, drawing from one of his personal skills. This includes Canada's Justin Trudeau and Frances's Macron. This is a problem for the diplomats and officials because they are often left out and their assessments are not considered to be serious or reflecting the president's thinking.