Stainless steel coils wait to be pressed into sheets in Montreal, in 2025.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: Only a scant 16 per cent of Americans say that economic conditions are good or excellent, an autonomous agent powered by advanced artificial-intelligence models went rogue and the global tourism industry is facing backlash in many European cities. Take our quiz and find out what happened in business.
d. The Tariff Act has never been used until now. Do you get the sense that Mr. Trump is thrashing around for justifications after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his previous tariff efforts?
c. Mr. Trump vowed to impose tariffs of 100 per cent on generic drugs that are not made in the United States. The tariffs would start on Aug. 1, 2028, and rise to 200 per cent a year later. Such a tariff would hit Canada’s industry particularly hard, as most Canadian production is in generics.
b. So much for U.S. triumphalism. About 33 per cent of Canadians describe the economy as good or very good, according to a recent Leger poll. That is double the rate south of the border. Canadians may be feeling more positive than Americans because wage growth for most workers in recent years has been stronger here than in the U.S.
a. Gregg Distributors is a family-owned provider of industrial products to thousands of businesses across Western Canada. Its catalogue spans a diverse array of products including power tools, hoses, safety equipment and medical supplies. That makes it a fit for Brookfield’s private-equity business, which has focused recently on buyouts of industrial companies. Brookfield’s bet is that companies with physical assets and steady demand will be able to weather whatever disruptions artificial intelligence may bring.
c. Bombardier of Dorval, Que., won the order from Saudi Arabia’s The Helicopter Company. It was part of a wider haul by Canadian manufacturers this week at England’s Farnborough International Airshow. For instance, Horizon Aircraft, a developer of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft based in Lindsay, Ont., said it secured a letter of intent with Australia’s V-Star Powered Lift Aviation for five of its Cavorite X7 hybrid-electric planes with options for 95 more.
a. The researchers found that even when educational levels and experience were held constant among job applicants of different races and genders, discrimination occurred disproportionately toward those who disclosed their Indigenous heritage.
a. Investors who think the U.S. is destined to dominate artificial intelligence may want to think again. The newest Kimi K3 model from Beijing-based startup Moonshot appears to be catching up to the best versions of Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
b. Hugging Face, a platform used to host open-source large language models, caused a stir last week when it said that it had been the target of a hack that “was different from anything we had handled before” in that “it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system.” This week, OpenAI acknowledged it was the source of the hack. It was testing the capabilities of some of its most advanced models in a controlled environment when one agent managed to escape containment and reach the internet.
d. Air transportation costs jumped 9.6 per cent year-over-year in June, marking the biggest increase in more than three years. In most areas, the news was much better. Gasoline prices fell, while grocery prices rose at a slower pace. Overall, Canada’s annual inflation rate eased to 2.8 per cent in June, down from 3.2 per cent in May.
d. An average private-sector worker only has about $26,000 in their workplace pension plan, according to calculations by actuary Fred Vettese. The huge disparity in pension wealth between public and private workers reflects the near-total disappearance of defined-benefit pension plans in the private sector. It also suggests that private-sector workers deserve a better deal.
c. The Houthis announced a blockade of Saudi-linked shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the strait is a vital shipping chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12 per cent of the world’s trade, including a fourth of global container traffic, passes through Bab e-Mandeb, moving between Europe and Asia via Egypt’s Suez Canal.
b. Visitors now face fines for going bare-chested or wearing swimwear outside of beach areas, piers and boat decks. The new rules are designed to deter tourists from entering the town’s streets, bars and restaurants without covering up. “Our residents’ quality of life cannot be sacrificed on the altar of mass tourism,” the town’s mayor said.