U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers and their families in the Oval Office at the White House on May 09, 2025 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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: U.S. President Donald Trump goes on the offensive against Canada, while the country’s House of Representatives throws a bone our way. What did they do? Take our quiz and find out.
b. Mr. Trump interrupted his lengthy post about the new bridge to inveigh against Canada’s trade dealings with China. In one of his oddest ramblings yet, the U.S. President declared that increased trade with China will put the future of hockey at risk. “Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China – which will eat Canada alive. We’ll just get the leftovers! I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said. “The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.”
a. Unfortunately, the 219-to-2011 vote – in which six Republicans broke with Mr. Trump – is mostly symbolic: Even if the measure passes the Senate, the President will almost certainly veto it, a move that would require a two-thirds majority of each chamber of Congress to override. Still, the vote signals a growing willingness by Mr. Trump’s once unfailingly loyal party to defy him on one of his signature policies amid mounting voter disapproval.
c. Gallup has confirmed it will stop tracking presidential approval ratings. U.S. President Donald Trump closely scrutinizes polling of his popularity, and publicly lambastes media companies that report on his increasingly unfavourable numbers, but Gallup insisted that its decision to end its nearly nine-decade-old rating was “solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.” Um, right.
d. The Canadian Transportation Agency is facing a backlog of more than 93,000 complaints from people who have been afflicted by disrupted flights and other air-travel issues. The mountain of consumer grievances is the result of glaring inefficiencies in Canada’s passenger protection regime, where complex eligibility criteria mean that disputes – sometimes involving just a few hundred dollars – consume many hours of labour.
c. Allied Properties REIT units lost more than a quarter of their value after the owner of office properties surprised investors with plans for a $500-million share sale to pay down debt. Investors were startled by the share sale, as well as by changes that include a $1.4-billion portfolio writedown and plans to sell another $500-million in properties to fix the REIT’s balance sheet.
a. The biggest landslide win in postwar history gave Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a huge mandate to revitalize the economy with her expansionary fiscal agenda. Following her victory, Tokyo stocks surged to record highs in anticipation of stimulus flowing to consumers and Japan Inc.
c. Canada’s score has slid over the past decade, according to the latest report from Transparency International. The annual report from the Berlin-headquartered anti-corruption organization rates the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in 182 countries and territories, ranking them on a scale of 0 for very corrupt to 100 for very clean. Canada scored at 75, down from 84 in 2012. The United States, meanwhile, was ranked at 64, significantly below its 2015 baseline of 76.
b. Shopify is launching a share buyback program to help lift shareholder sentiment.
a. Venezuela had been Cuba’s major supplier of oil, but that ended when the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a raid in early January.
d. Mr. Dodig served as president and CEO of CIBC from 2014 to 2025.
b. Ottawa says PrescribeIT, a national digital service to send prescriptions from doctors offices to pharmacies, has been shut down because the program failed to replace fax machines. The government estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of prescriptions were sent through PrescribeIT. Most are still sent by fax or on paper.
d. Bithumb said its internal systems failed to prevent an erroneous transfer of more than US$40-billion in assets last week. The country’s second-largest virtual asset exchange accidentally gave away about 620,000 bitcoins to customers during a promotional event, instead of 620,000 won (US$426). Most of the bitcoins have been retrieved by the exchange, but 1,786 had already been sold within minutes before the exchange froze the accounts of the customers that received them, regulators have said.