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FILE PHOTO: France, Paris, 03-12-2022. March against the Uighur genocide

Fiora Garenzi / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

Hard Numbers: Slave labor gets free pass, China probes fried chicken blast, Fresh beef over origins of meat, Windfarms vs. farmlands, Record numbers at US-Canada border

0: Is Canada complying with its obligation, under the revamped NAFTA accords, to stop importing goods that are made with forced labor? A Politico report earlier this week suggested Canadian border services officials were starting to detain shipments from Western China, where Beijing is accused of using slave labor among the Uighur population. But the Globe and Mail reports that zero imports have so far been rejected. Of particular concern are exports of relatively inexpensive Chinese solar panels, which have helped businesses and homes wean themselves off fossil fuels without breaking the bank.

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Paige Fusco

Graphic Truth: US trade deficit with Canada & Mexico

The US trade deficit in goods with Canada and Mexico reached an all-time high in 2023 of over $220 billion — and despite what you may hear from certain former US presidents, that’s a good thing. Yes, more money than ever is leaving the US and going to the neighbors. And in exchange, American consumers get more stuff from their neighbors than ever before and for better prices than they can find at home.

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Jess Frampton

Biden and Trudeau face headwinds … from Gaza

Last Thursday, after Joe Biden promised during his State of the Union to build a pier to deliver aid to Gaza, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet shook the president’s hand, congratulated him on the speech, and urged him to push Israel to do more on “humanitarian stuff.”

Biden, caught on a hot mic, nodded in agreement and said he was pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I told him, Bibi, don’t repeat this, but we are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting.”

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FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo

Atwood and Musk agree on Online Harms Act

Space capitalist Elon Musk and Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood are in agreement …. on warning that Canadian legislation to bring order to cyberspace threatens freedom of speech, which suggests that Justin Trudeau may have to go back to the drawing board.

The Liberals unveiled the Online Harms Act last month, proposing a digital safety commission to target hate speech, child porn, and other dangerous content. Advocates like Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen have called for governments to pass similar laws, and both the EU and the UK are doing so.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks beside Guyana President Irfaan Ali and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness as they attend an emergency meeting on Haiti at the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in Kingston, Jamaica, March 11, 2024.

REUTERS/Gilbert Bellamy

Scrambling for a plan for Haiti

American, Canadian, French, and Caribbean diplomats are in Jamaica this week trying to chart a security plan for Haiti, where a gang leader is poised to control the country’s streets, but so far Haitians can’t agree on a plan.

The Americans and Canadians brought their checkbooks, but neither were likely to send troops to establish order.

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TikTok creators are holding signs in support of the app and against a ban in Washington, D.C., on March 12, 2024, ahead of a scheduled vote tomorrow in the House of Representatives that would ban the social media app until it divests from Chinese ownership.

Photo by Aaron Schwartz/NurPhoto via Reuters

Clock ticks on TikTok

The US House voted to ban Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on Wednesday, sending the bill to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has not committed to bringing it to a vote.

Republican and Democratic representatives — who voted 352 to 65 to pass the bill — argue that China could use TikTok’s algorithm to feed propaganda to Americans and collect intelligence about users. Intelligence experts have warned for years that Westerners should be skeptical of assurances that the company does not share intelligence with the Chinese government. TikTok says such concerns are ridiculous.

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Canadian Federal Minister for Business and Innovation Franois Philippe Champagne, Germany, Berlin, Press statement by Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck and Canadian Federal Minister for Business and Innovation Franois Philippe Champagne.

IMAGO/Metodi Popow via Reuters Connect

Team Canada, Part Deux

Justin Trudeau’s “Team Canada” ventured south this past week to remind Americans that their trade relationship with the Great White North is vital. The new effort was announced by Trudeau in January, signaling a determination to prepare for the outcome of this year’s presidential election. His government, you’ll recall, was criticized in 2016 for being unprepared for Donald Trump’s win. But the Team Canada approach to NAFTA renegotiation was widely seen as a success since it led to the USMCA in 2020, which will be reviewed by all the parties in 2026.

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Marc Miller, minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, hands small Canadian flags to 53 new Canadian citizens representing 22 diverse nations, at a special ceremony at Canada Place, on Oct. 12, 2023, in Edmonton, Alberta.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Reuters

HARD NUMBERS: Small towns get big say in immigration, Canada faces arms export lawsuit, Red Sea attacks push up shipping costs, Hotel California suit gets checked out

18: Over the next 18 months, Canada will expand and make permanent a pilot program that gives small towns a say in where immigrants can settle. The program has already resettled close to 5,000 foreigners in rural villages and small towns struggling with labor shortages.

21 million: The Canadian government is facing a lawsuit alleging that $21 million worth of Ottawa’s arms exports to Israel are illegal. The plaintiffs – the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and a Ramallah-based non-profit called Al-Haq Law – allege that arms exports to Israel since Oct. 7 violate Canadian laws that prohibit the sale of weapons that could be used in human rights violations. Ottawa says all exports since Israel launched its assault on Gaza have been “non-lethal” equipment.

1,000: The cost of shipping goods from India or the Middle East to North America is about to go up. Global shipping giant Maersk has raised prices along those routes by $1,000 per container, a hike of around 20%. Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea have forced companies like Maersk to take much longer routes around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds at least 15 days to the journey.

3: Well, three lucky guys in New York won’t be “prisoners here of their own device,” or any other device, as it happens. Authorities have dropped charges against a trio of men accused of trying to sell a stolen notepad with handwritten lyrics to the famous Eagles tune “Hotel California.” The pad was swiped from the Eagles’ archives by a biographer in the 1970s and sold to one of three accused men for $50,000 in 2005. Prosecutors said a newly released cache of emails cast doubt on the fairness of the case and asked a judge to drop it.

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