The fog of (trade) war

Good morning. Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dylan Cease is making strides in his second career as a painter. The all-star partnered with the Art Gallery of Ontario to drop a retail collection inspired by his artwork, and even had one of his paintings on display at the gallery for a day. 

“Painting just makes me happy. It makes me feel good about my life,” Cease said at a press conference yesterday, “It helps me balance my life in a lot of ways.” What a lovely sentiment. We’re pulling for him to lead the Jays into the playoffs and secure his first Cy Young award.

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: BMO and Scotiabank kicked off bank earnings season with each lender reporting strong beats and the latter even posting a “record quarter.” Surging Scotia shares helped drive Canada’s main stock index to a new record closing high. Next on deck: National Bank.

Canada’s federal government unveiled its plan for retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. alongside new tariff relief measures yesterday — here’s the lowdown. 

What happened: As promised, the new tariffs affect the same imports the U.S. has targeted with its own levies, which came into effect on Saturday, and will be set at the same rates (either 15%, 25%, or 50% depending on the good). Over 700 distinct items are being tariffed — everything from frozen oysters to swivel seats — covering $27.6 billion worth of imports.

As for relief plans, the feds announced new measures and extensions of existing ones totalling $7.5 billion meant to protect industries, businesses, and workers affected by the U.S. tariffs. Some of these measures include: 

Why it matters: BMO estimated that the U.S. tariffs could knock half a percentage point off of GDP growth, while economist Trevor Tombe warned they could result in the loss of 90,000 jobs — that’s a lot of workers and businesses who will desperately need these new supports. 

Zoom out: In other news, Donald Trump took to Truth Social again to voice his displeasure and threatened to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America (one of his favourite bits). On the other hand, he did express love for Quebecers and French Canadians.—QH

Canada’s Kepler Communications boots up space data centre. The Toronto-based satellite maker says it has brought online the first commercial space data relay service, beating out the likes of SpaceX and Amazon. The lasers that connect Kepler’s satellites allow data to be sent back home immediately, meaning they no longer have to wait to pass over a ground station on Earth to transmit information. In practical terms, that could mean faster wildfire detection, quicker disaster response, and better military intelligence. (BetaKit) 

OpenAI says it's out-chipped Nvidia. The company said Jalapeño, its new in-house chip, outperformed Nvidia’s current models in a number of key benchmarks, including the amount of AI work it could handle per unit of power and its speed of responses. OpenAI, a top Nvidia customer, plans on using its own chips to power its AI models by the end of this year. (Axios)

Honda warns that the Canada-U.S. trade spat will lead to price hikes. Honda executive Noriya Kaihara said that the automaker will have to raise its prices and hold off on building any more North American plants if the U.S. and Canada can’t reach a new trade deal. The Japanese automaker is heavily reliant on the auto supply chain between the two countries and is currently the second-largest vehicle manufacturer by volume in Canada. (Reuters)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

With EQ Bank they can. Following the recent acquisition of PC Financial®, EQ Bank is celebrating its new role as the exclusive financial services partner of the PC Optimum™ program by delivering more rewards directly to Canadians. Throughout August, EQ Bank has been bringing in-store experiences and exciting chances to win PC Optimum™ points during routine shopping trips.

Capping off its cross-country tour, the final EQ Bank Pop-Up Pavilion (for now…) is coming to the Signal Hill Real Canadian Superstore in Calgary (5858 Signal Hill Cntr S.W.), August 27-30, from 11-7 p.m. Swing by to:

This marks the end of nearly a month of rewards-rich experiences from EQ Bank, showing up in the places where Canadians already shop, browse and run errands to provide extra value on everyday purchases.

If this summer is any indication, EQ Bank is just getting started – Canadians have plenty more to look forward to.

🤝Meet Joe Mimran. He’s a Canadian fashion designer and the founder of Club Monaco and Joe Fresh. Today, he’s the president of JM&A, where he steers such brands as Tilley and Kit and Ace. Mimran is about to add another company to that list: Roots, the beloved retail brand known for its distinctly nostalgic Canadiana. We spoke to Mimran about his plans for the brand, which include a push into the US market. 

Why is Roots going private?

Having to report on a quarterly basis and having to try and grow the business to the public market’s expectation is not always the best way to evolve. There may be a time when Roots can once again go public. But, right now, for us to do the work that we need to do means not doing it under the scrutiny of the financial market, but under the scrutiny of the consumers. That's the more important market. 

Where do you see the biggest opportunity for Roots — international expansion? 

I still think there’s opportunity in the Canadian marketplace, but I obviously believe that there's a huge growth opportunity in the U.S. that hasn’t been exploited until now. If we can replicate what I’ve done in the past [with Club Monaco] and what we've done with Tilley, I think there's a huge opportunity for Roots. But we've got our work cut out for us to get there.

What will it take for that to be a success?

The way I look at it is, what better brand to express Canadian identity than Roots? It's the best part of us. And how do we take that and personify it in the apparel, the imagery and everything else? And how do we romanticize it? I just want to ensure that the heritage of the brand is absolutely maintained. This is not about taking a left turn or a right turn. This is about really ensuring that the brand lives up to its 53 years of glory. 

And how do we do that? By really leaning into this whole idea of Canada. And when you think about it, what's more romantic than Canada? We're loved everywhere around the world, so why not take that and personify that within the clothes themselves? That's what we want to do.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here

Canadian schools are having a rough time turning campus projects into billion-dollar businesses. 

Driving the news: Despite more R&D spending last year, Canadian post-secondary schools and research institutions made even less money from their intellectual property and saw a 65% increase in the number of university-linked startups shutting down. 

Catch-up: Despite more government support over the past decade — and $8.4 billion in research spending last year — the classroom-to-marketplace pipeline hasn’t really improved. Over the past five years, most of the key metrics for commercialization, like patents and licensing income, have seen little to no change. 

Why it matters: The longstanding narrative has been that Canadian schools produce world-class talent and discoveries, but all of the big ideas are scooped up by the U.S. While that exodus of innovations is still a major problem, this data suggests that there’s a more fundamental issue within Canadian academia when it comes to bringing research to market.

Bottom line: Not all university research is intended to make money (University of Toronto researchers made $1 from discovering insulin), but it appears that a disproportionate amount of Canadian universities’ work is mismatched from what the market is looking for.—LA

🧠 25%. Share of former NFL players who develop the debilitating brain disease CTE, which is associated with repeated head trauma, according to a new study. Researchers said that the one-in-four number is a conservative estimate and that the real number is likely even higher. Of the brains examined in the study, over 93% showed evidence of CTE.

Oh yeah! It’s time for today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!