A limit on foreign steel imports, Canada’s slowed population growth and DHL suspends operations: Business and investing stories for the week of June 22

Getting caught up on a week that got away? Here’s your weekly digest of The Globe’s most essential business and investing stories, with insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and more.

Canada to limit foreign steel imports to help producers hit by U.S. tariffs

Canada plans to adjust countertariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum imports on July 21 to new levels that will depend on how trade talks are going, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday. This is the first major trade announcement from Mr. Carney’s government since this week’s G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta, where his office said he and U.S. President Donald Trump had agreed to work toward a comprehensive trade and security deal within 30 days.

Ottawa also announced that it will attempt to limit steel imports from countries that don’t have free-trade agreements with Canada to 2024 levels. As Niall McGee reports, that includes China, India, Taiwan, Turkey and Russia – and they have been accused of selling the metal at an artificially low price to gain market share (a practice known as dumping). If this group of countries exceeds 2024 steel shipment volumes, a 50-per-cent tariff will apply. But Algoma Steel Group Inc. chief executive Michael Garcia says the federal government’s quotas still fall far short of what is needed during the vicious trade war.

Canada Post reaches a deal with second-largest union CPAA; DHL suspends operations

Canada Post said it has reached a contract deal with its second-largest union after 18 months of negotiations. The agreement with Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association covers about 8,500 employees, who mostly manage post offices in rural Canada, and includes an 11 per cent wage increase over the next three years. Canada Post still hasn’t reached a deal with the primary union representing about 55,000 postal workers, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Given the impasse, the federal government intervened last week to force unionized Canada Post workers to vote directly on the latest offers from the postal service, though no date has been set.

Meanwhile, DHL Express suspended operations across Canada on Friday after a heated labour dispute and the implementation of a new federal law that bans the use of replacement workers during strikes.

Decoder: Trump’s trade war is hammering Canada much harder than Mexico

The U.S. trade war is affecting Canada much worse than Mexico, especially looking at data about commercial trucks and overall trade flow. According to new data on border traffic released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of commercial trucks entering the U.S. from Canada fell 10.5 per cent in May from the year before.

By comparison, the number of U.S.-bound trucks from Mexico declined by a more modest 2.8 per cent last month. A similar pattern has played out in trade flows. In April, U.S. imports from Canada fell 14.4 per cent from the same month in 2024, compared with a 2.7-per-cent decline in imports from Mexico. Jason Kirby takes a closer look at the numbers in this week’s Decoder series.

Canada’s population growth slows to a crawl after moves to curb immigration

Canada’s population barely grew in the first quarter of this year as tighter immigration policies slowed the number of new arrivals, according to data from Statistics Canada. Between Jan. 1 and April 1, 2025, the overall population grew by just 20,107 people to roughly 41.55 million, Vanmala Subramaniam reports. By comparison, the population jumped by an average of 217,000 people a quarter from 2021 to 2024 – raising widespread concerns about access to housing and health care and forcing the federal government to implement new restrictions on migration, particularly for temporary residents.

The Statscan data also showed that the number of temporary residents fell for a second consecutive quarter. As of April 1, there were 61,111 fewer temporary residents in Canada, compared with the start of the year. The largest decrease in temporary residents came from those holding study permits. There were about 53,000 fewer international student visa holders in the first quarter of this year, compared with the previous quarter.

David Rosenberg says investment scam using his name bilked victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars

A Bay Street veteran and financial commentator is speaking out after finding himself at the centre of an alleged online “pump and dump” scam that used his identity to defraud some investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. David Rosenberg, an economist and founder of Rosenberg Research, said ads appearing on Facebook and Instagram as early as March have promoted a fake investment program falsely listing him as its administrator. Since then, he’s heard from several individuals who lost money to the scheme, a sum Mr. Rosenberg said he believes exceeds $1-million, though the total amount is unknown. Mariya Postelnyak shares his story.

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