Canadians are casting their ballots today Monday April 28th, in a pivotal election that has been completely transformed by US President Donald Trump.

The Conservatives appeared certain to win any contest by a landslide at the start of the year, until Trump’s tariffs and barbs about making Canada the “51st state” upended the country’s politics and injected fresh life into Mark Carney’s Liberal Party.

The final polls suggest the Liberals are slightly ahead, although the race has tightened in the past week and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says his party can win.

The 36-day campaign ended on a sombre note as party leaders responded to the Saturday evening car ramming that killed 11 people in Vancouver.

Carney, the incumbent prime minister, cancelled a stop in Hamilton on Sunday morning to address the nation following the attack, which saw an SUV ram into a crowd gathered for a local Filipino festival.

US President Donald Trump says it’s Liberation Day in America as he announced his sweeping new tariffs. The new measures took effect at midnight. Since taking office in January, Trump has imposed several of the measures.

US President Donald Trump has announced a 10 percent universal tariff on all imports into the country. This includes Barbadian exports to the American market. According to Mr. Trump, the tariff is in retaliation for the 10 per cent tariff now charged by Jamaica on U.S. imports.

The tariff means American consumers are likely to see an increase in the price of Jamaican goods sold on the U.S. market.

St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Belize, Suriname, St. Kitts and Antigua are among the Caribbean countries that will also see a 10% tariff applied to their exports.

Nearly 60 countries across the world have been hit with tariffs ranging from 10 per cent to as high as 49 per cent. China, countries in the European Union, Taiwan and Vietnam are among the hardest hit. It’s one of the most sweeping impositions of tariffs in U.S. history.

Trump says the tariffs are aimed at protecting American markets from unfair global trade practices. He’s projecting a resurgence in American manufacturing as a result of the sweeping tariffs.

Gathering of senior business leaders in Beijing comes amid rising tensions with US

Xi Jinping has urged global business leaders to work together to protect supply chains at a meeting with a group of executives including Rajesh Subramaniam of FedEx, Ola Källenius of Mercedes-Benz and Georges Elhedery of HSBC.

Amid a deepening trade war with the US, the Chinese leader told the group of more than 40 business leaders, which also included Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca, Miguel Ángel López Borrego of Thyssenkrupp and Amin Nasser of Saudi Aramco, that foreign business leaders should resist behaviours that “turn back the clock” on history.

“We hope everyone can take a broad and long-term view . . . and not blindly follow actions that disrupt the security and stability of global industrial chains and supply chains, but instead contribute more positive energy and certainty to global development,” Xi told the gathering in Beijing on Friday.

The event at the Great Hall of the People marked the second consecutive year that Xi held a carefully staged meeting with foreign chief executives in the Chinese capital. Last year’s event was held exclusively with US business leaders.

The meeting came at the conclusion of a busy week for Chinese policymakers, who are trying to strengthen relations with international business amid rising tensions with US President Donald Trump’s administration.

China’s premier annual CEO conference, the China Development Forum, was held in Beijing this week, followed by the Boao Forum for Asia in the tropical resort island of Hainan. Beijing is seeking to promote itself as a bastion of stability in global trade in contrast to the US, where Trump has launched successive waves of tariffs on products from aluminium to cars. The president has vowed widespread, reciprocal duties on US trading partners on April 2, threatening further disruption to international trade.

“A few countries are building ‘small yards with high walls’, setting up tariff barriers, and politicising, instrumentalising, weaponising, and over-securitising economic and trade issues,” said Xi, who was accompanied by his foreign, commerce and finance ministers.

He said these actions were forcing companies “to take sides and make choices that go against economic principles”. “This runs counter to the overarching trend of open markets,” he said. He added that foreign enterprises, especially multinational corporations, had “considerable international influence”.

“We hope everyone will . . . resist regressive moves that turn back the clock,” Xi said. “Together, we must safeguard the stability of global industrial and supply chains. “Decoupling and severing ties harms others without benefiting oneself; it leads nowhere.”