Axios

President Trump said the U.S. would ban Canadian alcohol, some dairy products and large motorcycles, sharply escalating a trade war largely fought with tariffs.

Why it matters: The measures deepen the economic rift between countries that have spent decades interlinking commerce, threatening disruption for businesses and consumers on both sides of the border.

Congressional Republicans are preparing to share the stage with a president who has spent the August recess complicating their efforts to run their races on their own terms.

Why it matters: Republican lawmakers fled Washington for the latter part of the summer, eager to localize their races.

Robinhood is expanding its prediction markets offerings, defying critics and plunging ahead despite looming uncertainty over the regulatory future of event contracts.

Why it matters: Robinhood has more than 28 million funded customers, making it a seamless entry point into prediction markets for many retail investors.

LIV Golf — the Saudi-backed league that upended the sport with a costly splash but failed to identify a viable business model — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday.

Why it matters: It's an ignominious turn of events for a brash organization that lured some of the biggest stars away from the PGA Tour with enormous paydays that proved to be unsustainable.

Trump is reaching for a more drastic trade war weapon, with new threats to shut foreign goods out of the U.S. altogether.

Why it matters: It would mark a significant evolution of the administration's trade agenda, with potentially bigger economic fallout than the tariffs that have defined it so far.

• Trump may also have firmer legal footing for some import bans than emergency tariffs. Federal trade laws explicitly give presidents the power to prohibit imports under certain conditions, even where courts have rejected their authority to impose tariffs.
• Businesses can absorb the cost of a tariff, pass it on to customers, or some combination of both. But losing access to a key part or product altogether can result in shortages, stalled production and a chaotic scramble to find new suppliers.

Driving the news: Trump threatened to ban Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier from selling jets in the U.S., just hours before Canada's retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of U.S. goods took effect this morning.

• "NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. "If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a 'piggybank.'"
• The Bombardier threat came days after Trump responded to the strong jobs report with a social media post demanding that the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, tying the demand to a sweeping threat to cut off trade with nations that would in theory include countries like Canada, Japan and China.
• "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT," Trump wrote. Notably, he added: "IT'S BETTER THAN TARIFFS!"

Between the lines: Top Trump trade official Jamieson Greer has also floated outright bans, saying last month that it could be an option to hit back at Canada's retaliatory tariffs.

• "We've never done these bans; it's quite extreme. But maybe we need to," Greer said in an interview with the CBC late last month.
• Greer also said in July that Trump "for sure can" use emergency powers to restrict trade, after the president threatened to cut off trade with Spain.
• At the time, Greer pointed to the Supreme Court's ruling that blocked Trump's emergency tariffs, noting that law "clearly says you can prohibit trade."

The intrigue: The U.S. has banned imports before, though usually as part of sanctions against adversaries rather than as leverage in a trade dispute with a close economic partner like Canada.

The Supreme Court ruling that blocked Trump's emergency tariffs highlighted that a more potent option was available to him.

• The Court ruled that IEEPA doesn't authorize tariffs, but the law explicitly allows presidents to prohibit imports. Trump seized on that distinction the day the ruling came down. "I can embargo, but I can't charge one dollar," he told reporters.
• Justice Brett Kavanaugh called that an "odd donut hole" in oral arguments, noting that a president could shut down trade entirely, but couldn't impose even a 1% tariff.
• Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which Trump has already invoked against Canada, also allows the president to exclude a country's goods under certain conditions.

What to watch: Trump's Bombardier threat is already showing the political realities that can complicate such drastic trade moves.

• The company — and the firms that supply it — are deeply embedded in the U.S. economy, particularly in Kansas. It employs over 1,000 people in Wichita and buys from roughly 2,800 U.S. suppliers across 47 states.
• Kansas Republicans were quick to hint at the potential for economic fallout of an outright import ban.
• "I reached out to the Trump administration to make certain the President is aware of the significant contributions of Bombardier to Kansas," Sen. Jerry Moran posted on X.

Americans are as pessimistic about the overall job market as they have been since the depths of the pandemic. But they think they, personally, will be just fine.

The big picture: That it the perplexing combination of views displayed in the New York Fed's latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, which matches other survey-based evidence that Americans are doing well individually but are deeply negative about the overall economic outlook.

By the numbers: Survey respondents put average odds that the unemployment rate will be higher a year from now at 44.4% in August, the highest since April 2020 and up 1.6 percentage point from July.

• Yet survey respondents' average perceived odds of losing their own job in the next 12 months decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 13.8%, the lowest since February.
• Perceived odds of voluntarily quitting their job voluntarily increased as well, by 0.9 percentage points — a sign of confidence in respondents' personal job prospects.

State of play: Labor market data has firmed up so far this year, with the unemployment at 4.1% the last two months after ending last year at 4.4%. That firming is reflected in peoples' perceptions of their personal job prospects, but not in their macro views.

Zoom in: This curious mix of views aligns with other public opinion data.

• The Conference Board's consumer confidence index, for example, showed a July surge in the "present situation index" of current conditions, which was up 6.8 points to 121.2
• Meanwhile the expectations index — consumers' outlook for income, business, and the job market — fell 5.8 points to 68.2.

Between the lines: Survey responses about economic questions increasingly seem to bring sour responses that reflect broadly negative attitudes about the direction of the world.

• When you narrow the question to ask about peoples' immediate economic circumstances, the responses get a lot more favorable.

The Trump administration is seeking to rescind a rule that was put in place to stop private equity funds from bribing public officials, following a raft of pay-to-play scandals.

The big picture: The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that the Rule 206(4)-5 of the Investment Advisers Act stifles "free speech" and had too many unintended consequences.

• It did not propose any sort of replacement, instead arguing that existing state and local laws would suffice — even though it was the failure of those very laws that led to the rule's creation in the first place.

Split Pay, a lending startup initially focused on renters, tells Axios that it's raised $125 million in Series A and Series B funding. Khosla Ventures led both rounds, joined by Thrive Capital and Max Levchin.

Why it matters: It's an effort to make the consumer economy work more like the invoice-based business economy — which recognizes that income can be lumpy — by reconciling the timing discrepancy between large bills (once per month) and paychecks (twice per month).

Bluecore Energy, a developer of small nuclear reactors on barges that could power ports, on Tuesday announced that it's raised $50 million in seed funding.

Why it matters: This could enable the startup to begin ordering nuclear fuel, thus charting a path toward criticality and helping to power the Port of Long Beach.

Retail investors were less eager buyers of stocks in August, taking advantage of gains early in the month to trim some of their positions and leading to a 3.9% decline in Charles Schwab's index of stock positions and trading activity, per data shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: That caution, seen during a month of rising Treasury yields and surging energy prices, may indicate a willingness to tap the brakes on this long-running bull market.

In a Virginia law school classroom, students are grappling with an event once considered unimaginable: a U.S. government debt default.

Why it matters: This semester's class is indicative of a nervousness that has become more widespread about America's standing in the global financial system.

The information sector lost 23,000 jobs in August, and its employment is now down by about 12% since peaking in 2022.

Why it matters: That's 370,000 lost jobs over four years across the movie and music industries, telecom and media, as well as data processing, web hosting and other information services.

• The decline got less attention last week when the August employment report showed surprisingly strong hiring.

Democrats have gained sharply with Latino voters in some of the country's most competitive House districts since 2024, a new Hart Research/TelevisaUnivision poll shared exclusively with Axios shows.

Why it matters: President Trump came close to erasing Democrats' longtime advantage among Latinos in the last presidential election. Now, with control of Congress at stake and Trump's approval ratings hitting new lows, that breakthrough appears to have eroded.

On Sept. 4, Hyundai Motor Group held a ceremonial event marking the start of a new steel mill project at the RiverPlex MegaPark site in Ascension Parish, Louisiana — the latest chapter in a partnership with the United States that spans four decades.

The background: Since first investing in U.S. manufacturing in 1986, South Korean multinational automotive manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group had committed more than $20.5 billion by 2024.