Business
As Trump Returns to G7, Rift With Allies Is Even Deeper
When President Trump last attended a Group of 7 meeting in Canada, he was in many ways the odd man out.
At that meeting, in 2018, Mr. Trump called for the alliance of Western countries to embrace Russia, antagonized allies and ultimately stormed out of the summit over a trade battle he began by imposing metals tariffs on Canada.
As he returns on Sunday for the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, those fissures have only deepened. Since retaking office, the president has sought to shrink America’s military role abroad and made threats to annex the summit’s host after embarking on a much more expansive trade war.
Mr. Trump is now facing a self-imposed deadline of early July to reach trade deals. His trade adviser even promised in April that the tariffs would lead to “90 deals in 90 days.” Despite reaching framework agreements with Britain and China, the administration has shown scant progress on deals with other major trading partners.
The future of the president’s favored negotiating tool is uncertain as a legal battle over his tariffs plays out in the courts. But a failure to reach accords could lead the Trump administration to once again ratchet up tariffs and send markets roiling.
“I think we’ll have a few new trade deals,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday as he left for the summit.
The gathering also comes amid fears of a broader, regional war in the Middle East after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran’s leadership and nuclear facilities last week, prompting both nations to trade strikes.
“Sometimes they have to fight it out, but we’re going to see what happens,” Mr. Trump said when asked what he was doing to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran. “I think there’s a good chance there will be a deal.”
Mr. Trump’s aides say he will discuss a range of topics, including fairness in global trade, critical minerals, illegal migration, drug smuggling and international security. World leaders will also be focused on surging oil prices and Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Leaders of the Group of 7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — will convene in Kananaskis, a remote town west of Calgary. The summit this week, the 50th such meeting, is usually a forum for the U.S. president to leverage allies and partners to further its agenda and assert its leadership on global issues of consequence.
But world leaders appear to be bracing for Mr. Trump’s shift away from global partnerships. Canadian officials have said that they were scrapping hopes of issuing a joint communiqué, the traditional statement leaders put out at the end of such meetings. Mr. Trump refused to endorse the joint statement moments after it was released at the end of the 2018 summit.
“One thing that the G7 represents just beyond the world’s largest economies is a community of shared values — shared values that Trump doesn’t necessarily share or subscribe to,” said Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
Beyond trade, the war in Ukraine is likely to be a point of contention at the summit. While Mr. Trump has signaled reluctance to stay engaged in the war and derided multilateral organizations like NATO, European allies have rallied around Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is expected to be in attendance.
François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s finance minister, said the presence of Ukraine was meant to “send a strong message to the world,” that the Group of 7 was recommitting to support Kyiv and hold Moscow accountable.
At the 2018 summit in Canada, one of the biggest disputes between Mr. Trump and allies was when he demanded Russia’s readmission to the Group of 7 nations. The country was ousted from the diplomatic forum after Mr. Putin violated international norms by seizing parts of Ukraine in 2014.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has boasted about his close relationship with Mr. Putin, and has repeatedly taken his side in the war — even falsely accusing Ukraine of starting it. Thus far, his embrace of Mr. Putin has not helped broker peace in the war.
“Given Trump’s ongoing conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the prospect of any meaningful new G7 action to promote a durable resolution of the three-year-old conflict is highly uncertain,” Matthew P. Goodman, the director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote last week.
He said Mr. Trump’s attendance at the summit and his decision to impose tariffs on the other members had “cast a deep shadow over the gathering in Canada.”
Mr. Trump’s increased hostility toward U.S. allies is perhaps most exemplified by the relationship with the host country.
The relationship between the neighbors and top trading partners has been at a historical low since Mr. Trump’s re-election because of his decision to impose tariffs on Canadian goods and his continuing to threaten its sovereignty by asserting that Canada should be a part of the United States.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada has sought a cordial relationship with Mr. Trump, but during a meeting in the Oval Office last month delivered a stern response to Mr. Trump’s suggestions: Canada “won’t be for sale, ever.”
“Never say never,” Mr. Trump replied.
Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Mr. Trump’s treatment of Canada was “emblematic of the bullying Trump considers appropriate.”
“If this is the behavior toward a country with which we share a 5,500-mile border and a common air defense, it’s sure to be similarly antagonistic to other allies,” Dr. Schake said.
A May poll showed that Canadian sentiment toward the United States was at a historical low. Nine out of 10 Canadians rejected Mr. Trump’s idea of making their country the “51st state.” And recent travel data showed that Canadians were canceling or changing plans to visit the United States.
Canadians have been so galvanized against Mr. Trump that the rift appeared to have swung national elections. After Canada seemed poised to elect a conservative as prime minister in its April elections, the pendulum swung in favor of Mr. Carney, a liberal, by 30 percentage points, because the conservative candidate was seen as too close to Mr. Trump.
Still, while protests are expected during the summit, Alberta is a conservative stronghold within Canada, so Mr. Trump will find some friendly welcome there. Sometimes referred to as “Canada’s Texas” on account of its oil riches and conservative politics, Alberta is in the middle of a push to hold a secession referendum.
Mr. Carney, who this year holds the Group of 7 presidency, has invited the leaders of several nonmember countries: India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, Australia and South Korea, and the head of NATO.
In his second term, Mr. Trump has had explosive clashes in the Oval Office with Mr. Zelensky and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa.
Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that while the United States had historically played a role as a consensus builder at Group of 7 summits, it had often come to the table with a different perspective than its allies.
Mr. Froman argued that Mr. Trump was engaging the world, just under different terms than his predecessors.
“On some of these issues, we are currently alone,” Mr. Froman said.
“But I think one of the goals will be to bring other countries in our direction,” he added, “whether that’s through careful diplomacy” or “the threat of tariffs and sanctions.”
Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting.
The sale of Warner Bros. — whether in pieces to Netflix or in its entirety to Paramount — is stirring mounting worries among Hollywood union leaders about the possible fallout for their members.
Unions representing writers, directors, actors and crew workers have voiced growing concerns that further consolidation in the media industry will reduce competition, potentially causing studios to pay less for content, and make it more difficult for people to find work.
“We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” said Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West. “There are lots of promises made that one plus one is going to equal three. But it’s very hard to envision how two behemoths, for example, Warner Bros. and Netflix … can keep up the level of output they currently have.”
Last week, Netflix announced it agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studio, Burbank lot, HBO and HBO Max for $27.75 a share, or $72 billion. It also agreed to take on more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt. But Paramount, whose previous offers were rebuffed by Warner Bros., has appealed directly to shareholders with an alternative bid to buy all of the company for about $78 billion.
Paramount said it will have more than $6 billion in cuts over three years, while also saying the combined companies will release at least 30 movies a year. Netflix said it expects its deal will have $2 billion to $3 billion in cost cuts.
Those cuts are expected to trigger thousands of layoffs across Hollywood, which has already been squeezed by the flight of production overseas and a contraction in the once booming TV business.
Mulroney said that employment for WGA writers in episodic television is down as much as 40% when comparing the 2023-2024 writing season to 2022-2023.
Executives from both companies have said their deals would benefit creative talent and consumers.
But Hollywood union leaders are skeptical.
“We can hear the generalizations all day long, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless it’s on paper, and we just don’t know if these companies are even prepared to make promises in writing,” said Lindsay Dougherty, Teamsters at-large vice president and principal officer for Local 399, which represents drivers, location managers and casting directors.
Dougherty said the Teamsters have been engaged with both Netflix and Paramount, seeking commitments to keep filming in Los Angeles.
“We have a lot of members that are struggling to find work, or haven’t really worked in the last year or so,” Dougherty said.
Mulroney said her union has concerns about both bids, either by Netflix or Paramount.
“We don’t think the merger is inevitable,” Mulroney said. “We think there’s an opportunity to push back here.”
If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros.’ TV and film businesses, Mulroney said that could further undermine the theatrical business.
“It’s hard to imagine them fully embracing theatrical exhibition,” Mulroney said. “The exhibition business has been struggling to get back on its feet ever since the pandemic, so a move like this could really be existential.”
But the Writers Guild also has issues with Paramount’s bid, Mulroney said, noting that it would put Paramount-owned CBS News and CNN under the same parent company.
“We have censorship concerns,” Mulroney said. “We saw issues around [Stephen] Colbert and [Jimmy] Kimmel. We’re concerned about what the news would look like under single ownership here.”
That question was made more salient this week after President Trump, who has for years harshly criticized CNN’s hosts and news coverage, said he believes CNN should be sold.
The worries come as some unions’ major studio contracts, including the DGA, WGA and performers guild SAG-AFTRA, are set to expire next year. Two years ago, writers and actors went on a prolonged strike to push for more AI protections and better wages and benefits.
The Directors Guild of America and performers union SAG-AFTRA have voiced similar objections to the pending media consolidation.
“A deal that is in the interest of SAG-AFTRA members and all other workers in the entertainment industry must result in more creation and more production, not less,” the union said.
SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the union has been in discussions with both Paramount and Netflix.
“It is as yet unclear what path forward is going to best protect the legacy that Warner Brothers presents, and that’s something that we’re very actively investigating right now,” he said.
It’s not clear, however, how much influence the unions will have in the outcome.
“They just don’t have a seat at the ultimate decision making table,” said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. “I expect their primary involvement could be through creating more awareness of potential challenges with a merger and potentially more regulatory scrutiny … I think that’s what they’re attempting to do.”
Businessman Brian Kahn has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case that brought down a hedge fund, helped lead to the bankruptcy of a retailer and damaged West Los Angeles investment bank B. Riley Financial.
Kahn, 52, admitted in a Trenton, N.J., federal court Wednesday to hiding trading losses that brought down Prophecy Asset Management in 2020. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the losses exceeded $400 million.
An investor lawsuit has accused Kahn of funneling some of the fund’s money to Franchise Group, a Delaware retail holding company assembled by the investor that owned Vitamin Shoppe, Pet Supplies Plus and other chains.
B. Riley provided $600 million through debt it raised to finance a $2.8-billion management buyout led by Kahn in 2023. It also took a 31% stake in the company and lent Kahn’s investment fund $201 million, largely secured with shares of Franchise Group.
Kahn had done deals with B. Riley co-founder Bryant Riley before partnering with the L.A. businessman on Franchise Group.
However, the buyout didn’t work out amid fallout from the hedge fund scandal and slowing sales at the retailers. Franchise Group filed for bankruptcy in November 2024. A slimmed-down version of the company emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
B. Riley has disclosed in regulatory filings that the firm and Riley have received SEC subpoenas regarding its dealings with Kahn, Franchise group and other matters.
Riley, 58, the firm’s chairman and co-chief executive, has denied knowledge of wrongdoing, and an outside law firm reached the same conclusion.
The failed deal led to huge losses at the financial services firm that pummeled B. Riley’s stock, which had approached $90 in 2021. Shares were trading Friday at $3.98.
The company has marked down its Franchise Group investment, and has spent the last year or so paring debt through refinancing, selling off parts of its business and other steps, including closing offices.
The company announced last month it is changing its name to BRC Group Holdings in January. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At Wednesday’s plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kelly Lyons said that Kahn conspired to “defraud dozens of investors who had invested approximately $360 million” through “lies, deception, misleading statements and material omissions.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp released Kahn on a $100,000 bond and set an April 2 sentencing date. He faces up to five years in prison. Kahn, his lawyer and Lyons declined to comment after the hearing.
Kahn is the third Prophecy official charged over the hedge fund’s collapse. Two other executives, John Hughes and Jeffrey Spotts, have also been charged.
Hughes pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors. Spotts pleaded not guilty and faces trial next year. The two men and Kahn also have been sued by the SEC over the Prophecy collapse.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Chatty bots are sharing their hot takes through hundreds of thousands of AI-generated podcasts. And the invasion has just begun.
Though their banter can be a bit banal, the AI podcasters’ confidence and research are now arguably better than most people’s.
“We’ve just begun to cross the threshold of voice AI being pretty much indistinguishable from human,” said Alan Cowen, chief executive of Hume AI, a startup specializing in voice technology. “We’re seeing creators use it in all kinds of ways.”
AI can make podcasts sound better and cost less, industry insiders say, but the growing swarm of new competitors entering an already crowded market is disrupting the industry.
Some podcasters are pushing back, requesting restrictions. Others are already cloning their voices and handing over their podcasts to AI bots.
Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast “Diary of a CEO.” On YouTube, his clone narrates “100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett,” which adds AI-generated animation to Bartlett’s cloned voice to tell the life stories of entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.
Erica Mandy, the Redondo Beach-based host of the daily news podcast called “The Newsworthy,” let an AI voice fill in for her earlier this year after she lost her voice from laryngitis and her backup host bailed out.
She fed her script into a text-to-speech model and selected a female AI voice from ElevenLabs to speak for her.
“I still recorded the show with my very hoarse voice, but then put the AI voice over that, telling the audience from the very beginning, I’m sick,” Mandy said.
Mandy had previously used ElevenLabs for its voice isolation feature, which uses AI to remove ambient noise from interviews.
Her chatbot host elicited mixed responses from listeners. Some asked if she was OK. One fan said she should never do it again. Most weren’t sure what to think.
“A lot of people were like, ‘That was weird,’” Mandy said.
In podcasting, many listeners feel strong bonds to hosts they listen to regularly. The slow encroachment of AI voices for one-off episodes, canned ad reads, sentence replacement in postproduction or translation into multiple languages has sparked anger as well as curiosity from both creators and consumers of the content.
Augmenting or replacing host reads with AI is perceived by many as a breach of trust and as trivializing the human connection listeners have with hosts, said Megan Lazovick, vice president of Edison Research, a podcast research company.
Jason Saldanha of PRX, a podcast network that represents human creators such as Ezra Klein, said the tsunami of AI podcasts won’t attract premium ad rates.
“Adding more podcasts in a tyranny of choice environment is not great,” he said. “I’m not interested in devaluing premium.”
Still, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify have introduced features for creators to clone their voice and translate their content into multiple languages to increase reach and revenue. A new generation of voice cloning companies, many with operations in California, offers better emotion, tone, pacing and overall voice quality.
Hume AI, which is based in New York but has a big research team in California, raised $50 million last year and has tens of thousands of creators using its software to generate audiobooks, podcasts, films, voice-overs for videos and dialogue generation in video games.
“We focus our platform on being able to edit content so that you can take in postproduction an existing podcast and regenerate a sentence in the same voice, with the same prosody or emotional intonation using instant cloning,” said company CEO Cowen.
Some are using the tech to carpet-bomb the market with content.
Los Angeles podcasting studio Inception Point AI has produced its 200,000 podcast episodes, accounting for 1% of all podcasts published on the internet, according to CEO Jeanine Wright.
The podcasts are so cheap to make that they can focus on tiny topics, like local weather, small sports teams, gardening and other niche subjects.
Instead of a studio searching for a specific “hit” podcast idea, it takes just $1 to produce an episode so that they can be profitable with just 25 people listening.
“That means most of the stuff that we make, we have really an unlimited amount of experimentation and creative freedom for what we want to do,” Wright said.
One of its popular synthetic hosts is Vivian Steele, an AI celebrity gossip columnist with a sassy voice and a sharp tongue. “I am indeed AI-powered — which means I’ve got receipts older than your grandmother’s jewelry box, and a memory sharper than a stiletto heel on marble. No forgetting, no forgiving, and definitely no filter,” the AI discloses itself at the start of the podcast.
“We’ve kind of molded her more towards what the audience wants,” said Katie Brown, chief content officer at Inception Point, who helps design the personalities of the AI podcasters.
Inception Point has built a roster of more than 100 AI personalities whose characteristics, voices and likenesses are crafted for podcast audiences. Its AI hosts include Clare Delish, a cooking guidance expert, and garden enthusiast Nigel Thistledown.
The technology also makes it easy to get podcasts up quickly. Inception has found some success with flash biographies posted promptly in connection to people in the news. It uses AI software to spot a trending personality and create two episodes, complete with promo art and a trailer.
When Charlie Kirk was shot, its AI immediately created two shows called “Charlie Kirk Death” and “Charlie Kirk Manhunt” as a part of the biography series.
“We were able to create all of that content, each with different angles, pulling from different news sources, and we were able to get that content up within an hour,” Wright said.
Speed is key when it comes to breaking news, so its AI podcasts reached the top of some charts.
“Our content was coming up, really dominating the list of what people were searching for,” she said.
Across Apple and Spotify, Inception Point podcasts have now garnered 400,000 subscribers.
Banking on carbon markets 2.0: why financial institutions should engage with carbon credits | Fortune
The future of fitness: How AI coaches are changing the way we exercise
‘Christmas Karma’ movie review: A Bollywood Carol with little cheer
It’s Christmastime —– and if you live in the Alps, watch out! Krampus is coming
Parents call for New York governor to sign landmark AI safety bill
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Inside Minnesota’s $1B fraud: fake offices, phony firms and a scandal hiding in plain sight
Residents emerge in DR Congo’s tense Uvira after M23 rebel takeover
What to know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from immigration custody
Republican House leader signals plan to begin contempt proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton
Three years on, former MEP Kaili remains in limbo still awaiting trial
-
Alaska7 days agoHowling Mat-Su winds leave thousands without power
-
Texas7 days agoTexas Tech football vs BYU live updates, start time, TV channel for Big 12 title
-
Ohio1 week agoWho do the Ohio State Buckeyes hire as the next offensive coordinator?
-
Washington4 days agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa6 days agoMatt Campbell reportedly bringing longtime Iowa State staffer to Penn State as 1st hire
-
Miami, FL6 days agoUrban Meyer, Brady Quinn get in heated exchange during Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami CFP discussion
-
Cleveland, OH6 days agoMan shot, killed at downtown Cleveland nightclub: EMS
-
World6 days ago
Chiefs’ offensive line woes deepen as Wanya Morris exits with knee injury against Texans
