Finance
Trump’s tariffs will test unity among allies at G7 finance ministers’ summit – The Boston Globe
The Trump administration has reached an initial trade deal with one G7 member, the United Kingdom, and is engaged in talks with Japan and the European Union. But Canada still faces 25% duties on many of its exports to the United States, including autos, and the other three G7 members — France, Germany, and Italy — all face a baseline tariff of 10% on all their exports as part of the European Union.
It will be the first formal meeting of the G7 attended by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who participated in a brief G7 gathering last month on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington, D.C. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will also attend along with central bank governors from the other G7 nations.
“The message from colleagues is pretty clear is that a free and fair and a rules-based multilateral trading system, is a system in which we all win,” Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of finance, said Tuesday.
While many finance ministers gathered in Banff this week will likely seek one-on-one meetings with Bessent, it’s unlikely any trade deals will be reached, according to a person briefed on preparations for the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have authorization to speak about it publicly.
Instead, the finance officials will seek to smooth the way toward any agreements before a meeting of the heads of state of the G7 countries in June in nearby Kananaskis, Canada.
Bessent may be able to bring a more conciliatory tone to the meetings, Prasad said, as he is often seen as a relatively moderating influence on tariffs in the Trump White House.
And there will likely be some areas of agreement, particularly around the Trump administration’s goal to address what it calls “global imbalances” in world trade, a reference to the United States’ large annual trade deficits, which reflects that it imports more than it exports. The White House sees China as the key driver of such imbalances. China has a large trade surplus.
“Intentional policy choices by other countries have hollowed out America’s manufacturing sector and undermined our critical supply chains, putting our national and economic security at risk,” Bessent said in a speech last month during the IMF and World Bank meetings.
The status of the U.S. dollar may also come up, at least in informal conversations. The dollar dropped in value unexpectedly last month after Trump unveiled his widespread tariffs, while the interest rate on Treasury bonds rose, a sign international investors may have been dumping American assets as confidence in the country’s governance and economy eroded.
“In the hallways, they’re going to talk about nothing but tariffs and the dollar,” said Steven Kamin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former senior economist at the Federal Reserve.
At last year’s meeting of G7 finance officials in Stresa, Italy, they agreed on a joint statement that said the members have a “strong commitment to a free, fair, and rules-based” trading system. It’s not yet clear whether they will be able to agree on such a statement this year.
Another question hanging over the meetings will be whether the G7 can come to agreement on a new round of sanctions on Russia. The European Union and U.K. announced sanctions on Russian oil Tuesday, targeting Russia’s “shadow fleet” of unregistered oil tankers that are shipping its oil and allowing it to fund its war with Ukraine.
Proposals to lower a price cap on Russian oil, set as part of earlier rounds of international sanctions, down from its current level of $60 may also be discussed in meetings Wednesday.
Yet the Trump administration, while it has called for greater sanctions on Russian oil, hasn’t yet signed on to the new restrictions. Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, and said the two countries would soon begin ceasefire talks, though no details were available.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko will also attend the G7 meetings this week, though Ukraine is not a member.
Daleep Singh, chief global economist at PGIM Fixed Income and a former deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration, said the issue of Russian oil sanctions will be a key test of what unity remains in the G7.
“If you’re looking for something to engender a just and lasting peace, oil sanctions are the place to look,” he said.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
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Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
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LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
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