 Welcome to Mind Your Business ! Consider this your weekly guide to understanding what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. By Peter Armstrong
|  | Time to enjoy some summer views. (Alex Stemmer/Shutterstock) | | | This will be my last edition of the summer. I'll be around and will pop up on your radios and TVs — and if things go really sideways, I may do an emergency summer issue of the newsletter.
I'll be working out of our office in Washington for a stretch. I will drop in on Youghall Beach in New Brunswick. I'll sit on my friends' dock on a lake outside Haliburton, Ont., and soak up this glorious summer. I hope you plan to do the same.
But before I get out the door, I wanted to try to figure out where things stand.
We'll get the latest housing numbers and the latest inflation data this week. They will help fill in some blank spots in the broader picture of the Canadian economy.
There are a lot of blank spots right now.
U.S. President Donald Trump's latest threats don't dramatically change the landscape, but serve as an important reminder that things can change mighty quick.
Aug. 1 is now the date to watch (and as fate would have it, I'll be reporting out of our Washington bureau that week).
The trade war is hitting specific sectors hard. Last week's jobs numbers showed that.
Overall, the economy is still holding up better than many had expected. | | |  | | | | | The rest of the summer will test that resilience.
GDP is expected to continue to slide into negative territory. The unemployment rate in regions dependent on trade and shipping will continue to suffer.
Just a few years ago, there wasn't a better time to look for a new job (or to switch jobs). Now, those prospects are drying up.
One thing to keep a close eye on over the next couple of months will be the rate of inflation.
It's well down from the peak we saw after the pandemic. But tariffs and the trade war will have a weird and sometimes contradictory impact on prices.
On the one hand, tariffs are inflationary, in that they increase the cost of an item. But in the longer term, they drive down demand, which often pushes down prices.
We were hyper-focused on rent and mortgage costs for much of the last few years, because they were among the primary drivers of inflation.
Now, rents in most major markets are falling. Interest rates are back to more manageable levels, so mortgage-interest costs have settled as well. Though we still have a huge number of mortgage-holders who benefitted from the emergency low levels we saw in 2022. Those homeowners will renew this year at much higher rates.
Here's where the CPI numbers look to be heading going into this week's release. |  | | | Economists expect to see those numbers rise a bit this week. As you can see, we are still below the Bank of Canada's inflation target of two per cent, so there's some room to tick up a bit without causing too much concern.
What do you think will happen? Email me at peterarmstrong@cbc.ca
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forwarded to you. | | |  | | We will get the latest inflation numbers this week. Economists think price growth cooled again in June. Those numbers will be released on Tuesday. | | | | | | The Canadian Real Estate Association will release national home sales numbers on Tuesday. Both prices and sales volumes have been falling steadily since peaking in January 2022. | | | | | | Statistics Canada will release the latest manufacturing sales and orders figures on Tuesday. These numbers will look back at May, as the tariffs and trade war were having the biggest impact. | | | | | Three things to read, watch and listen to this week | | |  | For the sixth summer in a row, NPR's Planet Money will release a series of podcasts they call Summer School. (NPR) | | | 1. Let's spend the summer at school! | | | One of my favourite traditions this time of year is Planet Money Summer School from NPR.
This will be my fifth summer following along (they've been running it for six years now).
The podcast is well-established as the standard for economics reporting. The show breaks down arcane financial topics and makes things accessible for people trying to wrap their heads around how your money fits into the bigger picture.
Every year, the show puts together a series of episodes tackling the big issues.
Last year, they tried to answer the question, "What is money?"
Now, the show has moved on to something particularly timely.
"This summer, we will tackle the biggest economic player of them all: the government," said host Robert Smith.
Now, I can hear a lot of you saying, "I don't care about the government" and "they only make things worse anyway."
But the show delves deep. They speak with street vendors in countries where there are no rules (and thus no protections) and others where there are too many rules and you can't get anything done.
"We will hear stories about how politicians sometimes make all of us richer and yeah, sometimes screw it all up," said Smith. "And we'll talk about the big economic question: what is the right amount of government in our lives?"
Final exam at the end of the season and a souvenir diploma. This year, the show is promising a live, in-person graduation ceremony for those who complete Summer School.
I promise, it's really fun and I have learned a ton over the years. So join me and we can chat about what we learned in the fall.
Check out Planet Money Summer School from NPR here. | | | 2. What now for Canadian oil? | | | I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the Canadian energy sector. On the one hand, the government has been giving the impression it's going to approve some new projects.
Last week, in an interview with the Calgary Herald, Prime Minister Mark Carney said this:
"I would think, given the scale of the economic opportunity, the resources we have, the expertise we have, that it is highly, highly likely that we will have an oil pipeline that is a proposal for one of these projects of national interest," Carney told the Herald.
On the other hand, two new major energy projects are now up and running. The first shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) left B.C. earlier this month.
Meantime, the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is now pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to the West Coast and new markets. And with that, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into the federal coffers.
So, what's next?
The ARC Energy Ideas podcast did an amazing interview with Mark Maki, chief executive officer of Trans Mountain Corporation.
Maki says the government owns the pipeline. It has also offered TMX a line of credit. Between the two, over the first three months of the year, TMX has paid the Canadian government $311 million.
He expects that over the year, the total will reach $1.25 billion.
"This year, we’re still finishing up some of the construction work on the expansion. And so, that’s taking some of the money that we’re generating, and that will disappear in 2026 largely. And so, that gives us more room to pay more dividend upstairs to the owner. So it should go up [next year]," he said.
They also talked about how the act of getting some Canadian oil to tidewaters has pushed up the price of all Canadian oil.
"In the past, buyers knew we had very few options for our product, and therefore, they would offer us low prices. Now, with the Trans Mountain, we have places to put our barrels. And now, they have to pay us a more fair price," said co-host Jackie Forrest.
Her back-of-the-envelope calculations found that every $1 rise in the price of a barrel of oil adds about $2 billion in annual revenue to the oil and gas industry.
Maki says the pipeline adds a clear uptick to Canadian GDP (at a time when we desperately need it).
So, as these two new energy projects build on that momentum, you can't help but wonder what comes next.
Maki has some ideas, but his broad sense of where things stand is what really stood out to me.
"I’m very optimistic about where the prime minister is taking the country. And I think he very much understands the importance of the energy industry to Canada. I’m as optimistic as I’ve been in a long time about what’s to come," he said.
The whole episode is a great listen.
Listen to Mark Maki on the ARC Energy Ideas podcast here. | | | 3. New podcast alert! | | | One of my favourite economics reporters is launching a new podcast... and it looks like it's right up my alley.
Stacey Vanek Smith was a reporter for NPR's Planet Money and went on to become a founder of the Planet Money offshoot The Indicator.
Now she's over at Bloomberg, where she's hosting a new show called Everybody's Business.
Her co-host as an equally impressive resume.
Max Chafkin wrote The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. He's been a must-read at Bloomberg's Business Week for ages.
Everybody's Business is all about exploring and figuring out how the economy intersects with our everyday lives. (It also feels like a pretty good way to describe what I'm trying to do with this newsletter.)
The trade wars and tariffs and chaos in global trade only add to the timeliness of the show.
But Vanek Smith says Everybody's Business is about much more than that.
"Business is about a lot more than tariffs. It is what to invest in, what to buy, when to ask for a raise and how the technology around us is changing our lives," she said in the show's trailer.
So far, the podcast has dropped episodes on copper tariffs, immigration enforcement raids and their impact on the U.S. economy and a breakdown of Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill.
I love how Smith and Chafkin talk about the economy and I think you will, too.
Check out Everybody's Business here. | | | How the economy looks beyond Bay Street | | | Jobs update | | | Canada's jobs market staged something of a comeback last month.
Last week, I was writing about an RBC report that wondered if Canadian economic data had hit bottom in April and May.
Well, the numbers released last Friday seem to back that theory up.
Canadian employers added jobs for the first time this year. In fact, they added 83,000 jobs in June.
The unemployment rate fell to 6.9 per cent. | | |  | Now, it's worth pointing out, the benefit of the Labour Force Survey is that we get it quickly. The drawback is that it is often prone to revisions.
So, there are legitimate questions about whether last month's jump was a turning of the corner or a statistical anomaly.
"This is a very solid report, especially compared to expectations for material weakness. Given the uncertainty hanging over the Canadian economy, many (including us) will be skeptical of this report," wrote Benjamin Reitzes, managing director at BMO Economics.
Still, he says it's one more data point that seems to suggest a certain resiliency in the Canadian economy.
And right now, Canada needs all the resiliency it can find.
What do you think?
I always appreciate your feedback. That's it for me. I'll pop up on your radios and TVs and I'll write some articles here and there. But if all goes to plan, the next edition of the newsletter will land in your inbox on September 8.
Have a wonderful summer. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | That's it for this week | | | Drop me a line anytime.
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