Mark Carney
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will work with the United States and Mexico to “modernize” the trilateral trade deal known as CUSMA, but won’t accept a bad deal from U.S. President Donald Trump. “We could sign a bad deal this afternoon. We could have signed a bad deal a year ago. We’re not going to sign a bad deal, so it has to be a real deal,” he said Thursday. He was asked about U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra’s comment that officials are “not anywhere close” to a deal. “What I have seen with the president is that you’re not close to making a deal, and then you make a deal,” the prime minster said. “It doesn’t mean the deals are good deals, but it means being prepared, having done the work, knowing what you want,” he added.
Canadian officials will meet their Mexican and American counterparts on July 1 for the first tri-lateral meeting to review the Canada-U.S.-Mexico (CUSMA) agreement, a spokesperson for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc confirmed. …LeBlanc’s office tells CTV News the meeting is scheduled to be virtual for now, but that things could evolve. Minister LeBlanc and Chief Trade Negotiator Janice Charette met with the United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France last week. …July 1 is the deadline for all three parties involved in the trade pact to decide whether to renew the deal for another 16 years, withdraw from the agreement altogether, or start an annual rolling review process that could last years.
A sprawling legislative package aimed at lowering the cost of housing and spurring more home construction won bipartisan approval from Congress this week, but it’s hit a major roadblock in becoming law: President Trump. The White House supported the 
The European Union has formally removed its remaining tariffs on American wood-based industrial products after the European Parliament approved legislation implementing the long-awaited 
A closely watched inflation report is set to reveal how much price growth picked up in May — and whether many American consumers remain mired in an affordability crunch. Wall Street forecasters expected the pace of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) to have quickened compared with April data amid higher oil prices and stronger consumer spending. The monthly PCE report is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge. New Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has said the central bank is committed to bringing inflation back to its 2% target — a level it has failed to reach for the past five years. Wall Street now anticipates the Fed will raise its key interest rate at least once by year’s end in a bid to counteract the stronger price growth.
China remains one of the world’s major importers of softwood logs and lumber, but its 
ATLANTA — At 
The U.S. Forest Service published the results of a six-city study delving into consumers’ participation in urban wood systems and their interest in urban wood products. According to the Forest Service, for the past 20 years, approximately twice as many trees were removed annually from urban areas in the United States as has been harvested annually from the U.S. National Forest System. Yet, most of this urban wood is treated as waste instead of as a valuable resource to generate economic growth and sustainable cities. The waste and underutilization of this neighborhood resource has been countered by a growing movement to divert urban wood from the waste stream and utilize this significant resource in an array of wood products, from high-end furniture to construction grade lumber to wood chips. Using removed wood for valuable products both avoids substantial waste disposal fees and can be a foundation of profitable businesses and markets. 
A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel the management plans governing hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land. At stake are thousands of leases and permits covering billions of dollars of economic activity — including mining, drilling, grazing, logging, ski resorts, wind and solar projects, outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. If successful, the lawsuit could throw the management of huge swaths of the West into chaos. Some experts fear the new legal uncertainty around federal agencies’ management authority could unleash a tsunami of lawsuits targeting everything from mining to the conservation of wildlife habitat. “When you throw that whole system into chaos, it’s a problem whether you’re the oil and gas industry or the timber industry,” said Susan Jane Brown, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and serves as principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.
Forest fires now burn ten times more acreage annually than in 1985, while wildfire severity has gotten even worse. In California, 30 times more acreage burned from high-severity, forest-killing fires, according to new UCLA research. In the 1980s and 1990s, California’s forest fires burned mostly at low or moderate severity, generally benefiting ecosystems. But as fires have grown in size, severe fires causing widespread tree death have overtaken beneficial fire as the most common fire type in California’s forests. Changes are tied to the increasingly warm and arid environment. These aridity-driven changes were also stronger in more densely forested areas, said senior author Park Williams. …The two main causes for the increase in fire severity are fuel density [and] environmental dryness. …The researcher’s conclusions show that the state can make some headway in protecting California’s forests with changes in forest management, such as doing more manual clearing of underbrush and conducting more prescribed burns.
PHOENIX — New technology is coming to Arizona to predict flooding and prevent wildfires. Moisture sensors are going in the ground to gauge just how dry the land is. Soil that is too dry cannot absorb water, which creates a higher risk for flooding and wildfires. This advancement should help predict wildfires and flooding across Arizona. Salt River Project (SRP) officials say plant moisture, in both dead and alive plants, is one of the most important indicators of wildfire danger. However, taking field samples by hand is tough, so this new technology will do the heavy lifting. SRP crews in the Tonto National Forest are planting tiny pieces of technology in the ground to provide data. …These moisture measurements should provide important clues, like the risk of a wildfire at a given location, how likely it is to spread, how big it might get, and predicting floods.
