Four stories that matter lately:
1/ Trade negotiations between the US and Canada collapsed on August 21, triggering 50% US tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian imports under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, unused since 1949. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer posted on X saying Canada “declined to finalize the deal,” and there are no new planned talks. Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney said the changes were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
Without waiting around, on August 25, Canada announced new tariffs on US goods: tariffs of 15% to 50% on more than 700 U.S. products starting September 8. This is a move designed to reciprocate American tariffs on an equivalent dollar basis, according to Canadian officials.
The US is launching yet another trade mini-war at the exact moment 1) Total federal debt exceeded $40 trillion in August 2026 while 2) interest expense during the first 10 months of fiscal 2026 reached about $1.17 trillion - 15% higher than a year earlier (Interest costs have become the federal budget’s second-largest line item, behind Social Security). The statutory debt limit is currently $41.1 trillion, and analysts expect it could be reached sometime between late winter 2025 and mid-summer 2027. These developments suggest that the US’s fiscal flexibility is narrowing, potentially making it more difficult to cushion the economic effects of future trade or geopolitical shocks. We will follow this story closely in the upcoming weeks.
2/ Speaking of trade wars, we previously discussed the US Ban on Chinese Humanoid Robots. Despite hiccups, the global market for Autonomous Robots hit $47.3 billion in 2025, driven by 1) ageing populations (Japan projects an 11-million worker shortfall by 2040), 2) warehouse economics (US warehousing turnover exceeds 40% annually), and 3) new verticals like semiconductor cleanrooms where Autonomous Mobile Robot deployments grew 72.4% in 2025. For those who are in this space, our team published a deep dive into the Autonomous Robots market here.
3/ Still on trading, on August 13, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy released a report titled “The Great Transshipment Scam,” placing Vietnam in Tier 2 of a transshipment-risk framework alongside Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Türkiye. The report flags economies with high transshipment volumes and deep integration into China-linked supply chains, and estimates illicitly transshipped goods at roughly $75 billion annually, with $19–34 billion in associated tariff revenue losses.
Transshipment is quite a young term, meaning “routing goods through a third country with minimal transformation primarily to evade tariffs, quotas, or sanctions, then exporting them to the final market under the third country’s origin.” Some luxury brands like Loro Piana know this all too well, but it wasn’t called transshipment, as the purpose has nothing to do with evading tariffs, to be specific - in fact, it wasn’t called anything at all.
Anyway, we digress. Transshipment might be a very wrong thing to do, but China+1, Nearshoring or Friendshoring is not. Our team wrote about these 3 strategies here.
4/ Still on supply chain, on November 10, the suspension of China’s October 2025 rare earth export controls expires. If enforced, controls expand to 12 elements with extraterritorial licensing for any product containing as little as 0.1% Chinese-origin material. The IEA estimates $6.5 trillion in annual downstream production is at risk.
The Western response of opening new mines doesn’t see the bigger picture, either. China controls 91% of rare earth refining, 98.7% of gallium, 96% of refined graphite, and 83% of tungsten. The IEA finds non-Chinese refining projects face 20 to 150% higher CAPEX and 50% higher operating costs. Our team published an analysis of what to expect on November 10 here.
Enjoy your week. Stay sharp, and keep building.
Anh & Tri
On behalf of the Tocco team
Further Readings · Material & Manufacturing News · 08.2026
(South Africa 🇿🇦) Weirdest story out there - but it’s true: a mass sardine die-off forced South Africa’s only nuclear power plant to halve its output. After dead marine material clogged a seawater cooling intake, triggering an automatic pump shutdown. Investigators detected pilchard herpesvirus as the leading cause for the affected fish, but nuclear safety was not compromised.
(Vietnam 🇻🇳) Vietnam’s National Assembly approved a $3 billion cost increase for the Lao Cai-Hanoi-Haiphong railway, bringing the total budget to $11.1 billion for 426 km of track connecting China’s border to Vietnam’s northern industrial hubs and Haiphong port. Completion targeted by the end of 2030, partially funded through Chinese government loans.
(US 🇺🇸) New York City unveiled a $4 billion, 10-year plan to rebuild a crumbling 1.5-mile stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The section is 20 years past its design lifespan and carries 130,000 vehicles daily, more than double its intended capacity. Construction starts in 2030, with temporary bypass roads to keep 13,000 daily truck trips off local streets.
(Brazil 🇧🇷) Terranova broke ground on a $500 million hyperscale data centre campus outside São Paulo, backed by Actis. The first phase includes a 300 MW substation due online in December 2027, expandable to 1 GW. The facility uses closed-loop liquid cooling for AI and cloud workloads. Part of a broader $1.5 billion plan to build AI-ready campuses across Brazil, Mexico, and Chile.
(Vietnam 🇻🇳 / Malaysia 🇲🇾) Japanese silicon manufacturer Tokuyama is expanding polysilicon production into Vietnam and Malaysia to meet surging AI chip demand. A $60 million Ho Chi Minh City facility uses skilled manual labour to crush and clean polysilicon, avoiding machinery to minimise metal contamination. Combined with a $300 million joint venture in Malaysia with South Korea’s OCI, the expansion will boost Tokuyama’s semiconductor-grade capacity by 50% to 12,500 tonnes annually.
As the ending note, we love you Dolly.