British steelmakers face a nervous wait to discover if they will be hit by US tariffs, after the UK government said it was attempting to complete a deal to protect the industry from Donald Trump’s trade war.

The US has set a 50% tariff on foreign steel and aluminium imports. While the UK has brokered a reduced rate of 25% and is trying to bring it down to zero, a deal has not yet been completed.

On Monday, Downing Street refused to confirm it was confident it could eliminate US tariffs on UK steel before Trump’s deadline on 9 July.

A spokesperson for No 10 said: “Our work with the US continues to get this deal implemented as soon as possible.

“That will remove the 25% tariff on UK steel and aluminium, making us the only country in the world to have tariffs removed on these products.

“The US agreed to remove tariffs on these products as part of our agreement on 8 May. It reiterated that again at the G7 last month. The discussions continue, and will continue to do so.”

The Trump administration has said it will send letters to trading partners without a deal by 9 July. On Monday, Trump caused some confusion over whether tariffs would be implemented by the 9 July deadline, before his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said tariff rates would take effect on 1 August.

When asked again whether ministers were confident British producers will not be hit by the original 50% tariff, the Downing Street spokesperson said that “discussions continue”.

“We have very close engagement with the US, and the US has been clear that it wants to keep talking to us to get the best deal for businesses and consumers on both sides,” they said.

Starmer and Trump signed off a UK-US trade deal at the G7 summit in Canada last month. Under the agreement, the UK aerospace sector will face no tariffs at all from the US, while the car industry will have 10% tariffs, down from 25%.

The US executive order implementing the deal highlighted the British steel industry, noting the UK “has committed to working to meet American requirements on the security of the supply chains of steel and aluminium products … and on the nature of ownership of relevant production facilities”.

It likely reflects worries in the US about Jingye Group, which owns British Steel despite the fact that the British government took control of the company in April to stop the closure of its Scunthorpe plant. The Trump administration has sought assurances that China’s Jingye does not use British Steel as a route to circumvent US tariffs.

France’s Capgemini has agreed to buy technology outsourcing firm WNS for $3.3 billion in cash to expand the range of AI tools it offers for companies, the IT services group said on Monday.

The deal equips Capgemini to create a consulting business service focused on helping companies improve their processes and cost efficiency with the use of artificial intelligence, namely generative AI and agentic AI, which it expects to attract significant investments.

The purchase price translating to $76.50 per WNS share represents a 17% premium compared to their last closing price on July 3 and does not include WNS’s financial debt, Capgemini said.

Its interest in India-based WNS, whose services include business process outsourcing and data analytics, was first reported by Reuters in April.

“WNS brings … its high growth, margin accretive and resilient Digital Business Process Services … while further increasing our exposure to the US market,” Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat said in a press statement.

WNS’s customers include large organizations such as Coca-Cola, T-Mobile and United Airlines.

On a conference call with media and analysts, Ezzat said the acquisition would immediately create cross-selling opportunities between the two companies, mainly in the U.S. and Britain.

Capgemini expects the deal to be closed by the end of 2025 and be immediately accretive to its revenue and operating margin.

However, its shares fell around 5% following the news, the biggest losers on Europe’s benchmark STOXX 600 index as of 1024 GMT, with Morgan Stanley analysts saying the deal would limit its balance sheet flexibility while not having a major impact on financials.

Some investors are also concerned that Gen AI could impact the typically staff-intensive business process outsourcing (BPO) market, which could bite into Capgemini’s revenues and expose it to new competition, the analysts said in a research note.

“We expect investors to be able to see the opportunity that could come from disrupting BPO with Gen AI but think some evidence will be needed to convince the market WNS is the right vehicle,” they added.

Good morning. This week’s AI for Good Summit in Geneva is showing how the technology’s innovations are also pushing global alliances into unfamiliar territory. That’s in focus today – along with this year’s Calgary Stampede and a gold rush that’s obscuring an inconvenient truth about Canada’s exports.

Up first

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On our radar

Tomorrow: Ahead of the July 9 deadline set by Trump for countries to strike trade deals with the U.S., the president said the White House would begin sending letters over the weekend to countries in batches of 10 to notify them of the tariff rates they can expect.

This week: The Calgary Stampede, which opened on Friday and runs through July 13, is known for many things: rodeo, pancakes and denim as far as the eye can see. But its real currency is connection. For 10 days, every bar and rooftop patio in the city is turned into a pop-up boardroom.

This year’s edition lands at an uneasy moment. Alberta’s energy sector has big wins to toast – LNG exports have begun from the West Coast, the long-delayed Trans Mountain pipeline is pumping and Ottawa is suddenly talking about Canada as an “energy superpower.” The city’s mood is buoyant. But a cautious kind of buoyancy, if there can be such a thing: Political uncertainty still looms large, from Mark Carney’s early tenure in Ottawa to the underwhelming response to Alberta’s proposed new pipeline.

On the books: Earnings and economic events are light, but Canada’s recent trade report is a reminder of how hard domestic exporters are being hit as Carney presses for a tariff-free deal with the U.S.

In focus

How global forces have shaped Canada’s priorities

The UN’s AI for Good summit this week is revealing how countries are racing to build sovereign computing infrastructure that is reliant on foreign investment.

In an attempt to capitalize on the economic promise of artificial intelligence, Western governments are investing in domestic data centres, drafting AI rules, and striking deals with countries that, less than a decade ago, might have faced sharper scrutiny.

By turning to investors such as Saudi Arabia, critics warn that attempts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants risk entrenching new forms of dependence on states with close ties to China and deeply contested human rights records.

Both Canada and the U.S. have set aside recent ruptures over human rights in favour of strategic and economic interests.

Canada’s 2018 standoff – sparked by then–foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland’s criticism of Saudi Arabia’s arrest of women’s rights activists – formally ended in 2023 when the two governments restored ties on the basis of “mutual respect and common interests.”

For the U.S., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightened the need for oil market stability and stronger regional alliances, prompting Washington to re-engage with Riyadh despite earlier condemnations of the kingdom’s role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (During his first presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia “pay the price” and called the country a “pariah” with “very little social redeeming value.”)

Human-rights advocates have remained critical of the UN for inviting Saudi officials to the AI summit – and concern remains over Riyadh’s expanding ties with China, which include co-operation on data centres, chip development and surveillance technologies that could complicate Western efforts to build secure, independent AI systems.

In May, President Donald Trump signed a US$600-billion strategic agreement with Saudi Arabia, including more than US$40-billion earmarked for artificial intelligence and related infrastructure.

Canada, too, is open to discussions with Saudi Arabia to support domestic data-centre expansion. In a recent interview with The Globe’s Joe Castaldo and Pippa Norman, federal AI minister Evan Solomon said Ottawa is in search of “pockets of capital” to help build sovereign capacity, while insisting any agreements would be pursued with “eyes wide open” and preserve Canadian oversight.

“Diplomatic ties and investment does not mean you agree with governments,” he said. “We can’t look at AI as a walled-off garden. Like, ‘Oh, we cannot ever take money from X or Y.’”

Ottawa’s openness was underscored last week when Castaldo reported that U.S. data-centre firm CoreWeave Inc. will soon operate a site in Cambridge, Ont., with Canadian AI startup Cohere Inc. – backed by $240-million from a federal fund – as a customer.

British-Canadian AI guru Geoffrey Hinton, who is presenting tomorrow, told The Globe he planned on telling Solomon that Canada needs to regulate AI when the two met last week. But he acknowledged a trade-off.

“The big problem is that unless you can get international agreements, countries that don’t regulate will have an advantage over countries that do. That’s the same for exploiting natural resources.”

It’s just one issue for Canada to tackle as it navigates the contradictions of a sovereignty strategy built on foreign capital, no clear regulatory framework and a bit of moral flexibility.

Charted

What the golden shine is hiding

Canada’s trade deficit with the world narrowed in May from a record high the previous month.

But tariffs continued to weigh on exports to the United States – and the rise in prices for gold skewed the picture.

Canada’s trade deficit with the world – in very technical terms according to The Globe’s Jason Kirby, “a measure of how much more stuff we buy from other countries than sell to them” – fell to $5.9-billion in May from a record high of $7.6-billion in April.

But after stripping out imports and exports of the gold category, Kirby observes, Canada’s trade deficit widened to $10.3-billion.

Bookmarked

On our reading list

Bednar: If a toaster burns you, you can sue. But if Big Tech burns you, you’re out of luck.

Keller: Trump has yet to kill the golden goose that is the U.S. economy. But he’s working on it.

Hirsch: To increase defence spending, Canada must cut deeper, tax harder and borrow more – all at once.

Morning update

Stock markets were mixed amid confusion as U.S. officials flagged a delay on tariffs but failed to provide specifics on the changes. Wall Street futures were in negative territory while TSX futures pointed higher.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.34 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged higher 0.13 per cent, Germany’s DAX gained 0.77 per cent and France’s CAC 40 rose 0.25 per cent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.56 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.12 per cent.

The Canadian dollar traded at 73.19 U.S. cents.