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Calgary Herald
The outlook for Canada's economy remains uncertain, especially with respect to the direction trade policy south of the border appears to be taking.
That was among the key messages Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz offered during an interview Tuesday afternoon.
"We don't know what sort of alterations to the trade architecture might be in store — and how quickly it might happen," said Poloz, who was the featured speaker at a lecture hosted by the University of Alberta's School of Business.
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Edmonton Journal
Canadians will have to work hard to ensure the country doesn't become a target of American protectionism, former prime minister Brian Mulroney says.
"We have to be vigilant in safeguarding that market," Mulroney said in a speech Thursday at Edmonton’s FarmTech 2017, Canada’s largest crop production and farm management conference.
"Americans are frustrated by the slow recovery of their economy. Open trade agreements have become an easy whipping boy...Canada will have to work hard to maintain the access we have."
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Bloomberg
President Donald Trump seems determined to start a fight with China over trade. He's appointed notable China skeptics to his economic team, badgered companies like Apple Inc. to stop making products on the mainland, and threatened tariffs of 45 percent on Chinese goods.
He hopes to get companies to move their manufacturing operations back home and create jobs in American factories. It won't work. In fact, it's likely to hurt the very voters he's promised to protect.
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Public.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is hosting Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the United States Chamber of Commerce for a brief but event-filled visit to Canada. Mr. Donohue and Canadian Chamber President Perrin Beattyhave met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeauand other senior officials to discuss the vital business ties between our two countries.
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By Katherine Radin
 When I wrote about the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in November of 2015, I concluded by asking where we would be in a year. At the time, the Canadian political landscape had seen the election of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to replace Conservative leader Stephen Harper as the prime minister of Canada. A year later, the political landscape has changed once again, this time with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America.
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Progressive Railroading
Elaine Chao was confirmed and sworn as the 18th secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Chao has a lengthy career in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She served as the 24th U.S. secretary of labor from 2001 to 2009 in the George W. Bush administration, and was deputy transportation secretary in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Several transportation associations provided written statements on Chao's appointment.
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Edmonton Sun
U.S. President Donald Trump has NAFTA in his sights.
His daily decrees have friends and foes in an uncertain mindset. Yet we cannot risk being anything but active and agile in making Canada's case for continued robust free trade between our three nations.
Mexico enjoys a trade surplus through NAFTA and exports significantly more goods and services to the U.S. than it receives. That must change says Trump.
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The Globe and Mail
The head of the biggest business lobby in the United States is warning against tearing up NAFTA, saying this would wreak havoc on the North American economy.
And U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief executive Tom Donohue vows he will take steps to defend the three-country trade deal in the Trump era.
"Withdrawing from NAFTA would be devastating for the workers, businesses, and economies of our countries," Donohue told a Canadian business audience in Ottawa.
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Ottawa Business Journal
Hudson's Bay. Co. appears to be continuing its aggressive international growth with reports it's eyeing another American retailer, Macy's Inc.
HBC declined to comment after a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said the two retail giants were in preliminary talks for a takeover.
"We do not comment on rumour or speculation," HBC spokeswoman Tiffany Bourre wrote in an email. A Macy's spokesperson echoed the response.
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RailwayAge
Expediency over principle describes a unanimous vote Jan. 27 by the three Surface Transportation Board (STB) members—Acting Chairman Ann Begeman, a Republican, and Democrats Dan Elliott and Deb Miller.
This is peripherally about a vote on an unremarkable administrative order delaying for 60 days a rulemaking affecting railroad reporting of certain service performance metrics.
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Progressive Railroading
The National Industrial Transportation League (NITL) elected Mary Pileggi chairman during the shipper association's annual business meeting.
Pileggi is sourcing and logistics manager of the fluoroproducts business at Chemours Co., an independent, publicly held company that formed in 2015 from the separation of DuPont's performance chemicals businesses. She has more than 30 years of experience in logistics and previously worked for DuPont and for Conrail, according to an NITL press release.
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RailwayAge
U.S. and Canadian freight rail traffic saw significant gains for the week ended Feb. 4, 2017, and for 2017's first five weeks, the Association of American Railroads reported. Mexican traffic, in contrast, did just the opposite, nose-diving as much as 21 percent.
U.S. rail traffic for the week ending Feb. 4, 2017 increased to 541,474 carloads and intermodal units, up 7.3 percent compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending Feb. 4 were 269,994 carloads, up 11.7 percent compared with the same week in 2016, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 271,480 containers and trailers, up 3.3 percent compared to 2016.
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Progressive Railroading
U.S. railroads' combined carload and intermodal traffic ticked up 0.5 percent to 2,017,641 units last month compared with January 2016, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).
U.S. carload traffic for the month totaled 996,573 units, up 2.9 percent compared with last year. Intermodal traffic declined 1.8 percent to 1,021,068 containers and trailers for the month.
In January, nine of the 20 carload commodity categories tracked by AAR on a monthly basis posted gains compared with January 2016.
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RT&S
Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have completed their Canada-CP Grizzly Bear Research Initiative and will now institute measures aimed at reducing railway related risks to grizzly bears.
Over the past decade, there have been 10 confirmed rail-caused grizzly mortalities in Banff and Yoho national parks. While population trend studies show that grizzly bear populations remain steady in the mountain parks, the bears are part of an interconnected population that have the lowest recorded reproductive rates in North America.
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RailwayAge
Freight car demand weakened in 2016 as lackluster economic and industrial activities as well as sluggish economies abroad dampened commodity flows and intermodal movements, according to the most recent market analysis conducted by Economic Planning Associates.
"After two consecutive years of strong growth, 2016 annual deliveries amounted to 62,433 cars and intermodal platforms, a 24.1 percent drop from the 82,296 units that were assembled in 2015," noted EPA principle Peter Toja.
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Bloomberg
There's no doubt that U.S. roads, airports and bridges are in great need of repair. It's equally clear that sourcing raw materials requires open markets. The trouble is that rebuilding U.S. infrastructure and anti-trade policies don't go together.
Among President Donald Trump's many loosely packaged proposals are the $1 trillion in U.S. infrastructure spending and the simultaneous threat to impose trade measures on the nations from which we source our commodities.
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International Transport Forum
Current and foreseeable policies to mitigate carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from global transport activity will not suffice to achieve the international community's climate ambitions, a new study published by the International Transport Forum finds.
Continued strong growth in demand for mobility means that even in the most optimistic scenario, transport CO2 emissions in 2050 will still be at 2015 levels of around 7.5 giga-tonnes, according to projections published in the ITF Transport Outlook 2017.
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Air Cargo Week
Qatar Airways has extended its network with the first Doha — Auckland service, covering a distance of 14,535 kilometres in 17 hours 30 minutes — now the world's longest flight.
The daily Boeing 777 flight offers 116 tonnes of belly-hold capacity every week to support growing imports of raw, industrial and consumer materials into New Zealand.
Qatar Airways Cargo offers its QR Fresh temperature-controlled handling and storage product at its Hamad International Airport cargo terminal to deliver perishable products such as dairy produce, meat and fruits from Auckland into the Middle East and on to major European cities.
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By Matt Falcus
 Online retail giant Amazon began flying its own packages last year when it started leasing cargo planes and flying them under the Prime Air brand. Now, the company has announced plans to open its largest worldwide air hub — investing $1.49 billion in a new home for its operations at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport. This major change in the way Amazon deals with its deliveries came about last year when it sought to reduce reliance on courier companies such as FedEx and UPS.
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Air Cargo Week
Halifax Stanfield International Airport saw cargo growth of 4.1 per cent in 2016 compared to 2015.
The Canadian gateway handled 33,329 tonnes and says much of that freight was Nova Scotian lobster.
It estimates $187 million (Canadian dollars) of seafood and lobster exports were shipped from Halifax Stanfield in 2016 up approximately $40 million from 2015.
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Air Cargo Week
Freight volumes outperformed forecasts in 2016 with 3.8 per cent growth helped by strong recovery in the second half of the year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.
Global airfreight volumes had a weak start to the year but picked up in the second half with a strong peak season, increased shipments of silicon materials and a turnaround in new export orders.
Freight tonne kilometres surged 9.8 per cent in December, which IATA says may have been because of the early timing of Lunar New Year.
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The Weather Network
Ice cover on the Great Lakes is at a near-record low, thanks to the January thaw, but watch out for what happens to the lakes!
Back in November, the Great Lakes were extremely warm.
This was the warmest the lakes had been in 16 years, and it has contributed to some of the lowest lake ice coverage on record for this winter season.
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Lloyd's Loading List
The International Transport Forum, an intergovernmental organisation with 57 member countries and affiliated to the OECD, has painted a bleak picture of the current state of international freight while the outlook for the sector is uncertain.
In its "Transport Outlook 2017" report, the ITF highlights that world trade growth "remains weak and the volume of international trade-related freight movement is growing at a significantly slower pace than prior to 2008."
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The Load Star
Australia-based China Sea Rates has launched the world's first plug-and-play, door-to-door ocean freight booking system for e-commerce websites, potentially bypassing a host of middlemen, including freight forwarders.
Aimed at US consumers buying Chinese products, the platform can be installed on any e-commerce or shipping company website to enable a "supplier-to-consumer" supply chain for large and bulky items normally restricted to retail purchases.
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Port Technology
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority added new criteria to its industry-leading incentive program for marine vessels operating in the Port of Vancouver, aimed at addressing concerns about underwater vessel noise affecting at-risk marine life and making Canada the first country in the world to have a marine noise reduction incentive.
The criteria has been added to the existing EcoAction program to include harbour due rate discounts for quieter ships and includes three quiet-vessel ship classifications and three propeller technologies shown to reduce underwater noise.
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