Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the broader economy.
The tariff war with Canada is hitting closer to home than most Americans expected. Canadian retaliatory measures are threatening the supply chain for toilet paper, much of which depends on Canadian pulp and timber. It's a consumer staple story with real shelf implications, and it echoes the pandemic-era shortages that rattled households just a few years back.
Shifting to corporate strategy, Shopify's chief operating officer Jess Hertz is reshaping how the company thinks about talent in the age of artificial intelligence. She's coined the term X-shaped employee, someone with multiple deep areas of expertise rather than a single specialty. Shopify has already made AI usage mandatory and plans to tie it directly to performance evaluations, signaling a broader shift in how tech firms define value in their workforce.
And in energy markets, Australian producer Woodside Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mexico's state-owned PEMEX to explore deepwater hydrocarbon opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a notable pairing of a Pacific-based major with a cash-strapped national oil company, and it suggests deepwater exploration appetite remains strong despite the broader energy transition noise.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
