CUSMA's First Mandatory Joint Review Kicks Off in Ottawa

On July 1, Canada, the United States, and Mexico held the first-ever mandatory joint review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. Minister Dominic LeBlanc met with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Mexico's Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard to undertake the review, as required under Article 34.7 of the agreement. No extension was agreed to on the day itself, but CUSMA does not expire as a result. Instead, the countries move into a pattern of annual joint reviews until the agreement's scheduled 2036 expiry, unless an extension is reached sooner.

Tariff rates and trade terms stay unchanged for now, but the ongoing uncertainty continues to weigh on business investment and planning. Expect continued caution from clients with cross-border supply chains through the rest of the year.

Study: Canadians Are Far More Cautious Than Global Peers on AI-Powered Shopping

Accenture's 2026 Consumer Pulse Research, which surveyed more than 25,000 consumers across 16 countries, found that Canadians are notably slower to embrace AI-powered commerce than the global average. Only 60 percent of Canadians are open to an AI agent completing commerce tasks on their behalf, such as negotiating deals or renewing subscriptions, compared to 74 percent globally. Just 21 percent would let an agent make a final purchasing decision, versus 32 percent globally.

As agentic checkout tools roll out across platforms, Canadian brands may need heavier investment in transparency and control features to reach the same adoption levels seen elsewhere. Trust, not capability, is the bottleneck here.

Hostinger Launches Platform That Turns a Product Photo Into a Checkout Link

Hostinger introduced Hostinger Ecommerce, a platform built for small sellers and creators that turns a single product photo into a working checkout link in minutes, with no website required. The AI-powered feature, called Quick Links, generates a full product page complete with description and suggested pricing, then lets sellers attach a payment method and share the link anywhere their customers already are. The platform is designed to structure merchant data for future AI-driven shopping tools as companies including OpenAI, Google, Visa, and Mastercard build agentic buying capabilities.

This lowers the technical barrier for small Canadian sellers to get discoverable across fragmented commerce surfaces, from social to messaging to AI-driven discovery, without needing a full storefront build.

Google Rewrites Its Ads Terms of Service for the AI Era

Google's updated Google Ads Terms of Service took effect July 1, replacing the terms that expired June 30. The new terms clarify how advertiser inputs, including URLs and account data, can be used across AI-powered features like AI Max and automated campaign setup. They also reinforce that advertisers remain responsible for reviewing and approving all automatically generated campaign assets.

Every business running Google Ads is now bound by these terms, whether they have read them or not. With AI-generated assets scaling fast, a quarterly review cadence is no longer enough. Agencies should build a tighter, more frequent review process into client accounts now.