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BigBear.ai to acquire Warren County-based AI company for $250M

SUMMARY:

  • to acquire Ask Sage for $250 million, closing late 2025 or early 2026
  • Ask Sage serves more than 100,000 users in government and defense sectors
  • Nicolas Chaillan, Ask Sage founder, to join BigBear. as chief technology officer

government tech contractor BigBear.ai announced this week that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ask Sage, a fast-growing, secure generative platform tailored for defense and national security, for $250 million.

BigBear.ai made the announcement as part of an earnings report released Monday. The company expects the to close in the late fourth quarter of this year or early in the first quarter of 2026.

Headquartered in , Ask Sage’s AI capabilities are specifically designed for defense and national security agencies, as well as other highly regulated sectors. According to BigBear.ai CEO Kevin McAleenan, Ask Sage supports more than 100,000 users on 16,000 government teams across hundreds of commercial companies.

“By integrating Ask Sage with BigBear.ai, we are creating what the market has been asking for: a secure, integrated AI platform that connects software, data and mission services in one place,” McAleenan said in a statement. “Despite delays resulting from the , we believe the potential for new business in the field of border security and defense remains strong, and we expect to see those opportunities, including accelerated spending resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill, to materialize into contracts next year.”

In the call, McAleenan stated that the acquisition of Ask Sage provides BigBear.ai with a proven, secure and model-agnostic generative AI platform, meaning the platform can work with various AI models, rather than being tied to a single vendor.

McAleenan also revealed during the earnings call that, as part of the merger, Ask Sage founder and CEO Nicolas Chaillan will join BigBear.ai as its chief technology officer.

In the role, Chaillan will focus on enhancing BigBear.ai’s broader portfolio and increasing the efficiency and velocity of its product development and innovation.

“Nick is one of the most respected voices in secure mission-grade AI, having served as the former Chief Software Officer for both the U.S. Air Force and Space Force and founded multiple companies over the past 25 years,” McAleenan said during the call. “He has proven that he can build technology the Pentagon actually uses rapidly and iteratively to support critical missions.”

A BigBear.ai spokesperson said there are about 28 employees who will join BigBear.ai from Ask Sage, bringing the BigBear.ai headcount to around 650 employees.

Headquartered in McLean, BigBear.ai is a federal contractor that provides artificial intelligence technology and services for defense, national security and critical infrastructure. The company generated $158.2 million in revenue in 2024, an increase from $155.2 million in 2023.

In its third-quarter report, the company disclosed that year-over-year revenue decreased 20% to $33.1 million, compared to $41.5 million for the third quarter of 2024, primarily due to lower volume on certain Army programs. However, this year’s third-quarter net income was $2.5 million, compared to a net loss of $15.1 million for the third quarter of 2024. The company projects it will earn revenue between $125 million and $140 million for the whole year.

Fed may soon start buying bonds to manage market liquidity, Williams says

Summary

  • President said the central bank is nearing the point where it will restart .
  • Williams stressed the move would be a technical step to manage liquidity, not a change in .
  • The Fed plans to halt runoff in December after ending quantitative tightening.
  • The balance sheet has fallen from a $9 trillion peak in 2022 to about $6.6 trillion.
  • Williams said banks should freely use the Fed’s to manage cash needs.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York President John Williams reiterated on Wednesday the time is getting closer when the U.S. central bank will have to restart bond purchases as part of a technical effort to maintain control over short-term .

Williams, in the text of a speech to be delivered to a conference at his regional Fed bank, noted that when these purchases happen they have no implications for monetary policy. He did not comment on the outlook for short-term interest rates in his prepared remarks.

Instead, the New York Fed chief tackled the implications of the central bank’s decision late last month to stop the drawdown of its balance sheet at the start of December. Williams said the Fed, by way of “inexact science,” is looking for the level of reserves it considers to be “ample,” which allows for firm control of the central bank’s interest rate targets as well as normal money market trading conditions.

“The next step in our balance sheet strategy will be to assess when the level of reserves has reached ample,” Williams said. “It will then be time to begin the process of gradual purchases of assets that will maintain an ample level of reserves as the Fed’s other liabilities grow and underlying demand for reserves increases over time.”

Williams’ comment on the Fed’s balance sheet followed a choppy period for short-term funding markets around the time of the October 28-29 policy meeting.

The Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to the 3.75%-4.00% range at that meeting to help bolster a weakening job market even as remains stubbornly above the 2% target.

The central bank also announced plans to stop shrinking the size of its balance sheet at the start of December, ending what had been called quantitative tightening, or QT, due to rising volatility in .

QT had been allowing Treasury and mortgage bonds owned by the Fed to run off and not be replaced, in a bid to remove the sea of liquidity that was added during the COVID-19 pandemic. That effort took the Fed’s balance sheet from its overall $9 trillion peak in 2022 to the current overall level of about $6.6 trillion.

USE OF STANDING REPO FACILITY ENCOURAGED IF NEEDED

In a speech last week, Williams flagged the looming need to soon commence gradual outright purchases of bonds to maintain a balance between market liquidity and a growing economy.

Williams also said in his prepared remarks on Wednesday that a new tool called the Standing Repo Facility, or SRF, which provides fast cash to eligible banks, has been working well as a source of liquidity for those who need it, and he encouraged banks to tap it without worrying that borrowing from the Fed signals a problem.

The SRF’s “effectiveness relies on market participants availing themselves of the SRF based on market conditions, free of worries about stigma or other impediments,” Williams said, adding “I fully expect that the SRF will continue to be actively used in this way.”

 

(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Paul Simao)

 

Atlanta Fed’s Raphael Bostic to retire in February

Summary

  • President , 59, will retire at the end of his term in February.
  • His exit opens a new seat on the Fed’s rate-setting committee as pushes for more control.
  • Bostic, the first Black and openly gay regional Fed president, has warned remains high.
  • The Atlanta Fed’s board will choose his replacement, subject to Fed board approval.
  • Trump has also sought to oust Fed Governor as he aims to reshape the central bank.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Raphael Bostic, president of the Bank of Atlanta, will retire at the end of his current term in February, opening up a new seat on the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee at a time that President is seeking to exert more control over the central bank.

As president of one of the Fed’s 12 regional banks, Bostic, 59, serves on the 19-member committee that meets eight times a year to decide whether to change a key short-term interest rate that influences borrowing costs throughout the economy. Only 12 of the 19 participants vote on rates at each meeting. The regional Fed presidents rotate as voters, and the Atlanta Fed’s president will next vote in 2027.

Bostic’s replacement will be selected by the Atlanta Fed’s board of directors, which are made up of local business and community leaders, not the . The terms of all the regional Fed presidents end in 2026.

Bostic is the first Black and openly gay president of a regional Fed bank in the Fed’s 112-year history. He has recently expressed concerns that inflation is still too high for the Fed to cut its key rate, and in recent months suggested he supported just one rate cut this year, while the Fed has cut twice.

The Fed’s Washington, D.C.-based board of governors will vote on whether to approve Bostic’s replacement. Trump has sought to gain more control over the Fed’s board, which would potentially give the administration more sway over the approval of the regional Fed presidents. Three of the current seven members of the board were appointed by Trump.

Trump has also sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, which would have given him a fourth seat on the board. But Cook has sued to keep her seat and the Supreme Court has allowed her to stay in the job while the issue is fought out in court.

The regional Fed banks were set up specifically to ensure that voices outside Washington and New York would have a say in the central bank’s decisions.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed this year for not cutting as quickly as he would prefer. The Fed reduced its key rate by a quarter-point at its September and October meetings, but Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference last month that another cut in December is not a “foregone conclusion.”

General Dynamics unit wins $1.7B to build Navy vessels

General Dynamics NASSCO, a business unit of -based aerospace and defense contractor , announced Monday it has been awarded $1.7 billion in funding from the for the construction of T-AO 215 and T-AO 216 vessels.

The company states that the ships are part of an up to $6.75 billion multi-ship procurement contract with the Navy to construct up to eight additional John Lewis-class fleet replenishment oilers, designated T-AO 214 through 221.

“The T-AO program holds significant importance to the men and women of NASSCO and is one we take great pride in — it’s the longest running Navy production series in NASSCO history,” Dave Carver, president of , said in a statement. “The timely funding for these two ships will act to stabilize the workforce by sustaining an important backlog and prevent future layoffs.”

NASSCO is currently under contract to build 17 of the Navy’s 20-ship program of record. So far, it has delivered four. The work began in 2016, when the Navy awarded NASSCO a contract to design and build the first six ships in the John Lewis-class. General Dynamics stated that the contract was modified in 2022 to include three additional oilers (T-AO 211-213). In 2024, the business unit received the contract to build eight more ships.

The John Lewis class of ships are 742-foot vessels that have a full load displacement of 49,850 tons, capacity to carry 162,000 barrels of oil and significant amounts of dry cargo. Designed to transfer fuel to Navy ships operating at sea, the vessels can travel at speeds of up to 20 knots.

Headquartered in San Diego, General Dynamics NASSCO specializes in the design and construction of Navy and commercial ships. The aerospace and defense contractor bought NASSCO Holdings, the National Steel and Co.’s parent company, in 1998.

A NASSCO spokesperson said T-AO 215 is scheduled to begin construction in mid-2026 and deliver in late 2029. T-AO 216 is scheduled to begin construction in early 2027 and deliver in early 2030.

General Dynamics has approximately 117,000 employees worldwide and reported $47.7 billion in revenue for 2024. It ranked No. 96 on the 2025 Fortune 1000.

New documents reveal scope of Google’s Chesterfield data center campus

A site plan filed this week shows that plans to build three of more than 800,000 square feet next to in .

announced in August that the California tech giant planned to invest an additional $9 billion in Virginia through the end of 2026, with a significant portion going toward the building of a new data center campus in Chesterfield, but he and Google did not reveal many specifics at the time.

The site plan says that Google will build an 855,846-square-foot data center campus on about 307 acres at 2700 Bermuda Hundred Road in multiple phases. There will be three data center buildings, each 285,282 square feet, and 345 parking spaces.

Youngkin said in August that Google’s new investment will focus on cloud and infrastructure, and that it will grow its existing facilities in Loudoun and Prince William counties, as well as enhance education and workforce development programs for Virginians.

According to planning documents, Dallas-based AECOM is the project’s designer, while Herndon-based Bohler Engineering will serve as the civil engineer and project applicant.

The data center campus’s project cost, megawatt capacity and the project timeline are still unknown, and Google, Chesterfield County and Bohler did not immediately return requests for comment.

A Google spokesperson previously said in August that construction on the data center is underway and that data center projects typically take 18 to 24 months to complete.

The governor’s office previously said that once the new Chesterfield County data center is complete, the facility will join the and Prince William campuses as part of Google’s global network of data centers.

Google has still not provided estimates on how many jobs the Chesterfield project would produce or details on plans in Loudoun and Prince William counties.

There’s no timeline on when flight cuts will ease up after the government shutdown ends

Summary

  • have canceled more than 9,000 U.S. flights since -ordered cuts.
  • FAA aims to reduce strain on short-staffed control towers amid shutdown.
  • Another 1,200 flights were canceled Tuesday as reductions expanded.
  • demand slows amid widespread delays and cancellations.

Airlines have canceled more 9,000 flights across the U.S. since the Federal Administration ordered flight cuts late last week, mostly to ease demand on control towers that are short-staffed during the federal .

Although the government appears to be moving to reopen in the coming days, airport disruptions, and economic losses won’t go away all at once.

Here’s how the network is being impacted:

Flights remain disrupted as the shutdown nears an end

Another 1,200 commercial flights were scratched Tuesday as the Federal Aviation Administration bumped up its target for reducing domestic flights at the nation’s busiest airports to 6%, up from an initial 4% cut at those 40 airports. However, the cancellations so far Tuesday have been less than in the past couple of days.

Cancellations are unlikely to ease right away

The FAA hasn’t put a timeline on when it will ease back on the flight limitations. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the cuts won’t go away until safety measurements improve and staffing levels stabilize at facilities.

Flight cuts won’t end until FAA sees safety improve

Duffy has declined to share the specific data that prompted FAA to imposed the flight cuts last week, but he told Fox News on Tuesday that he was seeing reports of loss of separation between aircraft in the air, more runway incursions and airline pilots telling the FAA they were concerned with the responses they were getting from controllers.

Air traffic controller shortages won’t go away either

The nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers isn’t new, but the shutdown exposed just how fragile the system is. Controllers who weren’t being paid have increasingly called off work during the shutdown, citing increased stress and the need to take side jobs to pay bills. Union leaders said this week that the number of controllers who retired or quit during the shutdown was “growing” by the day.

Airlines must readjust after FAA order is lifted

The flight restrictions have upended airline operations in just a matter of days. Many planes were rerouted and aren’t where they’re supposed to be. That could slow the airlines’ return to business as usual even after the FAA lifts the cuts, said Mike Taylor, an analyst with J.D. Power.

Major airports bear the brunt of flight cuts

Hub airports in Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and the New York area have seen the bulk of the cancellations. They’ve also been plagued by long delays caused by staffing shortages in regional air traffic control centers and towers.

posts a demand to get back to work

The head of the air traffic controllers union emphasized this week that the controllers were not walking off the job as part of an organized protest and were committed to their work. However President  on Monday blasted those who’ve taken time off during the shutdown, posting on social media “get back to work, NOW!!!” He also called for docking pay for those who didn’t stay on the job, and a $10,000 bonus for those who kept working.

Holiday travel outlook darkens amid persistent disruptions

The pace of airline ticket sales for Thanksgiving travel has slowed as more travelers reconsider whether to fly amid all the delays and cancellations. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said ticket sales during the busy travel season at the end of November are still expected to be up over last year, but only slightly.

Airlines face mounting losses

Canceled flights and mounting delays are adding to big losses for the airlines. The lost revenue is likely to add up to “hundreds of millions of dollars a day,” said Greg Raiff, CEO of the Elevate Aviation Group. He expects the toll to show up when the airlines start issuing earnings warnings for the fourth quarter.

Millions of people were affected

An estimated 5.2 million passengers have been affected by staffing-related delays or cancellations since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, according to Airlines for America, an industry trade group. However, it said cancellations really didn’t become a significant issue until the FAA ordered the flight cuts last week.

Trump says 50-year mortgages would be no ‘big deal’

Summary

  • says 50-year mortgages “might help a little bit” for affordability.
  • Critics warn longer loans increase interest and delay equity.
  • exploring long-term and portable mortgage options.
  • U.S. households face rising costs despite lower mortgage rates.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President downplayed efforts to offer a as a way to make owning a house more affordable than with typical 30-year loans, even as homeowners would pay far more in interest and take longer to build equity.

“All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit,” Trump told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” program on Monday night, blaming his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and the ‘s interest rate policies for home affordability concerns.

Some conservative lawmakers and influencers as well as economists have panned the idea, noting that it would take people longer to actually own their homes under such loans.

Over the weekend on X, Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reacted to the idea, writing “In debt forever, in debt for life!” while right-wing activist Mike Cernovich wrote: “Lifetime mortgages.”

IS KEY ISSUE

U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Saturday had said FHFA was “working on” a five-decade-long mortgage after Trump, a Republican, posted an image of himself under the heading “50-year Mortgage” on social media.

“A complete game-changer,” Pulte wrote on X.

“We are also working on ways to give relief in the 5 year mortgage, the 10 year mortgage, and the 15 year mortgage,” he wrote separately on Sunday, with no further details. “At Fannie and Freddie, we are evaluating how to do assumable or portable mortgages, in a safe and sound manner,” Pulte added, referring to the government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Representatives for FHFA did not respond to requests for comment seeking more details on the plan.

“The White House and the entire are appreciative of Mr. Pulte’s efforts, and everyone is working together to implement the president’s policies,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said.

U.S. households are grappling with cost-of-living increases ranging from housing and groceries to fuel and education even as has grown at a slower rate. Prices took center stage in last week’s state and local elections that saw Democrats sweep key races even as Trump has doubled down on his economic program.

“I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” Trump told Fox News.

Affordability could remain a challenge for many prospective buyers as home prices continue to rise.

While home sales rose in September, pending sales remained unexpectedly flat despite lower mortgage rates. Mortgage rates declined after the Federal Reserve resumed cutting last month, but the dip has been somewhat overshadowed by growing anxiety over the softening labor market.

Trump has urged the Fed to make more drastic rate cuts, with U.S. Treasury Secretary blaming current rates for what he said may already be a recession in the housing sector.

The central bank voted last month in favor of lowering its benchmark interest rate to the 3.75%-4.00% range.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is at a one-year low of 6.19% after surging to 7.04% in January, Freddie Mac data showed last month.

“It’s not clear how much this could lower the monthly payment because we don’t know what the interest rate would look like compared to a 30 year mortgage,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said on X on Monday. “A more effective, long-term solution is to fix the supply side.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Paul Simao)

 

Stocks mixed as Nvidia dips after SoftBank stake sale

Summary

  • slips 0.2% as trading remains mixed Tuesday.
  • Dow rises 396 points; drops 0.5%.
  • shares fall after sells its full stake.
  • European markets gain; U.S. bond market closed for Veterans Day.

NEW YORK (AP) — Most of Wall Street is rising on Tuesday, but another return toward Earth for Nvidia is keeping the U.S. in check.

The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged in afternoon trading, despite gains for the majority of stocks within the index. It’s a slowdown for the market, coming off Monday’s vigorous rebound following its first losing week in four.

The Industrial Average was up 396 points, or 0.8%, as of 12:45 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower. All three are still near their all-time highs but have been shaky recently.

Much of the focus was on Nvidia and other winners of the artificial-intelligence frenzy, as usual. Their sensational growth has been one of the top reasons the U.S. stock market has hit records despite a slowing job market and still-high inflation. But their prices have shot so high that critics say they look too expensive and are reminiscent of the 2000 dot-com bubble that ultimately burst and nearly halved the S&P 500.

Nvidia sank 3.2% after SoftBank, a Japanese technology giant that had been a major investor, said it had sold its entire stake last month for $5.83 billion. SoftBank is not giving up on AI. It’s still focusing on OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Because Nvidia is so large, worth close to $5 trillion, it was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 Tuesday.

Nvidia oftentimes can dictate the movement of index funds that track the S&P 500, which sit at the heart of many 401(k) accounts. A day earlier, Nvidia’s rally of nearly 6% was the biggest reason the S&P 500 erased nearly all its loss from last week.

CoreWeave, whose cloud platform helps customers running AI workloads, fell 13.8% Tuesday even though it reported a smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue also topped expectations, and financial analysts praised its momentum. But investors seemed to focus instead on supply-chain issues delaying a data center and pushing some of CoreWeave’s revenue further into the future.

On the winning side of Wall Street, jumped 6.9% after reporting better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it would buy AskSage, a generative AI platform built for national-security agencies and other highly regulated areas, for $250 million.

Outside of AI, Paramount Skydance climbed 9.9%, even as the entertainment giant fell short of Wall Street’s revenue and profit targets. It was the company’s first earnings report since Skydance closed its of Paramount in early August, and investors were apparently encouraged that it raised its 2026 cost-cutting goal to $3 billion from the previous $2 billion.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% even though SoftBank climbed 2%. Besides the sale of its Nvidia stake, the tech giant also reported a much bigger profit than analysts expected.

In the U.S. bond market, trading is closed for the Veterans Day holiday.

Yields have been generally rising since Chair Jerome Powell warned last month that further cuts to are not assured. The Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice this year in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market. But it’s worried that inflation, which has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target, could reaccelerate.

What’s potentially making the Fed’s job more difficult is that the U.S. government’s shutdown has delayed important updates on jobs and other areas of the economy. The Senate has made moves to end what’s become the longest-ever shutdown, but it’s not assured.

That has left the Fed and investors looking at reports coming from sources outside of the government, which have offered a mixed picture.

A job tracker at Goldman Sachs suggests growth slowed in October from September. After including the effect of a deferred resignation program at the government, U.S. employers overall may have cut 50,000 jobs in October, according to economist David Mericle.

Such softening in the job market has traders betting on a roughly two-in-three chance that the Fed will cut interest rates at its next meeting in December, according to data from CME Group. Expectations for such cuts, which Wall Street loves because they can goose the economy and investment prices, are another reason stocks have hit records recently.

UPDATES: trading.

Wendy’s to close hundreds of U.S. restaurants to cut costs

Summary

  • to close about 5% of its 6,000 U.S. locations.
  • Move aims to raise profits and update outdated restaurants.
  • Same-store sales fell 4% and revenue dropped 2% this year.
  • CEO says closures will help strengthen the brand.

Wendy’s plans to close hundreds U.S. restaurants over the next few months in an effort to boost its profit and make its remaining stores more appealing.

The Dublin, Ohio-based chain said during a conference call with investors Friday that it planned to begin closing restaurants in the fourth quarter of this year. The company said it expected a “mid-single-digit percentage” of its U.S. stores to be affected, but it didn’t give any more details.

Wendy’s ended the third quarter with 6,011 U.S. restaurants. If 5% of those locations were impacted, it would mean 300 store closures.

The new round of closures comes on top of the closure of 240 U.S. Wendy’s locations in 2024. At the time, Wendy’s said that many of the 55-year-old chain’s restaurants are simply out of date.

Ken Cook, Wendy’s interim CEO, said Friday the company believes closing locations that are underperforming – whether it’s from a financial or customer service perspective – will help improve traffic and profitability at its remaining U.S. restaurants.

Cook became Wendy’s CEO in July after the company’s previous CEO, Kirk Tanner, left to become the president and CEO of Hershey Co.

“When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective. The goal is to address and fix those restaurants,” Cook said during a conference call with investors.

Cook said in some cases, Wendy’s will make improvements to struggling stores, including adding technology or equipment. In other cases, it will transfer ownership to a different operator or close the restaurant altogether.

U.S. chains have been struggling to attract lower-income consumers in the past few years as has raised prices. Cook said he expects lower-income consumers to remain pressured for the rest of this year.

In the first nine months of this year, Wendy’s said its U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 4% compared to the same period last year. Wendy’s revenue fell 2% to $1.63 billion in the same period, while its net income fell 6% to $138.6 million.

Cook said $5 and $8 meal deals — which have been matched by McDonald’s — have helped bring some traffic back to its U.S. stores. But Wendy’s isn’t doing a good job of bringing in new customers, Cook said, so the company plans to shift its marketing to emphasize its value and the freshness of its ingredients.

Wendy’s shares dropped 7% Friday. On Monday, they were down 5% in afternoon trading.

G7 meets in Canada amid U.S. tensions over trade, defense

Summary

  • ministers meet in Ontario as tensions grow with the U.S.
  • ‘s trade demands and defense goals divide allies.
  • hosts 15 foreign ministers, including Ukraine’s.
  • Talks to focus on , and minerals.

TORONTO (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies are converging on southern Ontario as tensions rise between the U.S. and traditional allies like Canada over , trade and uncertainty over President ‘s ceasefire plan in Gaza and efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Canadian Foreign Minister  said in an interview with The Associated Press that “the relationship has to continue across a range of issues” despite trade pressures as she prepared to host U.S. Secretary of State  and their counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anand also invited the foreign ministers of Australia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Ukraine.

She said “15 foreign ministers are coming from around the world to the Great White North and funnily enough on the week of our first large snowfall.”

“The work that Canada is doing is continuing to lead multilaterally in an era of a greater movement to protectionism and unilateralism,” Anand said. “And in an era of economic and geopolitical volatility.”

Canada’s G7 hosting duties this year have been marked by strained relations with its North American neighbor, predominantly over Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports. But the entire bloc of allies is confronting major turbulence over the Republican president’s demands on trade and various proposals to halt worldwide conflicts.

One main point of contention has been defense spending. All G7 members except for Japan are members of NATO, and Trump has demanded that the alliance partners spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense. While a number of countries have agreed, others have not. Among the G7 NATO members, Canada and Italy are furthest from that goal.

There have also been G7 disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, with Britain, Canada and France announcing they would recognize a Palestinian state even without a resolution to the conflict. With the Russia-Ukraine war, most G7 members have taken a tougher line on Russia than Trump has.

The two-day meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Lake Ontario near the U.S. border comes after Trump ended trade talks with Canada because the Ontario provincial government ran an anti-tariff advertisement in the U.S. that upset him. That followed a spring of acrimony, since abated, over Trump’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney apologized for the ad and said last week that he’s ready to resume trade talks when the Americans are ready.

“The work that we are doing in the G7 is about finding areas where we can cooperate multilaterally,” Anand said. “This conversation will continue regardless of other efforts that we are making on the trade side.”

Anand said she will have a meeting with Rubio but noted that a different minister leads the U.S. trade file. The U.S. president has placed greater priority on addressing his grievances with other nations’ trade policies than on collaboration with G7 allies.

“Every complex relationship has numerous touch points,” Anand said. “On the trade file, there is continued work to be done — just as there is work to be done on the numerous touch points outside the trade file, and that’s where Secretary Rubio and I come in because the relationship has to continue across a range of issues.”

Anand said Rubio asked her during a breakfast meeting in Washington last month to play a role in bringing countries to the table to ensure that Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan has longevity.

U.S. officials said Rubio, who also may have meetings with other G7 counterparts and at least one of the invited non-G7 foreign ministers, would be focused on initiatives to halt fighting in Ukraine and Gaza, maritime security, Haiti, Sudan, supply chain resiliency and critical minerals.

Canada’s priorities include ending the war in Ukraine, Arctic security and security in Haiti. There will be a working lunch on energy and critical minerals that are needed for anything from smartphones to fighter jets. Canada has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.

Anand will probably try to use the meeting to improve the working relationship with Rubio, said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.

“Yet, a key factor shaping that relationship is beyond her control: President Trump’s mercurial behavior,” Béland said.

“The expectations are quite low, but avoiding drama and fostering basic common ground on issues like Ukraine and Russia would be helpful,” Béland said.