Morning. U.S. President Donald Trump is intensifying his trade war with Canada, banning imports of the country’s alcohol, motorcycles and some dairy products. Today, we look at how Canadian businesses and political leaders are navigating a widening rupture with the country’s largest trading partner.

Transportation: Porter and Transat have secured bailout loans to cope with soaring jet-fuel costs.

Investing: Bank of Montreal becomes the first Big Five bank to eliminate most online trading commissions.

Energy: Greg Ebel is retiring as chief executive officer of Enbridge Inc.

Please return your elbows to their upright positions

Hours after Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on $28-billion worth of U.S. products took effect, Donald Trump hit back with outright bans on several Canadian products and tariffs of 50 per cent on a broader range of goods.

Here’s what we know about the new measures, most of which are set to begin on Sept. 29.

The bans: Products on the no-go list include beer, rye whisky, wine, whey protein, molasses, motorcycles and mopeds, The Globe’s Mark Rendell, Adrian Morrow and Nathan VanderKlippe report.

Also yesterday, Trump ordered the General Services Administration to remove Canadian-made goods from a contracting program that does more than US$50-billion in business annually, unless Canada offers what he called “full and fair reciprocity” to American companies. It wasn’t immediately clear how much of that business goes to Canadian suppliers.

The tariffs: New levies are set to be imposed on cheese, motorboats, paper, aluminum products, furniture and lamps. Trump removed tariffs from a smaller group that includes cement, toilet paper and certain electronics.

A painful cycle: The measures deepen the loop of retaliation after the collapse of trade negotiations and further restrict Canadian access to the country’s largest export market. They also reinforce the likelihood of a prolonged standoff, adding urgency to businesses’ efforts to find new customers, redirect goods and reduce their reliance on the United States.

The long road ahead: In remarks yesterday to right-wing outlet Breitbart News, U.S. Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent said Canadians should be careful, accusing them of seeking the benefits of being a state without being a state.

“Now that the arrangements may be splintering, everyone’s going to be coming to our side,” Bessent said.

Time will tell whether companies, investors and trading partners will choose the U.S. over Canada, but the mere fact that the White House appears to believe countries and businesses must eventually pick a side is cause for concern.

In that light, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs have become an early test case for countries grappling with a more transactional U.S. The outcome will be closely watched by allies seeking to gauge how much leverage Washington is willing to exert, how much resistance it will tolerate and how long Canada can withstand the pressure.

But it’s not as though we’re all sitting on our hands. (For one thing, that would make it difficult to lift our elbows.) Canadian leaders across politics, banking and manufacturing appear to be plotting a new course.

Bucking up: Federal cabinet minsters will fan out in the days ahead to reassure companies of the support they can access during the escalating trade war, Steven Chase reports.

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne will be among the cabinet members meeting with businesses and local chambers of commerce across the country.

In the absence of formal talks with Washington, Prime Mark Carney’s focus will turn to attracting foreign investment. Next week, Carney is set to host an increasingly high-stakes investment summit in Toronto before travelling to Strasbourg, France, where he will aim to build alliances with European countries by attending the EU State of the Union and addressing the European Parliament.

Banking on Canadian tech: Ahead of the summit, Royal Bank of Canada is launching a $1.4-billion fund aimed at investing in Canadian technology companies that the lender believes could grow into “global powerhouses.”

Canada’s largest lender said the “RBCx Growth Fund” will focus on sectors where it believes the country’s greatest strengths lie to help stem the exodus of Canadian entrepreneurs seeking success in other markets.

RBC chief executive officer Dave McKay told The Globe’s Stefanie Marotta that he plans to pitch foreign investors at the Canada Investment Summit, which is part of Ottawa’s efforts to bolster its nation-building ambitions and diversify trade and global partnerships away from the U.S.

Canada is “just not scaling these companies that we need to form the next great multinational corporations in this country,” McKay said.

Bank of Nova Scotia, meanwhile, has laid the groundwork to issue bonds that would finance defence-related investments.

The bank’s Canadian defence issuance framework adds to the ways in which Canada’s financial sector is aiming to support Ottawa’s domestic defence ambitions, Pippa Norman writes.