Sir Keir Starmer is facing fresh calls to spearhead a new cabinet committee charged with shielding British businesses from the mounting cost of global economic shocks, after one of the country’s most influential lobby groups warned that the UK remains dangerously exposed to disruption.

In a report published on Sunday night, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said a decade marked by Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had laid bare the absence of meaningful contingency planning to insulate the UK economy when global supply chains seize up.

The intervention lands at a pointed moment. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz for two months in the wake of the Middle East war is expected to push British inflation higher in the coming quarter and is already squeezing supplies of components used across the food and heavy industry sectors.

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the BCC, said small and mid-sized firms had been “permanently bruised” by the procession of global shocks and could no longer be left to absorb the consequences alone.

“The UK’s inadequate economic security has become a drag on growth, competitiveness and national strength; yet it is still not given the focus and urgency it demands. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated how supply chains can be disrupted overnight. We now live in a world where trade interests may be weaponised and where failing to secure key raw materials means failing to grow.”

At the heart of the BCC’s recommendations is the creation of an economic security cabinet committee, chaired by the prime minister of the day, that would coordinate Whitehall’s response to trade disputes, retaliatory tariffs and attempts to lock British exporters out of foreign markets.

The proposal arrives in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in February to strike down President Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs,  a ruling that has done little to soften the chilling effect his protectionist agenda has had on free-trading economies, many of which have been forced to design emergency retaliatory measures of their own.

The lobby group is also urging ministers to follow Brussels’s lead and forge a UK version of the EU’s “anti-coercion instrument”, introduced in 2023 and dubbed by some officials a “trade bazooka”. The mechanism would empower the government to impose import charges, and other punitive trade restrictions, on companies based in jurisdictions judged to be in breach of international trade commitments.

The numbers underline the case. The BCC estimates that more than 75 per cent of British manufactured goods sold overseas begin life with imported components, while imports and exports together account for around 60 per cent of UK gross domestic product. Few advanced economies, the report argues, are quite so reliant on the smooth running of someone else’s logistics.

Diversifying that supply chain, so that Britain is less dependent on a narrow band of suppliers for the raw materials underpinning the industries of the future, must become a strategic priority, the BCC says. Demand for lithium, copper and aluminium, the building blocks of electric vehicles, batteries and renewable infrastructure, is forecast to surge over the next decade as consumers and businesses move to greener products.

China’s near monopoly over the refining and processing of many of those critical minerals is, in the BCC’s view, the clearest illustration of why ministers should accelerate domestic production where possible and steer supply chains towards “friendlier” trading partners.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized exporters — many still nursing the scars of Brexit-related red tape and pandemic-era cost spikes, the message from Westminster’s business community is becoming impossible to ignore: in an era of weaponised trade, economic security is no longer the preserve of the Foreign Office. It is, increasingly, a board-level concern.

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The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq eked out modest gains on Monday in muted trading, as investors took a breath at the top of an eventful week, with earnings, economic data, the U.S. Federal Reserve‘s rate decision and the ebb and flow of Middle East tensions all crowding the docket.

All three major U.S. stock indexes wavered throughout the session, showing little conviction in ‌either direction after last ⁠week’s rally ⁠sent the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to a series of record closing highs.

The session began with the S&P 500 up over 100% since the bull market began in October 2022.

“The market is just trying to deal with the rally that’s been going on and digest the latest all-time highs that we’ve made on the indices,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut. “And it’s trying to figure out whether or not those all-time highs are justified.”

First-quarter earnings season has hit full stride, with a host of high-profile firms slated to report this week, including five of the Magnificent Seven technology ⁠megacaps, Amazon , ‌Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Apple and Microsoft. Investors will assess the extent to which these companies are beginning to reap benefits of massive expenditures on artificial intelligence.

As of Friday, 139 companies in the S&P 500 have posted first-quarter ⁠results. Of those, 81% have beaten estimates. Analysts now see aggregate S&P 500 earnings growth of 16.1% year-on-year, up from 14.4% on April 1, according to LSEG I/B/E/S.
The companies due to report this week account for roughly 44% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, according to Raymond James. “Guidance has been pretty good. We’re seeing earnings growth of 15%, and I would classify that as a very good environment, except the road has gotten a lot more bumpy,” Pavlik added, referring to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Attempts to revive peace talks between the U.S. and Iran continue following President Donald Trump‘s decision to call off negotiators’ trip to Islamabad for another round ‌of face-to-face talks. Iran continues to restrict shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, with Iranian officials demanding that Washington lift its blockade as a precondition to further negotiation.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve is scheduled to convene for its two-day policy meeting, widely expected to ⁠culminate in the decision to leave interest rates unchanged. The accompanying statement and Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference will be scrutinized for clues regarding the central bank’s assessment of U.S. economic health and the inflationary impact of spiking energy prices resulting from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 8.93 points, or 0.12%, to end at 7,174.01 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 49.78 points, or 0.20%, to 24,886.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 57.82 points, or 0.12%, to 49,172.89.

Verizon advanced following the telecom company’s annual forecast hike due to stronger-than-expected subscriber adds.

Domino’s Pizza slid after the pizza chain missed first-quarter sales estimates.

Nvidia extended the prior session’s 4.3% surge. The company has reclaimed a market valuation of more than $5 trillion.

The British Business Bank has committed $20m to Ineffable Intelligence, the London-headquartered artificial intelligence venture, as part of a landmark $1.1bn seed round that ranks as the largest in European history.

In a move that signals a sharpening of the Government’s industrial strategy around frontier technology, the state-owned development bank has co-invested alongside the Sovereign AI Fund, the Treasury-backed vehicle established to keep strategically significant AI businesses anchored on these shores. The Sovereign AI Fund has put in further capital on top of the Bank’s contribution, although the precise figure has not been disclosed.

The British cheques sit within a syndicate that reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley capital. Sequoia, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index Ventures, Google, EQT, Evantic, Flying Fish, DST Global and BOND have all joined the round, lending weight to the argument that Britain remains capable of attracting deep-pocketed foreign investors to its homegrown technology champions despite persistent concerns about the country’s appetite for risk.

Ineffable Intelligence is the brainchild of David Silver, the University College London professor widely regarded as one of the most influential reinforcement learning researchers of his generation. Silver previously ran the reinforcement learning team at Google DeepMind and is credited with pivotal work on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold and AlphaProof, the systems that successively rewrote what machines were thought capable of in domains ranging from board games to protein folding and mathematical reasoning.

His new venture has set itself a deliberately audacious mission: to build what Silver calls a “superlearner”, a system capable of discovering knowledge from its own experience rather than relying on the data humans feed it. If realised, the technology would represent a step change beyond today’s large language models, which remain heavily dependent on training material drawn from the internet.

For the British Business Bank, the investment marks the latest in a steady cadence of AI commitments. The lender has now made nine AI deals over the past twelve months, with recent backing for autonomous driving outfit Wayve and conversational AI specialist PolyAI. The Bank has also been a quietly significant force behind the commercialisation of British academic research, supporting almost a quarter of all university spinout deals struck between 2022 and 2024.

Charlotte Lawrence, managing director of direct equity at the British Business Bank, described Silver as “a generational talent who has consistently been on the cutting edge of AI development“. She added: “Ineffable Intelligence has the potential to produce a paradigm shift in our scientific and technology landscape, and we are incredibly excited to be supporting him and his team in this endeavour.”

George Mills, the Bank’s investment director, said the company was tackling “one of the most significant opportunities within AI”, citing potential applications spanning advanced problem solving and new product development. “The UK produces world-class AI talent, and we are pleased to back strategically important businesses to scale and stay in the UK,” he said, in remarks that will be read as a pointed reminder of the Government’s determination to stem the flow of British intellectual property to American owners.

Josephine Kant, head of ventures at Sovereign AI, was equally bullish. “Very few founders in the world could credibly set out to build a superlearner, a system that discovers new knowledge from its own experience rather than ours. David is one of them,” she said. “From AlphaGo to AlphaZero to AlphaProof, he has spent nearly two decades turning reinforcement learning from a research idea into the results the rest of the field builds on. Ineffable is being built in the UK, and that matters.”

The deal arrives at a delicate moment for British technology policy. Ministers have repeatedly stressed their ambition to position the country as a global hub for safe, sovereign AI development, but they have faced criticism for the relative scarcity of late-stage growth capital available to scaling deep-tech businesses. A seed round of this magnitude, anchored by domestic public capital and topped up by the world’s most prolific venture investors, will be cited by Whitehall as evidence that the strategy is beginning to bear fruit.

For SME founders watching from the sidelines, the headline figures may feel a world away from their own funding realities. Yet the structural shift is significant: the British Business Bank’s growing willingness to write meaningful equity cheques into frontier technology businesses, in concert with private capital, suggests a more interventionist posture that could in time filter down to a broader cohort of high-growth British companies.

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Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to TFI International’s 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. [Operator Instructions] I’d like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on Monday, April 27, 2026. I would now like to turn over the call to Mr. Alain Bedard, Chairman of the Board, the President and Chief Executive Officer of TFI International. Please go ahead, sir.

Alain Bedard
President, CEO & Chairman

Well, thank you, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 2026 Annual Meeting of the shareholders of TFI International. Participation at this meeting by myself, the scrutineers and certain proxyholders is being done remotely. So we are making this meeting available by phone. We have, therefore, asked all shareholders to vote by proxy prior to the meeting, which many of you have done and we thank you for doing so. At the conclusion of the official business shareholders will be able to ask questions by following the instruction from the operator.

So I will act as Chairman of the meeting. And with the consent of the meeting, I’ll ask Josiane Langlois, who is President of TFI’s Head Office in Montreal to act as Secretary. Also, with the consent of the meeting, I’ll now ask Steve Gilbert and [ Vlad Tilibassa ], our Computershare Trust Company of Canada to act as scrutineers for the meeting, tabulate the number of shareholders and the number of shares represented at this meeting in person or by proxy and report to me as Chairman of the meeting. There are several routine matters to

A gourmet chocolate maker is recalling select bonbon collections sold nationwide after a labeling error failed to disclose the presence of walnuts, posing a potentially life-threatening risk to some consumers.

French Broad Chocolates PBC is recalling its Bette’s Bake Sale Bonbon Collection in six-piece, 12-piece and 24-piece boxes due to the potential presence of undeclared walnuts, according to a company announcement published by the Food and Drug Administration.

The recall applies to products with batch numbers 260414 and 260417.

DOZENS OF ICE CREAM PRODUCTS RECALLED OVER UNDECLARED ALLERGENS POSING ‘LIFE-THREATENING’ RISK

“People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to walnuts run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products,” the company said.

The products were distributed between April 14, 2026, and April 20, 2026, and were sold in French Broad Chocolates retail stores in Asheville, North Carolina, and online to customers in multiple states.

CANTALOUPES RECALLED NATIONWIDE OVER SALMONELLA FEARS — WHAT SHOPPERS NEED TO KNOW

Affected products include Bette’s Bake Sale Bonbon Collection in six-piece (2.5 oz.), 12-piece (5 oz.) and 24-piece (10 oz.) boxes, with “best by” dates ranging from June 22, 2026, to June 30, 2026, depending on the batch.

According to the company, the issue stems from a labeling error in the tasting notes insert that failed to identify walnuts as a tree nut allergen. The Walnut Fudge bonbon, which contains walnuts, was incorrectly identified in the printed tasting notes and was switched with the Peach Cobbler bonbon in the guide.

GENERAC RECALLS PORTABLE GENERATORS SOLD AT COSTCO OVER FIRE RISK

The company said it was notified of the issue on April 20, 2026, by a team member. No illnesses have been reported to date, according to the company.

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Consumers with a tree nut allergy who purchased the products are urged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund or discard them. Customers with questions can contact French Broad Chocolates customer service.

The United States is ramping up pressure on Iran by targeting the economic lifelines that help keep its oil flowing, with a particular focus on China’s role in facilitating those exports.

Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang joined FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria” to discuss how Washington’s latest sanctions strategy is designed to disrupt the networks moving Iranian crude, including Chinese refineries and vessels tied to Tehran’s so-called “shadow fleet.”

Those measures come as U.S. officials expand beyond traditional sanctions, warning foreign entities that continued business with Iran could jeopardize access to the American financial system. The approach reflects a broader shift toward what analysts describe as economic warfare, aimed at cutting off revenue streams that sustain Iran’s government.

“It’s important for the United States to start imposing secondary sanctions,” Chang said. “You should start, as the Treasury has done, with China because China is the main criminal here.”

Chang pointed to a recurring challenge in enforcing sanctions, noting that targeted entities often adapt quickly by shifting operations to avoid penalties.

WHITE HOUSE ACCUSES CHINA OF ‘INDUSTRIAL-SCALE’ AI TECHNOLOGY THEFT WEEKS AHEAD OF TRUMP-XI SUMMIT

“We have seen in the past that when we impose sanctions on Chinese entities… it moves the sanctioned activity to non-sanctioned entities and starts all over,” he said. “This is sanctions whack-a-mole.”

To counter that, Chang argued, the U.S. must broaden its approach to include entire networks rather than individual actors.

“The important thing here is for the United States to sanction all refiners, for instance, all vessels. We do that, we really cut off the China support for Iran,” he said.

CHINA COULD TARGET US HOMELAND IF IRAN CONFLICT ESCALATES, EXPERT WARNS

The push comes ahead of anticipated high-level talks between U.S. and Chinese leaders, raising the stakes for how aggressively Washington enforces its sanctions.

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Elon Musk’s lawsuit claiming that OpenAI violated its mission as a nonprofit organization moves to trial on Monday as jury selection gets underway in a federal court in Oakland, California.

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015, but left the artificial intelligence (AI) startup in 2018 after he was unable to persuade its other leaders to have OpenAI merge with Tesla or create a for-profit entity led by him to attract the investment needed to meet the company’s technological needs.

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI claims that the company violated its founding mission as a nonprofit to develop AI for the benefit of humanity by creating a for-profit entity in 2019.

His suit seeks the removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, as well as more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, which Musk has said he would provide to OpenAI’s nonprofit entity. Altman and Brockman were among OpenAI’s co-founders.

OpenAI is countering Musk’s claims by noting that the Tesla CEO pursued a merger with OpenAI and was involved with discussions about creating a for-profit entity for the company before his departure from its board of directors. They also view the suit as a tactic to boost his own AI startup, xAI, as a competitor to OpenAI.

OPENAI’S NONPROFIT PARENT COMPANY SECURES $100B EQUITY STAKE WHILE RETAINING CONTROL OF AI GIANT

The company’s 2019 creation of a for-profit entity governed by OpenAI’s nonprofit arm allowed the company to raise money from investors to scale up its computing capacity to facilitate AI research, which helped spur the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
TSLA	TESLA INC.	379.26	+2.96	+0.79%
MSFT	MICROSOFT CORP.	424.62	+8.87	+2.13%

OpenAI restructured again last fall, transitioning into a public benefit corporation in which its nonprofit arm as well as its other investors, including Microsoft, hold stakes. The nonprofit arm has a 26% stake with additional warrants if OpenAI’s valuation hits certain targets.

Musk’s legal team arrived at its estimate of damages owed to him by OpenAI by multiplying its valuation and a portion of the nonprofit’s stake that could be attributed to his contributions, claiming that between 50% and 75% of the OpenAI nonprofit’s stake can be attributed to him.

“Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon – and in just eight years. Never before has it happened, because doing so violates almost every principle of law governing economic activity,” Musk’s suit claims.

ALTMAN CALLS MUSK’S SPACE DATA CENTER PLANS ‘RIDICULOUS’ FOR CURRENT AI COMPUTING NEEDS

Court documents show that Musk gave about $38 million of seed money to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, mostly before he left the board.

Microsoft is also a defendant in the lawsuit and denies colluding with OpenAI, arguing that its partnership with OpenAI began after Musk’s departure.

OpenAI has insisted that Musk is motivated by revenge and competitive concerns, with the company writing on X that, “His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that’s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor.”

Both Musk and Altman signaled their eagerness for the trial to proceed earlier this year.

JUDGE STRUGGLES TO SEAT JURY IN ELON MUSK INVESTOR TRIAL AMID ‘HATE’ FOR TECH BILLIONAIRE: REPORT

“Can’t wait to start the trial. The discovery and testimony will blow your mind,” Musk said in a January post on X.

Altman countered in a February post on the X platform that he is, “Really excited to get Elon under oath in a few months, Christmas in April!”

The jury selection pool is about three times larger than a typical civil case due to concerns about possible difficulties in finding impartial jurors, given that Musk and Altman have become celebrities.

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The judge determined that the jury won’t decide the specific repercussions in the case, and will instead work in an “advisory” role to determine how much OpenAI would need to pay in disgorgement if it loses the case.

FOX Business’ Kelly Saberi and Reuters contributed to this report.

This article was written by

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