Rebecca Lowe had the highlight of her broadcast career this summer as the lead host of Fox Sports' World Cup coverage.
As much as Lowe enjoyed it, though, she is equally as joyed to be back leading NBC Sports' Premier League coverage. Lowe and NBC's studio crew of Robbie Earle, Robbie Mustoe and Tim Howard are in England for the start of the season. They were in London for defending champion Arsenal's 3-0 victory over Coventry on Friday.
They will be in West London for Brentford-Spurs on Saturday and Newcastle on Sunday for Newcastle-Liverpool.
“It’s like going home, back to my family,” Lowe said. “It was an amazing summer to work with (Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry and Alexi Lalas) on every level. They were brilliant, challenging and kept me on my toes. But going back to the two Robbies and Tim, who I know inside out, it’s like my three big brothers.”
Lowe, Earle and Mustoe have been with NBC since its Premier League coverage started in 2013. Howard was a guest analyst while being a goalkeeper at Everton but became a full-time studio analyst in 2020 after retiring.
Lowe was on loan from NBC for Fox's record-setting World Cup coverage. While she knew it was going to be a challenge because of the hectic schedule, Lowe did enjoy seeing how the tournament commanded the spotlight in the U.S. during the five weeks.
“It was so incredibly rewarding on a personal front, but also to see the country do what it did in terms of audience figures and just general water cooler conversation,” she said. “It seemed to give America something it has never had before, and that made me really proud."
While Lowe is ready for the season despite only four weeks off, she knows that most of the players who competed in the World Cup will still need a couple of more weeks to prepare for a long domestic season. That could also make for some interesting early results.
Lowe also sees Arsenal being able to defend as champions after it won the Premier League for the first time since 2006 last season with Chelsea as a possible dark horse.
“They slowly but surely kept the face with Mikel Arteta, who now by the way, is the longest-serving Premier League manager at six years, which is amazing,” Lowe said. "They trusted in this process that he talked about to build a foundation, to put them now where they are while everybody else is scrapping around with new managers and trying to buy big players.
“Now they’re playing with house money, but it’s a different challenge this season. They’re at least going into it now knowing what it feels like to win and they know how to do it. And there aren’t that many other teams that can say that.”
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
FILE - Broadcasters, from left, Alexi Lalas, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry, and Rebecca Lowe watch the World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between Norway and England in Miami Gardens, Fla., Saturday, July 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez,File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Canada, historic allies along an undefended border, fell deeper into a trade war Saturday marked by angry recriminations and new tariffs that are expected to raise prices for products in both countries.
Each side blamed the other for the collapse of negotiations in Washington late Friday, leading the U.S. to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods and Canada setting Sept. 8 as the start of its retaliatory penalties.
President Donald Trump’s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. Prime Minister Carney said Ottawa would respond with targeted tariff protection for industries exposed to the new U.S. duties, including some steel products. He also mentioned the dairy, appliance, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics sectors.
No further talks were planned. Whatever the eventual outcome, a loss of trust seems one of the earliest casualties.
Carney accused Washington of using “economic integration as a weapon” and said “its signature was written in pencil.” Resorting to the language of battle, he said his country had been “attacked” by the new American tariffs. “You’re at war when you get attacked,” he said, adding that Canada had the reserves, resilience and plan to respond.
But to Trump's chief trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. was compelled to act after a year of retaliation by its longtime ally.
“We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains,” the U.S. trade representative told ”Fox & Friends Weekend."
Carney said Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the U.S. substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales. But he said Washington’s final demands went too far. “They asked too much and offered too little,” Carney said.
Greer said the Republican administration was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, “things that are sensitive for them. And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that."
As a result, he said, “We’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.”
Carney said the U.S. added last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty.
He said such demands were “unacceptable.”
The breakdown in negotiations marked a sharp reversal from two days earlier, when officials from the two countries sounded as if they were headed toward a compromise.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province, s province, praised Carney for rejecting the deal, saying it would have hurt Ontario’s auto, steel and manufacturing sectors. Ford urged Canada to use “every tool in our toolbox” to fight the U.S. tariffs.
The moves also call into question the future of a North American trade agreement covering the United States, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.
The political impact will likely be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880 billion worth of goods and services last year.
The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue, but the countries could not reach an agreement in time.
The U.S. and Canada have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots such as Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.
Somehow, they still managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11. The 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.
Trump’s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States and made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.
Carney said Canada had recognized that “America has changed” and that the two countries would “not return to our old relationship.”
The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 248,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses the former Republican congressman from Michigan of having “normalized’’ Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.
The two countries had good reasons to find a compromise.
Nearly 72% of Canada’s goods exports last year went to the United States. The Trump administration might be wary of imposing new tariffs — paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — before the November’s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.
“Canada likely wanted further sector-specific relief than the U.S. was willing to offer, or Canada’s concessions did not go far enough,'' said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. "Either way, I think both sides will be under immense pressure in the coming days to still find an off-ramp. But if Canada has agreed to also impose tariffs, the off-ramp may be even harder to find.”
Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the tariffs “a body blow to North American competitiveness” and warned they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses.
Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country, justifying them by declaring the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he had overstepped his authority. The justices struck down the trade penalties and set the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.
So Trump has looked for other legal authority to justify tariffs.
To punish Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.
Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs after their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.
Section 338, which has never been used before to impose tariffs, authorizes the president to slap import taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long they can stay in place.
The rift comes as the United States, Mexico and Canada are trying to renew a trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term and once praised as a triumph. The United States has begun formal talks with Mexico over revamping the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA. But talks with Canada have not begun and escalating trade conflict casts doubt on whether they will.
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Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette listen as Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette listen as Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., en route to South Carolina. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn /The Canadian Press via AP)
FILE - Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump hold a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 7, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn /The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump walks on the Ellipse as he arrives on Marine One near the White House, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
