We ve been talking about tariffs coming from the United States to Canada for a couple of months now. Trump s tariffs will be devastating, we all know that. But Trump s threat to the Canadian economy is much larger than tariffs.
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00:00:19.640We've been talking about tariffs coming from the United States to Canada and attacking our economy for a couple of months now.
00:00:26.980Trump's tariffs will be devastating. We all know that.
00:00:30.000But Trump's threat to the Canadian economy is much larger than tariffs.
00:00:34.200Hello, welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.
00:00:37.640And today we want to explore what Donald Trump is trying to do with the world economy, with the American economy.
00:00:44.900He gave a bit of a hint when he was speaking, out of all places, the world economic form.
00:00:50.220My message to every business in the world is very simple.
00:00:53.680Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth.
00:01:00.360We're bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts.
00:01:05.420But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff.
00:01:13.740Not a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.
00:01:23.800But under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on earth to create jobs, build factories or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.
00:01:33.560Trump is looking to lower taxes, bring in tariffs, expand oil and gas production, expand LNG, exportation.
00:01:42.500That is as big a threat to Canada as the tariffs will be, especially if we don't get our own act together.
00:01:51.040Today, we're joined by two economists on full comment.
00:01:54.460Ian Lee is a professor of economics at Carleton University and Carlo Dade works for the Canada West Foundation as a trade specialist and spends an awful lot of time in Washington.
00:02:06.380Look, as I said, tariffs are a major threat to the Canadian economy, but I think that too many people in Canada, politicians or commentators, are missing the fact that Trump's looking at doing much more than just bringing in tariffs.
00:02:23.500He's looking at fundamental changes to the American economy and how global trade operates.
00:02:28.480And I think that is as big a threat as the tariffs.
00:02:36.380First off, I agree with what you said.
00:02:38.780About five days ago, I tripped across or fell across the paper by Stephen Marin, PhD economics, Harvard University with Hudson Bay Capital Group for many years.
00:02:51.860And now on Trump's Council of Economic Advisors.
00:02:55.880And now the chief economist to the White House, essentially.
00:02:58.400That's what the Council of Economic Advisors was, the agency set up by Richard Nixon many years ago.
00:03:05.780He was in the Trump's first administration and the Treasury, but it doesn't really matter.
00:03:11.040This 41-page paper, when I read it, I mean, it just hit me right away.
00:03:15.740I didn't have to get to the end of the paper.
00:03:17.240By probably the end of the first page, I realized, oh, my God, this is stunning.
00:03:25.180Whether it is successful, I'm not getting into that.
00:03:27.780What they are proposing, what they are proposing, and it's crystal clear.
00:03:31.480This isn't my interpretation or my opinion.
00:03:33.520It is very clear that they see the entire 1945 to present post-World War II architecture that includes UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, trading organization, as an error that they want to fix.
00:03:57.140And we could summarize that as the Bretton Woods system, or sometimes it's called simply, one word, multilateralism.
00:04:05.540All countries are equal, we all share the same views, and every country is treated equally, even if it's a big country like the U.S. or a small country like Canada, it doesn't matter.
00:04:13.920We all are subject to the same rules and are on a level playing field.
00:04:17.560It is absolutely clear, with absolutely zero ambiguity, that President Trump and his people around him see this as a failed system that has caused great damage or harm to the United States over many, many years.
00:04:35.180So they're proposing a huge reform, and the tariffs are merely one tool in a whole quiver or arsenal of tools designed to completely redesign the international economic trading currency regime system.
00:04:55.900Carlo, do you share Ian's thoughts on what they're trying to do, or the viewpoint they're coming from, is a bigger shift than we might have expected before?
00:05:09.320I agree with both of the analysis here.
00:05:13.280And we've written about this at Canada West Foundation, I think starting a couple years ago.
00:05:18.820So we've been doing a deep dive on the America First Movement think tank component, the economic thinkers, former government officials who have left going to the think tank world, academics, etc.
00:05:33.860And think tanks are massive in Washington.
00:05:37.260We have them, like Canada West Foundation here, but they play a much larger role in public policy in the United States.
00:05:45.620We do not have think tanks like the Americans have think tanks.
00:05:48.820We have, you know, half a dozen people at Canada West.
00:05:53.500CG is probably, the Center for International Governance Innovation is probably on a scale with American think tanks, but we just don't play in the same league.
00:06:03.560We don't have think tanks with 50, 60 fellows and staffers and multi-billion, a million-dollar budget.
00:06:13.360And if you've walked their offices, they're gorgeous.
00:07:50.460And that was what happened with steel and aluminum.
00:07:52.300But in 1971, we woke up on a Monday morning in August to discover that Sunday night, the Nixon administration had imposed a 10% surcharge or tariff on all goods coming into the U.S.
00:08:06.200The language they used to explain why they were doing this is an almost exact replica of what we hear in today.
00:09:21.580I'm simply saying I referenced the paper by Marin because it's much more structured and logical and coherent and systemic.
00:09:27.380In the paper, he actually uses the word geonomics and he said what has changed is that we now have a more, a larger understanding of trade and prosperity.
00:09:38.260It is not just near balance sheet balancing up, you know, do you have a balance of trade deficit or a surplus.
00:09:44.820He explicitly went on for pages about how the Americans have spent literally trillions since 1945.
00:09:53.800They spend a trillion right now a year.
00:10:07.860Pax Americana and these countries, Canada is not the only one by any means of the Europeans, Japan, South Korea, have all profited immensely from the rule of law as the United States, as the referee, my words, of the international economic system.
00:10:25.200And they're saying that when you factor this into the calculus and not just a mere adding up, you know, did you, you know, your balance of payments, they argue that it's decisively negative for the Americans because now I'm going to be colloquial again in my words, because all of these other countries have been free riding like crazy on America.
00:10:47.540And they are expressly, and they are expressly in this paper, he says, we must, this is part of the new revised deal we want.
00:10:55.020It will expressly require a rebalancing of and an analysis of the commitment of every country to ensure that they're at least at 2% defense spending and GDP.
00:11:08.340And they're saying this is part and parcel of the new international trade architecture.
00:11:13.120This hasn't been said before, to my knowledge, in such a formal, express way.
00:11:17.540So, yes, two things can be true at the same time.
00:11:20.380In essence, the core of their argument is the same.
00:11:23.820They have updated it and added some new things.
00:11:27.020But the core of the argument is the same.
00:11:29.660And the language that we hear, that most of your readers will hear, is this core language about unfairness, needing to rebalance.
00:11:39.200There is one of the major additions within the America First movement, and there is no one doctrine.
00:11:45.960There is no one catchism that everyone repeats within the movement.
00:11:50.900So you're going to have different aspects or different sectors of the America First movement saying different things.
00:11:56.480But an important addition is the economic populist argument, I think, to which Ian is referring, that growth is not the be-all and end-all.
00:12:05.360We will take economic losses to have good middle-class jobs.
00:12:11.700Quality of work, quality of life in communities, human dignity is tied to work.
00:14:09.040I went there to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was on my list for a long time.
00:14:12.880And as I was driving in from across I-81, across the top of New York State, and then Pennsylvania, and then on into Ohio, I was struck by two things.
00:14:23.700Number one, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Trump signs everywhere, and I don't think I saw more than three Hillary Clinton signs.
00:14:30.480So this would have been July of 2016, and I, in my naivete at the time, even though I've been driving through rural America in just about every state for many years, I said, no, well, Clinton's going to win.
00:14:41.780So there must be a mistake here because there's no Clinton signs.
00:14:44.720The second thing I noticed, if you drive, and this is my criticism of Paul Krugman, he's a brilliant man.
00:14:50.480You know, but he's sort of, you know, that argues, I don't understand how anybody can be, say it's not doing well in America, because in Manhattan, we're all doing very, very well.
00:14:59.020And it's my same complaint about the Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal elites.
00:15:02.440Get the hell out of Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, and drive into rural eastern Ontario, or rural northern Ontario, if you want to find out, well, Canadians really live, or into rural Saskatchewan, where I've driven, or rural Alberta.
00:15:14.480And so my point being that the Republicans were onto this way before, the Democrats were clueless right up until this election, about the elites in the coastal cities of San Francisco and New York, and the big prospects, they've been doing very well.
00:16:13.840I grew up in a nice neighborhood in the city, but I went to school downtown.
00:16:18.040My mom put me on the train when I was in fourth grade, and I went downtown, and I walked through downtown.
00:16:24.140And I went to high school in the city.
00:16:26.240I saw Philadelphia on its knees when the city was utterly devastated.
00:16:31.940And, you know, the jokes about the Eagles fans, you know, stoning Santa Claus.
00:16:38.460It was a time of desperation in the city.
00:16:42.020And the elites out in the suburbs are doing well, but the city, by and large, is on its knees.
00:16:46.820So I've lived a little bit of this firsthand.
00:16:49.500But let me caution, with the America First movement, there are those, Orrin Cass, I keep referring to him, and others who are really committed to this vision of trying to restore dignity to lives without dignity.
00:17:03.620But then there are other parts of the movement that are business as usual.
00:17:13.340Two different things can be true at the same time, but they don't have to be reconcilable.
00:17:18.400And you've got these, I think, irreconcilable differences with America First.
00:17:22.980So we have to be careful not to attribute one manifestation of the movement, one manifestation of Trump's administration, to the entire administration.
00:17:35.620What Trump laid out the other day in the speech to the World Economic Forum, you said he wanted the price of oil to go down.
00:17:43.140He warned Saudi Arabia that it better go down.
00:18:00.560I mean, you know, you deal a lot with the oil sector, you know, in your job, Carlo, you know how important it is to the Alberta economy, never mind the Canadian economy.
00:18:25.980Now, so part of the strategy this time, again, as maybe a lesson from the Nixon shocks or maybe a new calculation, is that the Americans realize that there'll be economic pain.
00:18:39.320They think that they can survive short-term economic pain.
00:18:43.520Remember, Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the example everyone quotes, lasted five years.
00:18:49.620Steel and aluminum, which is completely, we shouldn't even use it when having this discussion, but that lasted a year.
00:18:56.640But the Nixon shocks, global tariff, all countries, rebalanced trade, those lasted four and a half months.
00:19:06.760The Americans were able to bring Japan, Europe, Canada to our knees in four and a half months.
00:19:13.580So the Americans are calculating that they can take a short-term pain and others will cave and make concessions to them.
00:19:21.460They're targeting Canada first because, as I've used this analogy before, it sends a signal to the rest of the world.
00:19:28.500They're negotiating through us to the rest of the world as much as they're negotiating with us.
00:19:33.980So there's this great Chinese proverb, you're being hassled by monkeys as a farmer, and you can't chase down every single monkey.
00:19:57.440So by taking Canada and Mexico, two countries where the U.S. will be harmed the most,
00:20:03.120and making us examples up front, if they can get a quick win with us,
00:20:07.340then Ian's point, your point about restructuring the global economy becomes a little bit easier.
00:20:13.220Everyone realizes, holy bleep, not only does Trump have tariff power, but he just used it on Canada and Mexico.
00:20:20.780We better hustle to the negotiating table with, as the Chinese would say, a correct understanding of the situation.
00:20:28.180Ian, do you think that our political leaders get the severity of the total threat, both the tariffs and these structural changes Trump wants to make?
00:20:40.460I've been watching, reading just about every word, at least that's reported publicly, because I'm not inside any of these circles.
00:20:47.700I've been reading the comments by Mr. Trudeau and by Christy Freeland, and by, I don't want to turn this into a pure partisan thing against the liberals in Ottawa,
00:20:57.600I've been reading the comments by the Premier of Ontario, Premier Ford.
00:21:01.500And I have seen comments daily saying that, to the effect, Trump's a bozo, the people around him are bozos,
00:21:09.520they don't even understand tariffs, they don't understand the impact, they don't even understand why they're doing it.
00:21:14.900In fact, Premier Ford said that, and I'm paraphrasing only slightly.
00:21:19.480Carlo had a great line about that in his piece in the Financial Post.
00:21:23.300He described it as, we're elite-splaining to the Americans instead of listening to what they're saying.
00:21:29.660And why I was so upset about that isn't because I'm here to defend Donald Trump.
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00:25:47.700I don't think that's a plausible program.
00:25:51.660And we are so intertwined with the United States.
00:25:54.760Nobody will have heard this, but before we started recording the podcast, we were all talking about the fact that Carla's wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey and cheering for them this weekend.
00:26:06.140And, Ian, you're cheering for Patrick Mahomes.
00:26:08.540You know, I'm going out to watch the Bills game with my buddies.
00:26:12.100You know, we consume American culture.
00:26:14.280We consume a huge amount of their products.
00:26:38.100I have seen scant evidence of a more than cursory reading of Lighthizer's No Trade is Free Trade, a cursory glance at the work produced by American Compass or the American First Policy Institute.
00:26:55.080We did a deep dive at Canada West the same way I do a deep dive on the relevant parts of China's five-year plan.
00:27:27.660So, if we don't understand this, how do we formulate proper policies to protect Canadians?
00:27:34.440So, they need to listen to this podcast, is what you're saying, and they need to read what you guys have been writing about this.
00:27:40.980Well, I'm not going to say that because I don't want anyone from Foreign Affairs to lose their lunch.
00:27:45.880But, no, you have to do that basic work.
00:27:50.240And when I was in Washington for the inauguration with Gary Maher, we went to the embassy and we saw a bunch of Canadians talking to a bunch of Canadians and Americans that work with Canada.
00:28:02.780But we were also at a reception that was celebrating the Trump victory, a very, very right-of-center crowd, MAGA folks in the room.
00:28:15.860We weren't there to celebrate or to clean champagne glasses with them.
00:28:20.840We were there because these are the people we're going to have to deal with.
00:28:23.620So, time and time again, I just – and no one from the embassy was at this major reception.
00:28:31.600It's why I give full credit to Premier Danielle Smith.
00:28:44.780She actually had FaceTime with Trump more than once.
00:28:47.080She had FaceTime with Burgum and I believe it was Lutnik as well.
00:28:53.240I mean, these are important members of the administration that now have an eye-to-eye contact.
00:28:59.140And if you haven't done business in Washington with governments or think tanks or the media, I don't think Canadians get – like, networking is so much more important to Americans.
00:29:11.140And that personal contact is hugely important.
00:29:14.740And once you get it, they're willing to, oh, yeah, I remember meeting you.
00:30:31.120What mechanisms do we have in terms of provincial or federal capacity to be able to mitigate some of the damages?
00:30:39.520We know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $28 billion U.S. in checks to U.S. farmers to compensate for damages in the trade war with China from Chinese retaliation.
00:30:52.860What are we going to do for Canadian producers and Canadian exporters?
00:30:58.060What could we learn from other jurisdictions?
00:31:01.220What's worked in Canada where we've had natural disasters or economic shocks?
00:31:05.820This work needed to be done as soon as we knew that Trump clinched, but we didn't.
00:31:13.020We did spend a lot of time in the States, which was necessary, but we didn't do the other half of the job, which is why you see people scrambling now.
00:31:24.520We've waited until it's already occurred, and we're suddenly desperate and scrambling for our options as opposed to having prepared, and we had plenty of warning.
00:31:37.320If I could see this, I'm not the smartest guy out there.
00:31:40.940If I could see this, some of those geniuses at foreign affairs certainly should have seen it coming.
00:32:19.720So I'm just going to talk about Canada.
00:32:21.220That list has been very, very consistent from then until now under successive American presidents.
00:32:27.120They are really opposed to supply management.
00:32:29.660They're completely opposed to the Broadcast Act, excuse me, the Telecom Act that prohibits American companies from coming in, like Verizon and ATT.
00:32:37.100They don't like the protectionisms in the Bank Act.
00:32:45.220Obama came to parliament and he said, he actually talked about this list.
00:32:48.940And he said, but we like you, you're good people, you're our best friend, so we're not going to pursue it.
00:32:54.180Trump came along and said, I'm not going to accept that.
00:32:57.520So we know the shopping list that Mr. Trump wants us to change.
00:33:02.600So what we should be doing, I'm answering your question.
00:33:05.200To me, it's just, we should be pounding the table instead of threatening a trade war that we will get squashed like a bug on a windshield in the summertime.
00:33:14.000We should be pounding the table saying, we want to renegotiate the KUSMA agreement and we want to start Monday morning.
00:33:21.320And we will put all of our sacred cows on the table, the six or seven protected industries.
00:33:27.340And we want you to drop and give us guarantees you'll drop all of these tariffs.
00:33:33.160And I, if the paper written by Stephen Maron certainly suggests that.
00:33:38.960He doesn't put it quite as baldly as I just did, but he said there's things that the Canada is protecting and other countries are protecting their countries from American firms coming in.
00:33:48.700And he says, that's got to end or we will put tariffs on them and raise them if they retaliate.
00:33:53.160So to me, it's as clear as can be in that document, the Mirren paper.
00:33:58.720And what we have to do is immediately move to, and Trump offered it just the other day, yesterday, start negotiating a new KUSMA and put all those sacred cows, all five or six or seven of them, on the table and get rid of them.
00:34:14.100It's funny that you're saying that to fight back against American protectionism, we have to get rid of our own protectionism.
00:34:20.900Look, all countries are hypocrites on trade.
00:34:24.280It's why Lighthizer's book is called No Trade is Free.
00:38:24.440He's going to have a bunch of bureaucrat professional negotiators as well as the cabinet secretary, and they're going to come back with some kind of a package at an up-down, you know, do you approve this, Mr. Trump, or not?
00:38:37.600I don't think he's going to be micromanaging the negotiations.
00:38:40.400He's going to be way too busy dealing with all the other things that are on the desk of the president of the United States.
00:38:48.380On things where Trump doesn't care, he delegates more.
00:38:51.640On things that are personally important to him, he meddles a lot more.
00:38:55.340With the first administration, he started out with Wilbur Wright running trade policy.
00:39:00.480That lasted until Robert Lighthizer took over.
00:39:03.580So this can change within the administration too.
00:39:06.580It's just a lot more fraught, I think, than what we're used to in dealing with Americans, where there's a lot more consistency, rigor in the process.
00:39:16.400Now, for some areas where Trump doesn't care, agricultural policy, sure, he'll just dictate that out, and chances of his issuing a tweet midway through are slim.
00:39:26.420But with areas we really care, security, going after the intelligence establishment, and trade, there's a higher degree of probability.
00:39:35.020I'm not saying it's absolutely certain.
00:39:38.180And your probability of Trump interfering with trade is higher.
00:39:42.280It's not 100%, but it's higher than, say, with agriculture, where the probability of interfering is probably a lot lower.
00:39:50.500One of the things that disturbs me is, and this speaks to the fact that our administration, our governments collectively, aren't engaged with the Americans, aren't listening to what they're saying, don't understand, is when Trump said, you've got to stop the migrants coming across the border and the fentanyl, the immediate reaction is, we're not the problem.
00:40:13.960What are you talking about, what are you talking about, and Justin Trudeau is still going around and saying, less than 1% come from Canada of the people crossing illegally into the United States.
00:40:25.880The Americans publish this data, and they're far more open with their government data than we are, and it's readily available.
00:40:34.020And you can go on to the Customs and Border Patrol website, look up how many come across total.
00:40:54.440When I spoke to Premier Smith in December, I asked her about fentanyl, because everyone says, well, only 43 pounds seized.
00:41:02.300And she said, fentanyl is a growing problem, especially in Alberta and British Columbia, being shipped down to the U.S.
00:41:09.000So she's the only politician I've spoken to or heard from that actually wanted to acknowledge that there was a problem.
00:41:16.180So, you know, if we're not engaging with them on that, not hearing what they're saying, there's no way that we're going to be doing that on trade.
00:41:23.300But the larger issue I want to get across, and maybe there's a disagreement here, I don't, look, you are much more plugged into the Americans than I am.
00:41:33.440But I just don't think the president is going to be able to, there's an awful lot of things that are on the job of any president every day of the week.
00:41:40.700You know, events, dear man, events in that famous quote of the British Prime Minister.
00:41:44.920I think what Trump is doing is, and it's in the art of the deal, which I did read, he is softening us up, using his tweets and his public comments.
00:41:53.140But once they sit down to negotiations, he's going to have, he's already delegated it to the Commerce Secretary, who's a very, very competent, extraordinarily accomplished CEO,
00:42:03.600who turned around and saved Cantor Fitzgerald after it was wiped out by 9-11 when they lost 85 or 90 percent of their employees.
00:42:10.120And he's a very bright guy, and he's going to have his team of negotiators.
00:42:14.280And then they're going to get into all of the intricacies of this, and then there's going to be a package deal that they bring back.
00:42:20.960And in the paper I keep quoting, Marin said very clearly, explicitly, they want to use the tariffs to get countries to open up those protected industries.
00:42:44.600I want to be respectful of both of your time.
00:42:46.360But I want to ask you about the setup of Canada's economy.
00:42:51.020We don't have a functional government right now.
00:42:54.360We've got one guy that said he's resigning, who has no respect from Trump.
00:42:58.040We've got Mark Carney, who resigned as the UN climate change special rapporteur and the head of the financial asset manager's net zero program.
00:45:07.260We've got a leader who's forgotten but not yet gone running the country.
00:45:13.780You can thank Gary Marr for that quote.
00:45:16.300So, we're just in the worst possible position.
00:45:20.620I also don't see the opposition being prepared for this.
00:45:23.760Now, we've commented a lot about government not doing things, no evidence of the government contacting the America First movement or knowing things.
00:45:36.800If the government has done something, it's the fault of Foreign Affairs and the government for not having me public or communicate it to people.
00:45:45.560And it's not just me that hasn't seen it.
00:45:47.220I'm part of an expert's working group on North America, former ambassadors, Perrin Beattie and others, and they haven't seen it either.
00:45:56.500So, it also applies for the conservatives, though.
00:45:59.860I have yet to see evidence in public that the conservatives are prepared to take over the North America file.
00:46:07.480We've had a couple of statements by Pierre Paliyev.
00:46:10.140If he's done well, but I haven't seen real substance behind that from the conservatives.
00:46:16.860So, I'm not sure that they're ready to axe the tax, cut the, build the homes, what else is it?
00:47:31.780And so, I'm much more cynical than you are.
00:47:35.240I think they're going to—that's why they're not talking about negotiating a new KUSMA agreement.
00:47:39.980The last thing they want is a KUSMA agreement that's going to take the tariffs off the table and then take away their one possible driver, driving force, that will allow them to be re-elected.
00:47:50.520I think that they have a plan, but Carney is—the elites are in the Liberal Party, from everything I'm hearing in Ottawa, are coming together behind Carney.
00:48:04.320He's going to paint this as saving Canada from the Americans and from Donald Trump.
00:48:08.800And they're going to try and paint Paul Yev and the Conservatives in that—with that paint.
00:48:15.340In other words, they're going to give up on—you know, they're going to bring back abortion and the other social Conservative issues.
00:48:21.060They now have their new hot issue to label the Conservatives as sellouts and vendus who are going to be on the side of the Trumpian Americans.
00:48:32.460And they're going to try and use that to—they're going to do a Captain Canada.
00:48:36.120We're going to save Canada from not only Donald Trump and the big, bad Americans.
00:48:39.720We're going to save them, the Canadians, from the Conservatives.
00:48:42.760And that's why we haven't heard very much.
00:48:44.340I am absolutely certain that Paul Yev and his people are working night and day trying to figure out feverishly how can they come up with a policy that is not what the Liberals are doing.
00:48:55.280At the same time, they won't be seen or perceived as being in the pocket of Donald Trump.
00:49:00.500And that's why I think we've heard so little from the Conservatives right now.
00:49:04.120But I do believe they will come up with something.
00:49:06.060And I still think it has to be something along the line of a Kuzma agreement.
00:49:09.940It's hard for the Liberals to walk away from a Kuzma agreement when they negotiated the last one with Donald Trump.
00:49:15.440So I think that's going to be the opening if there is an opening.
00:49:18.200But the Liberals are going to run against Trump.
00:49:21.160They don't—I don't think they want the tariffs to come to an end.