Carney and Ford CLASH over U.S. tariff response
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Toxicity
1
sentences flagged
Hate speech
1
sentences flagged
Summary
Trump announces new tariffs on Canadian dairy, beef, and other products. Canadian PM Carney says he s keeping his options open. Ford pushes for a dollar-for-dollar response. What will Canada do about it? Our guest today is Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lyle.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Elbows down, at least for now, Prime Minister Carney has decided not to retaliate in response
00:00:11.360
to the 50% tariffs on Canadian goods announced this week by President Trump, who now says the
00:00:17.620
tariffs are not just about the wildfires. Are those a response to the wildfires in
00:00:23.540
No, no, no. That's separate. We're looking at that separately.
00:00:27.960
It's only a response to the way they've treated our farmers and our people.
00:00:32.360
Canada's been very, very tough on us over the years.
00:00:36.060
For many years, and no other president's done anything about it.
00:00:44.340
But their leadership from Trudeau to the current leadership,
00:00:49.800
I mean, in all fairness to them, they need us to survive.
00:00:57.360
Carney, meantime, says he's keeping his options open.
00:01:01.540
We have a situation where the American tariffs, the 338 tariffs, will come into effect in 29 days.
00:01:10.700
And we will look at all options in terms of how we would respond if they do come into effect.
00:01:17.000
That's part of what we'll be discussing with premiers.
00:01:19.680
Also, in parallel, as I just said, that I'd spoken with the President, we agreed to intensify
00:01:26.800
We'll begin that right away, and this is part of the negotiation, so the first objective
00:01:32.820
is to get a comprehensive agreement that benefits, obviously, both countries, that's consistent
00:01:39.020
with Kuzma, Kuzma as it is and Kuzma as it will be, and we'll work towards that.
00:01:46.240
But in parallel, when I say we will do whatever it takes and keep all options, obviously, it's a comprehensive point.
00:01:55.480
In a statement released today, Carney said the Trump tariffs violated the free trade agreement but stopped short of imposing new tariffs on U.S. products.
00:02:04.640
He says Canada has made a series of detailed and comprehensive proposals to resolve this dispute and to modernize KUSMA.
00:02:13.340
We stand ready to intensify those discussions in the coming weeks.
00:02:18.360
This trade dispute has raised costs for families, particularly in the United States.
00:02:24.480
Al Carney and Premier Doug Ford appear to be at odds over how to deal with the latest U.S. tariffs.
00:02:37.460
I'm tired of the bully trying to take our lunch money all the time.
00:02:43.580
We need to be on the offense, not constantly on the defense with President Trump.
00:02:48.940
We need to stand up to the bully and we need to hit him tariff to tariff all the way across the board.
00:02:59.000
That, of course, would make U.S. goods more expensive for Canadian consumers already struggling with high grocery bills.
00:03:06.480
U.S. Trade Rep. Jameson Greer says the new tariffs are in response to longstanding trade issues between the two countries.
00:03:14.760
And we impose tariffs on on all the world at varying levels of all the countries who retaliated against the United States.
00:03:20.920
One was the People's Republic of China and the other was Canada.
00:03:25.020
Some of the things they did is they banned the sale of U.S. liquor and other booze on Canadian shelves.
00:03:31.560
They capped and limited the amount of autos that could be shipped to the United States
00:03:38.240
And they also continue to maintain limited space for market access for U.S. dairy.
00:03:45.140
But importantly, they give other countries better deals on each of these three issues.
00:03:49.680
And so it was a natural consequence after a year of these measures being a place
00:03:54.140
and longer in the case of dairy for the president to take action.
00:04:00.520
We've been asking for a year for the Canadians to remove these, to modify them, to adjust them.
00:04:06.260
Our guest today is Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilly.
00:04:15.420
It appears to me that you've got two different approaches here.
00:04:22.760
Now, you suggest that there may be more to that.
00:04:25.300
But we've got Carney saying, you know, no retaliatory measures right now as far as the 50 percent tariffs coming the other way.
00:04:36.840
And we've got Ford taking a more belligerent tone saying, no, we've got to go dollar for dollar.
00:04:44.980
These tariffs don't take effect until August 19th.
00:04:47.940
And if you listen to what U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer has been saying on American business television this morning,
00:04:54.380
because while this story dominates the headlines everywhere in Canada, Mark,
00:04:59.180
nobody in the U.S. is paying attention, except like CNBC and Fox Business.
00:05:03.980
They're talking about it because it's a business story.
00:05:06.680
The rest of the Americans, they probably don't know that anything happened related to Canada yesterday.
00:05:13.140
And meanwhile, every Canadian knows exactly what's going on.
00:05:20.720
He was asked, you know, should the provinces remove their booze ban?
00:05:24.020
he said, well, that's a provincial decision. Doug Ford and David Eby out in British Columbia are
00:05:28.420
saying, absolutely not. The American booze is not going back on the shelf. You're right, Ford is
00:05:33.680
sounding more belligerent. Although he did say he wants us to get to the negotiating table and try
00:05:41.040
and strike a deal in the next 30 days. But if not, then he wants it to be matching tariff for tariff,
00:05:47.480
dollar for dollar. He also went on to, you know, he's calling Donald Trump a bully and you don't
00:05:52.300
let the bully steal your lunch money. It's like, calm down. No, that tone may have been
00:05:58.140
appropriate 18 months ago. I don't think it is now. I don't think it helps. But here's something
00:06:04.820
that you need to know, is that while Ford and EB are saying we're not putting the American
00:06:13.320
booze back on, and Carney seeming like he's non-confrontational, my understanding is that
00:06:18.520
some provinces have looked and said, well, you know what? It's not helping. Maybe we'll put it
00:06:22.380
back. And Carney is urging these or and or his team urging these provinces, don't give that card
00:06:28.760
up. Keep the booze ban in place. Do not walk away from this. He wants that in place. He knows it's
00:06:34.720
the number one irritant for the U.S. And look, if if I was Carney, I wouldn't want the provinces
00:06:40.880
to give it up unilaterally either. But I would be at the table trying to negotiate a deal saying,
00:06:47.220
look, here's what we'll do, including lifting the booze ban, including critical minerals,
00:06:51.520
preferred access for the United States, preferred access for energy. We'll up our defense spending
00:06:56.740
into the Arctic and elsewhere. And, you know, we'll do a bunch of things. We'll come to terms
00:07:02.360
with you on dairy, but we want the tariffs gone. We want guaranteed access to the U.S. market.
00:07:09.020
Carney's not doing that. He wants the booze ban to stay in place, but he's not engaging with the
00:07:13.700
americans and he won't engage with the americans until after the midterms which i think is a
00:07:18.960
horrible strategy that could backfire on us well it could backfire if the republicans hold on to
00:07:24.940
the house it's doubtful they will i think they're going to hold on to the senate the the house is
00:07:31.140
the house is possible but it's a big lift for them the redrawing of the boundaries especially
00:07:37.460
in the u.s south uh southeast you know could make a difference but for a while there looked like the
00:07:44.900
republicans would lose the house and the senate now they're going to keep the senate potentially
00:07:48.840
lose the house and donald trump's just going to be grumpy at that point and he's still going to be
00:07:53.780
in charge of the trade negotiations how is this a winning strategy i mean i get the argument that
00:08:02.080
you have that as a bargaining chip and allow trump to win so that's what he wants right he wants
00:08:07.460
be able to say i got those canadians to back off on the booze ban you know and so you keep that chip
00:08:14.180
chip on the table and you throw it in as part of a negotiation between the two sides now one of the
00:08:19.860
things that carney did say and you heard him was we're going to intensify talks um does that mean
00:08:26.580
that those talks are now quote-unquote intensifying that we're seeing a level of engagement that we
00:08:33.540
we haven't seen between these two countries for a while? I don't know what that means because
00:08:38.720
Mark Carney is claiming in both his verbal statements to TV cameras and in a letter that
00:08:44.680
statement he released yesterday that he has submitted multiple detailed proposals to the
00:08:51.100
Americans and officially Ambassador Greer who I mentioned earlier said all we keep getting are
00:08:56.800
proposals to talk more and you know have further discussions and he said we don't want discussions
00:09:02.900
we want solutions and we're not offering solutions. So, and you can say, well, that's
00:09:08.660
the Americans saying that. Well, I've spent the past day on the phone talking to people
00:09:13.720
who know what's going on in these trade talks, Canadians and Americans, and they're all saying
00:09:18.820
Greer is right. We are pretending to engage with the Americans and we've just been phoning it in.
00:09:25.900
Why? Because it's that strategy. They want to wake Trump out. That's what they think.
0.94
00:09:30.460
so you know ordinary canadians are footing the bill for mark carney's political strategy he
00:09:36.220
knows that as long as he's fighting with donald trump his poll numbers are doing great and so
00:09:40.940
these new terrorists from trump that's a godsend to mark carney it's like wow is are the liberals
00:09:46.660
going to hit 60 of the polls now it could happen i mean okay i don't think it will but you know
00:09:52.340
what i'm saying his poll numbers go up every time he fights with trump that's part of why he wants
00:09:56.460
to keep this going. Part of why he wants to defer. And in the meantime, average Canadians are losing
00:10:02.060
their jobs. In June, we lost 17,000 manufacturing jobs. 52,000 manufacturing jobs gone since Mark
00:10:10.680
Carney became prime minister on a promise to get a deal with Donald Trump because he told us. He
00:10:16.620
said he knows Trump. He's worked with Trump before. He knows how to negotiate. I would say between
00:10:22.060
this and the gordy how bridge deal uh the evidence shows the opposite so rag the puck that's that's
00:10:29.180
the strategy and i guess if there is retaliatory measures on our side there's always the danger
00:10:34.700
that that will just really increase the pain level for consumers because i mean if we're buying food
00:10:39.900
for instance from the united states and those certain articles are subject to tariffs then
00:10:45.820
it's just going to make it more expensive for canadian consumers who are already um feeling
00:10:51.100
the pinch from high inflation and grocery prices so it's a double-edged sword when it comes to
00:10:57.740
these tariffs isn't it at the end of the day you want to hurt the other guys but you don't
00:11:02.140
want to hurt your own people and sadly that's kind of the effect that tariffs have isn't it
00:11:07.740
well in the um when trump first put in his tariffs most canadians don't realize this so he tariffed
00:11:15.100
our steel, our auto, our aluminum. He increased some tariffs on softwood lumber, which were
00:11:21.520
already at historic highs, thanks to Joe Biden. When he tariffed that, we tariffed their steel,
00:11:29.960
aluminum, and autos. But then we also tariffed a whole bunch of things from March of 2025 until
00:11:36.720
the beginning of September 2025. And the government said, we're going to do these tariffs in a way
00:11:43.300
that doesn't hurt Canadians. And then what did they tariff? Coffee. So the biggest producer of
00:11:50.760
coffee in the world is Brazil. Brazil had a, but we get most of our coffee through the United States,
00:11:56.740
even if it is originally sourced in Brazil or Colombia, it comes to us through the United
00:12:01.840
States. The US had put a 25% tariff on Brazilian coffee coming into the US. Then we were putting
00:12:08.320
a 25% tariff on coffee coming in from the US, which is mostly coming from Brazil and Colombia.
00:12:13.300
which, you know, so double tariff. Our own tariffs on ourselves helped drive up the food
00:12:19.880
inflation that we saw. I mean, we're still seeing it. It's horrible. We were tariffing things we
00:12:24.940
never should have tariffed and also that were Kuzma compliant goods. And it was last summer,
00:12:31.520
the American said to us, you've had tariffs on Kuzma compliant goods for months now. If you don't
00:12:37.460
stop it. We're going to do that to you. Our reaction to the American tariffs originally
00:12:41.660
and since day one has been over and above what it should be. And so Trump is responding now,
00:12:49.340
I think unjustly on many of these, especially on the auto ones. But, you know, he's reacting the
00:12:57.620
way we're reacting. And when I point this out, I hear from an awful lot of Canadians, Mark,
00:13:01.260
to just say, yeah, but screw him. Well, okay, sure. If that's your negotiating strategy, great.
0.96
00:13:09.000
But at the end of the day, we need to get a deal with them because so much of our trade is with
00:13:14.080
the United States. If we want to crush our own economy, then we're going about it the right way.
00:13:20.620
Supply management has also reared its ugly head. And you heard Jameson Greer bring it up
00:13:25.900
uh during his interview on cnbc you know could the carny government move on that
00:13:33.200
or do you see that as kind of a non-starter in terms of negotiations going forward
00:13:39.080
well they don't have to move much to make the americans happy
00:13:44.080
look the americans don't want us to get rid of supply management they they could care less
00:13:49.420
whether we have it or don't have it that's up to us and we've decided as a country that we would
00:13:54.720
rather pay or our politicians have decided that we'd rather pay high prices for domestic cheese
00:14:00.480
and milk and other dairy products, butter as a way to ensure the small family farm sticks around.
00:14:08.000
Although we've gone from I think over 100,000 family farms when we brought this in to less
00:14:13.100
than 9,000 now. So the small family farm is a myth. Supply management is not doing what they
00:14:19.780
claim it would do. But here's part of the problem. We negotiated a deal with them that they would
00:14:27.860
have a certain percentage of access to the Canadian market on things like cheese. And then
00:14:32.980
we blocked them. How? The quota that we allotted to them, we didn't give to them. We gave it to
00:14:39.040
our companies. So the big cheese producers like Armstrong and Black Diamond and Saputo and
00:14:46.420
um agripoor these big companies have the quota and if they want to bring in american products
00:14:53.200
they can but they generally don't want to so they don't and then the americans say but wait a minute
00:14:59.200
you said we could sell you this cheese and you guys aren't buying it you refuse to buy it and
00:15:04.520
we can't sell it any other way so all they wanted was for a better allotment of how the um uh quotas
00:15:13.080
would be handed out. Now they've looked at the European free trade deal that we have in the U.S.
00:15:19.800
free trade deal. It can only be industrial producer to industrial producer of things like
00:15:24.900
cheese products that can sell back and forth. But the European trade deal, it allows for retailers
00:15:32.260
to say, you know what? I really like this type of brie. I'm going to import it. And the retailers
00:15:37.260
can decide what they're bringing in. So the Americans are now saying, okay, you've been
00:15:42.160
screwing is over on kuzma which by the way they've complained at trade panels twice once
00:15:46.600
one once lost once they've been complaining about it the whole time now they're saying give us what
00:15:51.880
the europeans have if you want these tariffs to go away they've upped the ante because we decided
00:15:58.280
to play silly games with the agreement we had with them okay so at this point wrapping things up uh
00:16:06.920
we're kind of ragging the puck but saying it's their fault and the americans are saying well
00:16:11.680
know it's it's canada's fault it's hard to know exactly whose fault it is but we can safely say
00:16:18.480
that things kind of be to continue to spin its wheels and i suppose we're heading for the midterms
00:16:24.600
in which we really don't know the result yeah and in fact the republicans hold on to the house
00:16:31.060
as well as the senate then you're saying that trump maybe ends up even more belligerent than
00:16:37.980
he was before the midterms. Is that the bottom line here? Yeah. And if the Democrats do take
00:16:43.880
the House, where's all the excitement in the Democrat Party right now? The far left of the
00:16:48.440
party, which whether you're just a far left Democrat or part of the Democratic Socialists
00:16:52.660
of America, you don't like Kuzma and you want to get rid of free trade. So they're not thinking
00:16:59.840
this out. How do people find you online, Brian? You can find me on X at Brian Lilly, or you can
00:17:06.420
us, Toronto Sun, and of course, BrianLily.com. Great stuff. Thank you once again. Appreciate
00:17:12.180
you coming on the show. Thank you. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting great
00:17:17.160
independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News. Please go to JunoNews.com
00:17:22.460
backslash straight up. You can find the link below. It helps us do what we do. Thank you
00:17:26.960
so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.