Juno News - Trump KILLS possible trade deal with Canada？!

00:00:00.000 President Trump says he is not looking to renew the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

00:00:13.140 He says NAFTA has been terrible for the United States.

00:00:17.080 How confident are you that you'll be able to renew the USMCA and what more do you expect from Canada at this point?

00:00:23.320 Well, I'm not looking to renew it.

00:00:24.780 I don't, you know, I mean, I made the deal and the primary reason I made the deal is that NAFTA was the worst trade deal I've ever seen.

00:00:32.020 USMCA did one thing that I loved.

00:00:34.880 After six years, it comes up for renewal.

00:00:39.500 I don't know that I'm going to renew it.

00:00:42.600 Well, that's more bad news for Canada, which is trying to salvage the trade agreement.

00:00:48.520 Meantime, Premier Doug Ford is ending his trade mission to Washington, D.C.

00:00:52.360 after getting somewhat of a cool reception.

00:00:55.740 No one in the Trump administration would meet with him,

00:00:58.240 and the one reception he was scheduled to attend was canceled at the last minute.

00:01:04.160 Ford did do some media interviews, including this one with CBS.

00:01:07.560 This is a slightly more diplomatic overture by you

00:01:12.380 after the moves last year to remove American goods from provincial stores,

00:01:18.960 the advertising that was run that needled President Trump?

00:01:23.280 Why the change in tactic, and does it have anything to do with the fact

00:01:26.820 that Canada appears now to have gone two quarters with negative growth,

00:01:30.920 therefore technically in a recession?

00:01:33.100 Well, I guess that would be the exception to Ontario.

00:01:36.600 We've seen tremendous growth.

00:01:38.440 Back-to-back months, we've seen 42,400 jobs.

00:01:42.380 April, another 42,000 in May as well.

00:01:46.640 And so we're seeing tremendous growth right now in Ontario.

00:01:50.980 But we need to work together.

00:01:53.880 And there's going to be a time, and the time is right now,

00:01:57.680 that the U.S. needs our energy.

00:01:59.740 We keep the lights on and businesses open with the lights on.

00:02:04.820 1.5 million homes and businesses in New York State and Michigan and Minnesota.

00:02:10.000 and I want to ship more energy down to the U.S.

00:02:14.620 Afford was careful not to attack the president this time.

00:02:18.740 He also posted this on X.

00:02:20.400 It was great to meet Congresswoman Representative Tenney of New York

00:02:25.500 to discuss how we can continue growing our two economies through tariff-free trade

00:02:31.700 and support greater cooperation between New York and Ontario.

00:02:36.060 Despite a few low-level meetings, the premier's more conciliatory tone came too late.

00:02:45.260 Months of public attacks, during which he called Trump a tyrant who was hated by Canadians,

00:02:50.500 did not go unnoticed in Washington.

00:02:53.180 And so the Ford charm offensive, in which he called for a fortress North America-style

00:02:58.640 trade alliance with the United States, has ultimately failed.

00:03:02.900 He was scheduled to attend a reception hosted by Ross Perot Jr.,

00:03:07.160 chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

00:03:09.680 That was canceled.

00:03:11.200 Despite that, Industry Minister Melanie Jolie praised Ford's trip to the United States.

00:03:16.480 Well, I have a super good relationship with Premier Ford.

00:03:19.100 I think that we're standing shoulder to shoulder to counter the impacts of the tariffs.

00:03:24.800 The tariffs are really, really hurting.

00:03:26.940 A lot of us are hurting.

00:03:28.220 A lot of us are hurting.

00:03:28.920 And I think it's important that we talk to American leaders across the U.S.

00:03:37.320 I'll be going to the U.S. this summer.

00:03:39.620 There will be many of us that will be going.

00:03:41.460 Our guest today is Jocelyn Bamford, founder of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers

00:03:46.680 and Businesses of Canada, joining us from Virginia.

00:03:50.040 Welcome, Jocelyn.

00:03:51.420 Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:03:52.940 It's always a pleasure to be with you and your listeners and your viewers.

00:03:57.800 Exactly.

00:03:58.920 here on Juneau News.

00:04:00.360 All right, let's have a look at this clip

00:04:02.380 from President Trump.

00:04:03.980 It's relatively new, and I think you'll agree

00:04:06.820 it's kind of a blow to those who had been hoping

00:04:10.080 that Kuzma could be renewed.

00:04:12.660 Let's listen to what the president had to say.

00:04:15.040 How confident are you that you'll be able

00:04:17.480 to renew the USNCA, and what more do you expect

00:04:20.180 from Canada at this point?

00:04:21.420 Well, I'm not looking to renew it.

00:04:23.020 I don't, you know, I mean, I made the deal,

00:04:25.500 and the primary reason I made the deal is that NAFTA

00:04:27.700 the worst trade deal i've ever seen usmca did one thing that i loved after six years it comes up for

00:04:35.860 renewal i don't know that i'm going to redo it there you go i'm not a particularly optimistic

00:04:45.060 assessment but now we've got canada all in now it's the full court press not only by

00:04:51.460 uh premier ford who's been to washington dc but uh the federal government and they're now on this

00:04:57.780 kind of charm offensive you know they've completely dialed back the elbows up stuff and are really

00:05:02.580 trying to uh speak to anybody who will listen to them about this trade deal what do you think

00:05:09.380 yeah absolutely and and we all predicted that this would happen at the beginning

00:05:13.700 we said in what world is it a great strategy to tick off your largest customer, your closest ally,

00:05:22.980 your trading partner, and in what world does it go well when you poke the bear continuously,

00:05:31.300 talk smack about them every chance you get, ban their liquor, completely cut off any negotiations,

00:05:38.660 and then suddenly decide that you can come in on the 13th hour and get a deal.

00:05:45.840 It's just not a realistic worldview.

00:05:49.540 And we had warned them the absolute crushing effect on the economy.

00:05:54.580 If they didn't have a deal, we told them to get back to the table.

00:05:57.540 We told them to negotiate.

00:05:58.720 We said, we need a deal.

00:06:01.540 Small to medium-sized businesses cannot afford to have a deal.

00:06:06.060 Canada will be in financial ruin.

00:06:07.900 but they didn't listen to us and they continued um to go on cnn and insult the the president of

00:06:16.300 the united states and our largest trading partner and this is what you get what you

00:06:20.940 how you reap so so so you so and and but we're paying the price ordinary canadians small business

00:06:28.780 are going to pay the price uh for this and it was a predictable outcome yeah i think what

00:06:34.620 what else is predictable is it wouldn't surprise me if the U.S. media started to get bored of

00:06:40.360 Doug Ford and stopped bringing him onto the show. But as far as I could see,

00:06:45.900 Premier Ford's strategy appears to, to your point, you know, take the U.S. liquor off the store

00:06:51.880 shelves, you know, anger as many people in that industry south of the border, then take repeated

00:06:57.320 personal shots at Trump on U.S. cable networks over the course of months. And if that doesn't

00:07:04.340 work, go down to D.C. and see if anybody worth talking to will give him the time of day. I mean,

00:07:09.800 this was a humiliation for Doug Ford. He went down there. The only real event that was scheduled for

00:07:16.100 him, a reception, was canceled. This was with Ross Perot Jr. It didn't happen. And I don't know,

00:07:24.700 he didn't get anywhere. He got nothing. And certainly nobody from the administration is

00:07:29.860 going to give Doug Ford the time of day. My question is, what was he thinking when he was

00:07:35.200 going on CNN, Fox, anybody that would have him on MSNBC and take all these shots at the president

00:07:45.380 and think that that was going to work out? I don't get it. And I find it difficult to believe

00:07:51.740 it's not a coordinated strategy between the federal government and the Ontario provincial

00:07:56.120 government because when those first Ronald Reagan ads came on, the Premier of Ontario and the

00:08:05.400 Prime Minister had dinner the night before. And I find it absolutely unbelievable that they wouldn't

00:08:12.640 have had a conversation on that. So to say that, oh, Doug Ford's gone rogue, that's not believable.

00:08:20.760 I believe it was a coordinated strategy. But you know who has made out well is Premier Daniel

00:08:25.400 Smith. She did not get on the wrong side of our largest trading partner. She went down in spite

00:08:31.200 of the consternation of the elbows up crowd. She went down, had conversations, worked to get a 0.54

00:08:38.100 deal. And as I predicted at the beginning, Alberta is going to come out way better than the rest of 0.63

00:08:44.120 Canada in terms of having better economic outcomes than the rest of us. Ontario is going to be

00:08:51.480 decimated. And the fact that they couldn't see this coming is beyond me. I guess they thought

00:08:58.420 that they were going to coordinate a complete world group against the United States. And that

00:09:05.780 just hasn't happened. They completely underestimated, as they always do, because they

00:09:10.940 think they're the smartest people in the room and all the rest of us are big dummies. They continue 0.98

00:09:16.220 to launch their strategy again to the economic issues for ordinary Canadians and small to medium

00:09:25.940 sized business. You know, those big companies, I don't think they're going to feel it as much as

00:09:31.020 we do. And the other thing they've done is they've made sure that people don't speak out. They don't

00:09:39.540 speak out against poor policies. And it is a failure. It's a bipartisan failure. And the

00:09:45.440 Canadian landscape, especially in Toronto. We have an NDP mayor who's failed a small to medium-sized

00:09:52.740 business. We've had a conservative premier who's failed to deliver on the things that they were

00:09:58.660 supposed to do. And we have a federal government, liberal, they've all failed because what's

00:10:06.700 important to ordinary Canadians and small to medium-sized business isn't what's important to

00:10:10.780 them and they aren't they don't feel it the way we feel it so that's what happens yeah i mean one

00:10:17.180 of the things that ford really needs to do or at least try to do is bury the hatchet with pete

00:10:22.940 hookstra the u.s ambassador to canada who is a friend of the president's he is influential

00:10:28.700 word is that he urged republicans in texas ahead of ford's trip down there not to speak with ford

00:10:36.340 possibly even DC, you know, telling Republicans, don't bother with this guy. He has been ripping

00:10:42.560 our president for months. You know, let's not give him any more attention than he deserves.

00:10:50.100 What do you think of that idea to start with, is to try and heal that rift?

00:10:55.880 Well, 100%. And here's how you do it. If I was Doug Ford, and I had done a bunch of things to

00:11:04.780 completely alienate myself from the administration and those people that support the administration,

00:11:10.060 I would hire somebody that is aligned with the administration as an envoy and send them down to

00:11:17.580 see if there's any way that they could smooth the waters. And very similarly, when the first

00:11:26.580 NAFTA deal was being negotiated, or the USMCA, Harker was in charge, and he sent NDP Premier

00:11:37.780 Gary Dewar to go down because he thought he would be more aligned with the Democrats that were in

00:11:43.940 power then, sent them down, and we got a deal. And likewise, on exemptions to buy America,

00:11:53.680 The government in power, again, Harper, sent down some folks that have some relationships.

00:12:01.680 And there's a bunch of Canadians, let's be clear, that do have good relationships with

00:12:06.300 the administration.

00:12:07.680 Send those folks down to see if they can fix it.

00:12:10.300 But no one seems to be able to think their way out of this problem.

00:12:15.320 There's a number of people that come to mind that are Canadians that would like to see

00:12:19.820 a deal get done, that have good relationships with the U.S. president and his administration,

00:12:25.700 if you really want a deal, if you absolutely do want a deal, there's a bunch of things you can do,

00:12:30.240 but I'm not seeing them execute on any of them. And again, it leaves me to wonder, do they in

00:12:35.360 fact really want a deal? Yeah, we had speculated that Carney kind of didn't really want a deal

00:12:40.980 and that many of his actions seemed almost designed to undermine Kuzma.

00:12:48.360 And yet now it looks like they're scrambling.

00:12:51.980 And maybe that's the result of having met with the Chinese

00:12:55.280 and realized that maybe, you know, a free trade deal with them 0.99

00:12:59.420 isn't the best possible hope that Canada can have.

00:13:03.840 Europe, you know, they might want some of our oil and natural gas and LNG,

00:13:10.240 But apart from that, you know, how many of our cars are going to are they going to buy?

00:13:14.680 Probably not that many.

00:13:15.860 They produce them over there, as you're aware.

00:13:18.920 So I'm wondering if you think that maybe they're realigning things, you know, the realization

00:13:24.600 that they, you know, pivot their pivot over to Asia, their pivot to Europe is not going

00:13:30.540 to replace our relationship with the United States.

00:13:35.140 Yeah, it absolutely could be.

00:13:37.340 And it absolutely could be a way to have in the voters' mind, oh, they tried.

00:13:44.380 So, you know, wouldn't it be a great strategy if you ticked off the administration of the U.S. so they wouldn't give you a deal?

00:13:52.280 And then at the last minute, you pretended like you wanted a deal so that you could go back to your electorate and say, look, we tried.

00:13:58.340 We tried to make friends and they wouldn't make friends with us.

00:14:01.380 So you got to wonder, is it A or is it B or is it both?

00:14:05.780 and they're trying to find a way to excuse themselves in the 13th hour.

00:14:12.720 I just don't know if Doug Ford is equipped to fix what he broke,

00:14:19.400 if you know what I mean, as far as our relationship with the United States.

00:14:22.740 I'm just not sure that there's any, you know, putting Humpty back together again,

00:14:29.700 you know, as far as, I don't know if he has the diplomatic skills

00:14:34.300 to try and heal the rift with an aim towards reestablishing good relations with our

00:14:40.540 neighbor to the south. I don't know who advised him to take the approach that he did. Maybe he

00:14:46.700 was watching Mark Carney talk about elbows up and he thought it was real rather than just some

00:14:53.620 campaign slogan that was designed to get everybody behind Carney. But this has been a huge blunder

00:15:02.560 on the part of Doug Ford, in my opinion.

00:15:05.340 And I just don't know if he's the guy

00:15:06.960 who's going to be able to fix it.

00:15:09.380 Yeah, but if he really wanted to fix it,

00:15:12.580 then why wouldn't you appoint a special counsel

00:15:15.660 and actually put people on that special counsel

00:15:18.840 who has alignment with the U.S. administration

00:15:23.940 and send them down as envoys,

00:15:26.040 not with them, on their own,

00:15:28.100 to go back and see if there's anything they could do.

00:15:30.160 If he really, truly wants a deal,

00:15:32.340 There's ways that he could do it.

00:15:33.740 And I'd like to see that happen.

00:15:36.180 But if this trade deal is not renewed,

00:15:39.880 and it's looking like it's not going to be,

00:15:41.700 at least if you believe Trump,

00:15:42.760 unless, of course, this is all just part

00:15:45.620 of the negotiating strategy by Trump saying,

00:15:48.540 you know, I don't know if I want this deal or not.

00:15:51.160 But if that's really what he thinks,

00:15:54.680 and this deal is not renewed,

00:15:58.060 what should Canada do at that point?

00:16:00.680 yeah well so again i would i would put a huge um emphasis on doing everything i could to try

00:16:09.360 and make this deal happen um and again i would have a special counsel i would put all my resources

00:16:15.700 and trying to come up with a deal because i think the purpose of not getting a deal is going to be

00:16:22.900 absolutely um horrific especially for ontario manufacturing and then uh adding on that

00:16:30.560 potentially more tariffs aimed at Canada, the outcome of that is unimaginable. So if I was

00:16:41.280 the premier, I would put every resource possible into trying to negotiate a deal, because I think

00:16:46.780 at this point, the damage has been done. But I would give it one last try to try and untangle

00:16:55.040 that and start afresh with the US administration. And that would take for him to assign some

00:17:03.560 resources on that that would make it happen. You could put a dream team together pretty quick. I

00:17:07.900 think a lot of Canadian business people understand the importance and are willing to do whatever

00:17:13.580 they can do to help get a deal with the United States. So I'd like to see him put his money

00:17:21.900 where his mouth is and and have a strategic plan to get a deal with the U.S. Yeah I mean they could

00:17:28.660 even put forth this change in the liquor policy and say you know what as a good faith step we are

00:17:38.760 going to put back the U.S. liquor back on the shelves as a sign that we want to talk to you

00:17:44.920 and we want to open up a chain of communications with the important people who are going to make

00:17:51.620 this decision. And so that might be seen as kind of an olive branch and something that the Trump

00:17:58.260 administration can kind of cling to as a sign that maybe there is going to be hope for this.

00:18:05.020 But in the meantime, a lot of the members of your coalition, the business coalition and

00:18:09.520 manufacturers, they must be on edge right now wondering, because if this deal is not renewed,

00:18:18.160 I mean, what happens to some of those companies?

00:18:20.860 So, well, I'll tell you what would happen to a lot of those companies.

00:18:25.220 A lot of the companies are making their plan B, which would be,

00:18:29.000 I need to open up a secondary plant in the U.S.

00:18:32.460 And the job losses will be terrible for Ontario.

00:18:36.760 So a lot of them are making a plan B, looking at growth in other areas.

00:18:43.960 And isn't that a tragedy that Canadians, entrepreneurs are basically pushed out of their own home because growth, energy prices, red tape is untenable in the country?

00:19:01.340 Shouldn't we be doing whatever it takes to help our small to medium sized business?

00:19:05.440 And I can't tell you, I've never been asked by the liberal government federally or the provincial government in Ontario, you know, what do we need?

00:19:16.220 How can we help you grow?

00:19:17.720 How can we help you expand your business?

00:19:20.940 They don't even talk to us.

00:19:22.840 So, you know, the problem is right there.

00:19:26.940 Why don't they ask us for our advice on how to get a deal with the United States?

00:19:32.400 Haven't heard them reach out to us at all.

00:19:34.480 we've got lots of ideas um let us help them um get you a deal because we certainly need one

00:19:42.320 but you're right that your strategy is perfect if you wanted a deal extend an olive branch and and

00:19:49.360 let's face it um how many people ontario would love to see california wine and bourbon back on

00:19:56.880 our shelves i suspect a lot yeah and in the meantime what have we got i mean we're in a

00:20:02.880 recession and the only people who say we're not are members of the arnie government and the media

00:20:09.960 but the rest of people in the canadian public are not fooled by this at all so we're being told no

00:20:17.920 our economy is strong and we're hiring all these people and look how great things are but at the

00:20:23.680 end of the day our numbers show otherwise and so i think unfortunately a lot of canadians are

00:20:29.080 losing faith in our government. Last word to you.

00:20:33.380 Yeah, I don't blame the government for trying to paint a rosy picture. What I blame is Canadians 1.00

00:20:38.780 for buying it. We all know, just look at the statistics. It used to be one in 60 people 0.86

00:20:46.180 required services of food bank. Now it's one in 10. How much more are we going to take for our

00:20:52.340 government? We need to demand better of them. And it's incumbent on ourselves to really 0.64

00:20:58.300 become educated and make wise choices for our politicians so that they can help our kids and

00:21:04.800 grandkids have jobs. Yeah. Dawson, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it as

00:21:10.180 always. Always a pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having me. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting

00:21:16.260 great independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News. Go to junonews.com

00:21:23.140 backslash straight up. You can find the link below. It helps us do what we do. Thank you so

00:21:27.900 much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

Juno News - June 11, 2026

Trump KILLS possible trade deal with Canada？!

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript