KINSELLACAST 402： Hockey heartache, Trump tariff turmoil with Lilley, Belanger and Bad Religion!
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143.50418
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28
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Summary
In this episode of the KinsellaCast, Warren talks about his trip to Montreal, his visit to the Basilica of Notre-Dame, and the Gold Medal Game between Canada and the United States in the Winter Olympics.
Transcript
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It's the KinsellaCast, starring Warren Kinsella.
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And I apologize for the lateness of the KinsellaCast.
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So we got there on Friday and went to my parents' grave spot and tended that a bit.
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And went to Snowden Deli and ate too much food.
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And then we went to the Wolf and Something Bar.
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One of whom, or both of whom, were charged with treason.
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You can't be a mayor unless you were charged with treason.
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And then the next day, we went to Atwater Market.
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And I had the best chocolate eclair I've ever had in my life.
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Well, then I caught up with my friend Jay Bentley.
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So Jay Bentley, if the name is familiar to you, and it should be, is the bassist for Bad Religion.
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And Bad Religion is one of the best bands in the world, in my opinion.
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And I had planned to see them in Peterborough last week.
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Apparently, it was because the main act, the offspring, who I'm no big fan of,
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And they were worried the snow would collapse the building.
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And then he got us in some great seats to see his band.
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And for me, when they came out with the giant inflatable skeletons,
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But in there, of course, this morning, was the most important contest, in my opinion,
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of the entire Olympics of 2026, which is the gold medal match between Canada and the United States.
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I interviewed Brian Lilley, by the way, and Carl Belange.
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So I went to the Basilica, Notre Dame, which is one of the most beautiful buildings in Canada.
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One of the most beautiful churches in the world.
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And then you told me how bad you had to suffer.
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But the defense, it looks like it's behind right now.
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We have better offensive talent than them, I think.
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But we can't let them play in our zone that much.
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So this week, the U.S. Supreme Court, surprisingly to me, because the conservatives dominate that court, many of them appointed by Donald Trump, ruled decisively.
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They ruled that he had acted illegally, quote unquote, in a decision that I encourage everybody to look at.
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And then right after that, people were like, what does this mean?
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I mean, it's nice symbolically, but frankly, the biggest tariffs that have been imposed on Canada were not under the law that was struck down by the American Supreme Court.
00:10:09.640
Nevertheless, it's nice to see, I think, for everyone, that institutions prevail, that the rule of law prevails.
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And so he came back with different tariffs under different laws.
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But the problem is that the world economy is still in shambles because of the way that this president is acting.
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And frankly, I don't know if anyone can prepare for his actions because they are so erratic, they are so irrational, they are so bad, even for Americans.
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And this is where, again, we have to have faith in the American institutions and the democracy that it is.
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And, you know, it's going to take some time, but the midterms in the fall are key, not only for the Americans, but for the world.
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And the numbers are not great for the Republicans at the moment.
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More than 30 of them have indicated they're retiring and going back to spend more time with their families.
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But Trump doubled down in his typically Saturnalian press conference on Friday morning and said he had three different statutory means to impose tariffs.
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So for Canada, what should Carney's next move be, do you think, here?
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Like, there is no rush to come to any kind of agreement with the United States.
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So the truth is that the review of the current free agreement is underway.
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We can't panic because you cannot plan for a guy like this.
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You cannot play chess when he's playing checkers, you know?
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But the key, though, for Carney is that if he doesn't get it still soon or if he doesn't get any kind of improvement and Canadians still feel the pain from the U.S. president's action,
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politically, it gives an opening to his opponents because he was elected to fix this.
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And even though it hasn't gone his way, if you look at the polling, Carney is just unbelievably popular.
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But showing that the Liberal Party was within the margin of error of the Conservative Party in the province of Alberta, in my former home province.
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So it suggests to me that Canadians, notwithstanding the absence of results, still have a lot of confidence in Mark Carney, don't they?
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Those numbers started moving back up when Mark Carney brought back his elbows up.
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He was not the Mark Carney that people saw in the beginning of his mandate as prime minister.
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And during the campaign, the guy promised he would give tit for tat, that he would fight back for Canada.
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But that guy's been back since the beginning of the year, you know?
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And certainly the devil's speech was a turning point.
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Meanwhile, the Conservatives are in the state that they are.
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So he is benefiting from that, clearly, because that's what Canadians want to see.
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That's what Canadians want their prime minister to do.
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Not the guy that goes to the White House and says,
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Now, the Trump, it's impossible to figure out what he's going to do.
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And Carney, I guess, we'll see what we're going to do.
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You know, for Kuzma, you know, for this all-important agreement that is now subject to renegotiation,
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do you feel, as I do, that the prospects don't look good?
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I mean, I don't know why this guy seems to be so angry or so hateful towards Canada all the time,
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but he is, he's always critical of Canada on the basis of nothing.
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Does that portend bad things for the Kuzma?
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Well, yeah, I think it does, which is why you can't rush into it, right?
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But the reason why, I think, the reason why Trump has it for Canada is because we are too successful a partner.
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It's about winning, and it doesn't matter if Americans are getting their, you know, their fair share.
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And he feels that somehow the trade deals that we've had, that Canada is getting ahead.
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I think, you know, certainly in the automobile sector, the industry is so integrated that there's no clear winner.
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But for Trump, he sees that as a loss because our industry has been thriving here the way it's been constructed.
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You know, the art of the deal, if you've read that book, it's not about making good deals.
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And this old psyche is what's driving the trade policy of the United States right now because all of his sycophants are buying into that strategy.
00:16:09.020
And, you know, again, you have to go and trust the institution and assume that the public pronouncements and the bluster will not hold in the long run.
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And we've got to prepare for the second period coming up.
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I promised you I would keep it within the break.
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So that lunatic Eve Engler showed up to mess with the final NDP leadership debate.
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It was crazy and ridiculous and a shit show.
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So at the end of this process, we're getting closer to the end of the NDP leadership process.
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What's your prediction about who's going to win and will it count when they do?
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Well, I think at this point, Avi Lewis looks like he's in the driver's seat.
00:17:11.300
And this is where it's going to be very interesting because it's a ranked ballot.
00:17:17.640
It's not like a good old delegated convention where camps and factions can work together to create an anybody but Avi movement.
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But behind the scenes, you know that the organizers are talking to each other and they're trying to convince their supporters to, you know, rank their magnificent fans, rank Rob Ashton as number two and vice versa.
00:17:42.740
So that you create that kind of condition to stop Avi Lewis from winning.
00:17:48.280
It's hard to say because in a one-member, one-vote type of formula, you cannot really predict that.
00:17:56.740
But all indicators seems to point to an Avi Lewis win.
00:18:02.180
And if he does, you know, I mean, let's be honest.
00:18:06.220
The guy has the better public profile of all the candidates.
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You know, David, his grandfather, and Stephen, his father, were successful politicians.
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They are raising a lot of money on his behalf, especially in Ontario.
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But maybe, at the same time, when he does, and if he does win, it's going to create problems with some provincial wings, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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But my friends, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me this week.
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Uniquitous, competitive, we cling to you like crazy glue, and injects such a potency, it's best for all humanity.
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The spread of culture, the sword of primress, the vector of suffering, a warm and septic breeze.
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The palm ventilation, the duty and vocation, the blood of the hybrid, it's just a recipe.
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Reliving our ancestry, the fight for lack of harmony, our forefathers who led the way, their victims are still in a day.
00:20:13.340
Now it's time to erase the story of our bond, has fed our history, as it's portrayed as just a recipe for hate.
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The spread of culture, the sword of primress, the vector of suffrage, a warm and septic breeze.
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The palm ventilation, the duty and vocation, the blood of the hybrid, it's just a recipe.
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I don't know if they call it television sets anymore.
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So by the time everybody hears this, I guess we'll know the outcome.
00:21:13.580
So what is your, you're in the prediction business?
00:21:34.920
It's, yesterday's curling was so exciting because they're such great match teams.
00:21:39.480
So, and I'm expecting that sort of thing today.
00:21:43.800
And my view is, if I was the guy at the back of the bobsled who didn't do anything, I would be excellent at that.
00:21:58.800
Well, I won't put you on the spot and ask you who's going to win the game.
00:22:01.840
But matters of Canadian pride are a big deal this week.
00:22:06.560
A lot of Canadians feel that a huge victory was scored against Donald Trump's tariffs this week.
00:22:14.320
And I think you wanted to point out to people, not so fast.
00:22:19.440
My view is that this victory at the Supreme Court against tariffs doesn't mean anything for us.
00:22:27.760
Because the tariffs hitting us are not the International Economic Emergency Act.
00:22:34.320
I think you got the name of the act right, the IEEPA tariffs are what were struck down.
00:22:39.160
Those barely apply to anything coming from Canada to the U.S.
00:22:46.500
That's Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act from, I think, 1962.
00:22:55.040
And if you read the legislation, which I'm a geek and I have,
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whoever is president has all the power in the world to impose those tariffs.
00:23:06.280
So, you know, all this talk of, oh, well, they're struck down.
00:23:12.800
Doesn't really matter to Canada because those 25% and 50% tariffs and 45% tariffs on steel,
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aluminum, autos, lumber, those are still in place.
00:23:25.260
And this new global tariff he's bringing in, well, everything in Kuzma is exempt.
00:23:31.080
Most of our exports, other than those sectoral ones I just listed off, covered by Kuzma.
00:23:36.400
So, you know, this is good news and big news for other countries.
00:23:46.540
And one thing that's good about the American decisions is they're written very plainly.
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I know as a lawyer, you read court decisions and sometimes ours gets too flowery.
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There's, I don't know how this happened, but they're very short and very to the point.
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And I'm told that Gore such as concurrence of Justice Roberts' majority decisions,
00:24:09.180
well worth reading as he lays out separation of powers,
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The law Trump used did not give him the power to impose tariffs.
00:24:20.740
Congress did not surrender that power the way they did in this other act,
00:24:25.880
They clearly delineated the power on national security grounds.
00:24:33.880
The Americans have what they call a plain language movement within the legal profession
00:24:38.260
and to make it more accessible and understandable to people.
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But I did still get, I got a phone call immediately after the decision,
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a friend of mine who's in the beans business, who said,
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My advice to him, and you can tell me whether I've written it or not,
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Take whatever you would have been paying in a tariff
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Don't spend it somewhere else on your business.
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Hold on to it because he may figure out some way to get at that money in the future.
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You know, notify the Americans that you're keeping the money in a trust account
00:25:22.020
And I said, you know, commence the decade-long litigation
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because the Trump guys have news that they won't give the tariffs they've collected back.
00:25:37.220
But if they are illegal, as the Supreme Court said,
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Although, in fairness to him, Trump didn't say the money wouldn't be paid back.
00:25:51.340
Oh, his administration officials have been saying that in interviews for months.
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You know, well, no, this money will not be repaid.
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And companies have been buying up long before the court decision.
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Companies were buying up people's payables on what they paid,
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And one of the biggest purchases of it, according to one report I saw,
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which used to be headed up by a guy named Howard Lutnick.
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They bet big that they're going to get repaid one day.
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And so they, you know, if you had paid a million dollars in tariffs
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and you weren't sure you were going to get them back,
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they'd buy your refund for $300,000 or $400,000.
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And then they'll sit on it and wait to get the million back.
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Well, maybe Lutton had cooked that up when he was having a family vacation
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and you're looking at this dog's breakfast on Friday.
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but then President of the United States coming out
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Well, last week, Dominic LeBlanc was the leader
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Our exports to the United States are worth 68 times
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the second, third, fourth, and fifth largest export market
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for Canada, and it amounts to about six weeks of trade with the U.S.
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So I think he's got to do a charm offensive in Washington again.
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The Mexicans are well ahead of us on this.
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Well, they moved ahead of us on trade, didn't they,
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They struck a critical minerals deal earlier this month.
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And we think that the Mexicans are going to stand up for us.
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Do you not remember the last time this happened?
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and we had to sign off to what they negotiated at the last minute.
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And so that was a result of the Mexicans not really giving a shit about us,
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And a guy who was not yet the U.S. trade representative,
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Greer was the guy that had that deal ready to go,
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and then Canada had to sign on at the last second.
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Look, auto parts, not part of the 25% sectoral tariffs.
00:29:45.860
The Brampton plant for Stellantis is not opening up again.
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Waiting things out is good if you're not impacted by it.
00:30:07.240
between the countervailing duties and tariffs, 45%.
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well, my role is to be the glass half empty guy.
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why do you believe that Kuzma is going to be renegotiated?
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Is it possible that we fail at getting a new deal?
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And part of the reason I know these trade numbers
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quoting Greer extensively from multiple interviews
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And I don't see overall how that's a bad thing for us.
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They export to us 34 billion in that same year.
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we have a very lopsided trading agreement with Mexico.
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my answer to Mark Carney going around the world
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we signed on to what the Mexicans had agreed to for us.
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We need to focus on better access for our markets
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As old glory may change your consciousness.
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