Mark Slapinski - February 25, 2026


Why America's Trade War With Canada Failed

Topics
trade war with Canada groceries Trump's tariffs on Canada failed
Hosted by
Mark Slapinski
Mentioned
Donald Trump
Poilievre's Speech Made Me CRY Poilievre SLAMS Trump Over Tariffs

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

186.62

Word count

1,259

Sentence count

109

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The ongoing trade war between the United States and Canada has been a costly mistake. Not only has it hurt Canada, but it has hurt Americans as well. In this episode, I explain why and how Donald Trump's trade war with Canada has backfired on America.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Now whether you love Donald Trump or hate Donald Trump we have something serious to talk about
00:00:04.300 and that's the ongoing trade war between Canada and the United States. This whole trade war has
00:00:09.020 turned out to be a costly mistake. Not only has it hurt Canadians but it's also hurt Americans as
00:00:14.100 well. Let me explain. When Donald Trump put tariffs on Canada back in 25 it was supposed to bring in
00:00:19.120 this golden age of manufacturing. However that didn't happen. What happened was prices rose,
00:00:25.000 America lost its standing in the world and it pushed away its closest allies. Now this isn't
00:00:30.140 about left or right politics. This is simply about Donald Trump's trade war with Canada
00:00:34.180 and how it backfired on America. Now to understand what happened let's try to get where Donald Trump
00:00:39.400 was coming from. Donald Trump is a big fan of tariffs. He has long said that tariffs are his
00:00:44.760 favorite word. Tariffs. My favorite word. Tariffs. All tariffs really are are an import tax. So when
00:00:52.080 Donald Trump says that he's putting a 10% tariff on Canada that means that when products cross into
00:00:57.100 the United States from Canada they become 10% more expensive. Now tariffs aren't necessarily a bad
00:01:02.520 thing in and of themselves. They can be a great negotiation tactic especially when they're used
00:01:07.800 by a large country like America to get some sort of concession from a country like Canada. And it can
00:01:12.920 also help bring back manufacturing to the United States from Canada if done properly. However this
00:01:19.300 approach can actually backfire if the demands from the country that are putting on the tariffs are not
00:01:24.240 clearly defined. And it can also backfire if the country that's being tariffed has other avenues and
00:01:30.400 other places they can trade. And unfortunately for the United States of America both of these things
00:01:35.100 happen. When Donald Trump says that America doesn't need anything that Canada has that's simply not
00:01:39.600 true. Both economies are highly integrated. We have car parts that go down from Windsor into Detroit and
00:01:46.520 back multiple times before they're finished. The Americans also rely on us for energy. And the
00:01:50.960 supply chains between both countries are highly integrated. So when Donald Trump puts tariffs on
00:01:55.040 Canada that doesn't just make prices more expensive for Americans it disrupts the whole supply chain.
00:02:00.620 Contrary to popular belief Donald Trump can't just snap his fingers and magically bring all the
00:02:05.040 manufacturing back to the United States. Putting on these tariffs leads to economic instability and it
00:02:10.680 leads to higher prices. So when Donald Trump attacks Canada through tariffs he's actually hurting
00:02:15.380 America's economy as well. And American households have felt the pain of tariffs. The average American
00:02:20.580 household paid an extra $1,000.25 due to the tariffs. And that's according to a report by the
00:02:25.720 Tax Association. And this is coming from a guy that claimed that he won the 24th election due to groceries.
00:02:31.520 I won on two things. The border. And more than immigration. You know they like to say immigration.
00:02:38.400 I break it down more to the border. But I won on the border and I won on groceries. It's a very simple
00:02:43.680 word. Groceries. Like almost you know who uses the word. I started using the word the groceries. When you
00:02:51.620 buy apples. When you buy bacon. When you buy eggs. They would double and triple the price over a short
00:02:58.180 period of time. And I won an election based on that. We're going to bring those prices way down. 0.97
00:03:03.780 He said that he was elected to lower the price of groceries. However terrorists don't make groceries
00:03:08.340 less expensive. They make them more expensive. Now Kearney whether you love him or hate him. He
00:03:13.760 actually took a really smart approach when dealing with Donald Trump. He initially went down and tried
00:03:18.640 to butter Trump up a little bit. Say nice things about him and see if he could get a deal. Unfortunately
00:03:24.880 that didn't happen. But Kearney was smart enough not to react publicly. Quietly he started strengthening
00:03:31.100 trade relationships with Europe. And then eventually moved on to China, Qatar and other countries in the
00:03:36.980 world. One of his most famous or infamous deals was his deal with China which opened our market up in
00:03:43.180 Canada to sell electric vehicles. Now some people describe this as getting in bed with China. But the
00:03:49.500 people making that argument forget that we as Canadians already buy a lot of products from China.
00:03:54.300 A lot of stuff that's sold in stores in Canada is made in China. And they also forget the fact that
00:03:59.580 none of this would have been necessary if Donald Trump didn't start this trade war with us in the
00:04:03.640 first place. The funny thing is it's not just Canada that's moving away from the United States.
00:04:08.180 The whole world is taking notes. They realize that if this is the way the United States treats an ally
00:04:13.660 then they could be next. And a lot of them have been attacked as well. A lot of people seem to forget
00:04:18.800 that Donald Trump started a trade war with the whole world. It wasn't just Canada. And this was an
00:04:23.520 essential theme in Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum where he suggested that this was
00:04:28.160 the end of the rules-based international order. For decades countries like Canada prospered under
00:04:33.380 what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions. We praised its principles.
00:04:39.300 We benefited from its predictability. And because of that we could pursue values-based foreign policies
00:04:45.680 under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially
00:04:51.760 false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced
00:04:59.060 asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity
00:05:05.920 of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful. And American hegemony in particular helped provide
00:05:14.880 public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for
00:05:21.640 frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals.
00:05:29.680 And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works.
00:05:38.820 The real cost of Donald Trump's trade war? It wasn't just monetary. It was strategic. Trade relies on
00:05:45.620 trust. And now the whole world knows they can't rely on the United States anymore. The whole world has
00:05:50.980 learned that a deal with the United States is not worth the paper it's written on. Because the country has
00:05:55.820 a habit of electing presidents like Donald Trump who can change the rules of engagement on a dime. So to
00:06:01.200 be fair to Trump he may have scored some headlines and made himself the center of attention. However he
00:06:06.840 also broke the trust of other countries, pushed them away, and he also strengthened his adversaries
00:06:12.300 such as China. Because a lot of countries no longer want to work with the United States and are moving
00:06:17.220 closer to China. The fact of the matter is that trade it's not about dominance. It has to be mutually
00:06:22.460 beneficial. And if it's not mutually beneficial, countries will look for other trading routes.
00:06:27.740 And that's what's happening right here. Trump's tariffs on Canada failed because treating an ally
00:06:32.280 like an enemy is terrible foreign policy. And it's that foreign policy blunder that's going to hurt
00:06:37.860 America in the long run. Thanks for tuning in. If you like this type of content, like and subscribe.
00:06:43.960 Talk to you soon.