00:00:00.000It's official. The bridge is burnt between the United States and Canada.
00:00:03.800And no, I'm not talking about the new Gordie Howe Bridge out in Detroit and Windsor, which was recently inaugurated.
00:00:08.900I'm talking about a much more important nexus between the United States and Canada.
00:00:13.840Because after months of elbows up, buy Canadian, boycott America, fight Trump, yada, yada, the whole nine yards.
00:00:21.080Well, congratulations, Canada. We got ourselves a fight.
00:00:24.800The negotiations have officially collapsed.
00:00:26.760Mark Carney sent the negotiators home, and the USA has now imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
00:00:35.720And Carney's answer is more tariffs, dollar for dollar retaliation, because apparently when your house is on fire,
00:00:42.320the best idea is to go and get a gallon of gasoline and pour it all over the thing.
00:00:46.960That might feel good in the moment, the old stick it to them, let's fight, fight, fight.
00:00:50.700That feels great in the moment, but we have to live with tomorrow and the next day and the day extra.
00:00:55.400And this will have a massive, massive impact on a number of Canadians.
00:01:00.740So I think it's going to be quite broad.
00:01:02.480It's not necessarily the sectors, but those businesses that have the heaviest reliance on American clients.
00:01:07.30080% of their clientele is in the States.
00:01:10.280And if these tariff hits, they might go under immediately.
00:01:13.100Many more of our members, almost half of our members that do trade are importing from the States.
00:01:17.760And that's going to have a big impact.
00:01:20.340For some, we're seeing sales go to zero.
00:01:24.100And that drop had already started because U.S. businesses were already worried about this tariff hitting and had already stopped purchasing from Canada.
00:01:34.420This is going to cause real harm in a large number of economic sectors, particularly in wood, that were previously not hit.
00:01:44.060And small towns across Canada are going to suffer seriously.
00:01:46.900And now the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses says that 40% of small Canadian exporters are directly hit by this new round of tariffs, with nearly one-third expecting their revenues to drop by 50% or more.
00:02:03.760That's half of the revenue, because this is where the cute political slogans run into economic reality.
00:02:10.640It's easy for a liberal cabinet minister with a government paycheck to say, we have to stand strong against Donald Trump.
00:02:16.900The whole other bowl game when you own a manufacturing business and your American customer stops ordering altogether, or you work at a mill in a small Canadian town and production gets cut in half, or you're a Canadian distiller who sells half every product into the United States.
00:02:32.900Maybe Mark Carney has 340 million replacement customers hiding somewhere in Ottawa, or maybe he'll find them in China or something.
00:02:39.940Americans, to this point, haven't retaliated on our wines and spirits.
00:02:44.360And 50% of the spirits that are produced in Canada are sold in the United States.
00:02:48.880That will not be the case for the Section 338 tariffs.
00:02:52.160And I think that's a bit of a warning to Canada that, you know, if you're being tough
00:02:56.340because you think 85% of your trade is not covered by tariffs, have a look at what this feels like.
00:03:02.160We have to admit that what is happening right now is certainly not good news
00:03:06.500for people who might be thinking about investing in Canada.
00:03:08.620A lot of them are interested in access to the American market.
00:03:26.960So a lot of people here in this province are really going to be hurting in the coming days and in the coming weeks from these tariffs.
00:03:33.680You know, we've got over a million companies in this country.
00:03:36.940And you cannot subsidize every business indefinitely into the future.
00:03:43.400It is not a long-term policy, strategy policy.
00:03:47.020They've got to get back to the negotiating table very quickly.
00:03:51.340Our research showed that the vast majority of small businesses in Canada were not eligible.
00:03:59.020And those relief programs missed the target, generally speaking.
00:04:06.040I think the prime minister is telegraphing to Canadians and to Canadian businesses that this is going to be the status quo going forward.
00:04:14.540You can't replace the United States. Not tomorrow, not next month. Not because Mark Carney gives another speech about diversification.
00:04:22.200The United States is the massive, wealthy market sitting directly beside us that Canadian supply chains have been built around for generations.
00:04:30.380And now Carney says that he walked away because America asked too much and offered too little.
00:04:35.880Fair enough. Fair enough. That's his version.
00:04:38.800Trump administration is saying something very different.
00:04:41.140U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer said that Canada walked away from terms that they had agreed to earlier in the week.
00:04:47.960And a senior U.S. official says that the offer would have given Canada the best tariff position of any major exporter into the United States.
00:04:54.740There are many businesses across Canada, small and medium sized, who woke up that morning going, I don't know if I have revenues anymore.
00:05:03.460What am I going to do with my bank? How do I make payroll? How do I look at my employees?
00:05:09.240So there's a lot of concern. So I think the prime minister moved as quickly as he can to give assurances to Canadians that, OK, we understand what's going on and we're going to have some programs in place.
00:05:21.640And she says the goal of these programs has to be more than just saving jobs, but actually saving industries.
00:05:30.020And she says the programs will need to be more tailored than previous supportive industrial support programs
00:05:36.920because these tariffs will not hit all industries and nor will they hit the industries that are being hit uniformly across them.
00:05:45.540Now, in terms of Canadians in general, remember that the U.S. tariffs now, in effect, mostly hit American consumers buying Canadian products.
00:05:53.400So if Canada's counter tariffs do go into effect September 8th, that's when prices here will go up.
00:06:00.500And this is where we get into the part that Ottawa doesn't like talking about.
00:06:05.120Canada is not some innocent free trade angel randomly being bullied by Donald Trump.
00:06:10.400The White House specifically accuses Canada of discriminating against American commerce.
00:06:14.520We protect supply management, the Quebec dairy cartel. We have massive barriers around politically sacred industries. Provinces took American alcohol off their shelves. Canada was the only country other than China to retaliate. And then we act personally offended when the Americans say, OK, let's play that game. Here's 50 percent tariffs.
00:06:34.100And this is why Alberta and Saskatchewan deserve a lot more credit than they get.
00:06:39.040They never joined that ridiculous boycott in the first place.
00:06:43.220They left the decision to the consumer.
00:06:48.400Honestly, this is maybe the worst case scenario.
00:06:51.880It was through the day today we were debating whether the deal that we were all hearing rumblings and briefings about was going to be enough.
00:07:00.340Would it be good enough for Canadian businesses?
00:07:02.600I can tell you for certain that this development is not good.