PJ The Belt - August 19, 2026


Canada is NOT Ready For what Trump Will Do Tonight..

Mentioned
Donald Trump Mark Carney Joe Biden
Trump has Mark Carney CORNERED on CUSMA.. Trump Just Made Alberta AN OFFER WE CAN'T REFUSE

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

162.17

Word count

957

Sentence count

60

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.200 It's tariff day today in Canada. As you all know, 50% tariffs will be imposed on Canada tonight at midnight if a deal isn't reached.
00:00:08.800 And here's something I think a lot of Canadians need to hear, because for the past year we've been fed this incredibly simple story, actually.
00:00:15.740 Apparently, Donald Trump woke up one morning after winning the election. He looked at Canada and said,
00:00:20.960 You know what? I'm going to start a trade war today. That's basically the story, if you listen to the CBC.
00:00:27.600 poor, innocent Canada, led by liberal Mark Carney, was just sitting here minding our
00:00:32.600 own business, and that evil orange man south of the border randomly decided to attack us.
00:00:38.060 Except there's a problem. 0.69
00:00:39.900 That's not the whole story, of course.
00:00:41.800 And with this new 50% tariffs now hours away, maybe it's time we actually talk about why
00:00:47.060 the American administration is so angry with Canada.
00:00:50.600 Because Trump's position on trade has been pretty consistent over the years.
00:00:54.260 If you want access to the American consumer, the largest, richest consumer market on earth,
00:00:59.340 then American companies should get fair access to your market too.
00:01:03.140 That's the deal.
00:01:04.380 And you can hate Trump, you can love him, you can have whatever opinion you want about him.
00:01:10.320 But that principle right there, it's not really radical or unreasonable.
00:01:14.100 What's radical is pretending Canada has always practiced some perfect version of free trade.
00:01:20.480 We haven't.
00:01:21.740 Take dairy, for example.
00:01:23.860 Canada operates what we call a supply management system that controls how much milk, cheese,
00:01:29.360 eggs, and poultry get produced.
00:01:31.140 And they use tariff rate quotas to control import competition.
00:01:34.400 And if you're an American dairy farmer trying to sell into Canada beyond those quotas, some
00:01:40.000 of the over-quota tariffs are insane.
00:01:42.580 We're talking rates that can run into the 200-300% range, depending on the product.
00:01:47.960 But apparently, that's not protectionism.
00:01:50.380 No, no, that's just Canada being Canada or whatever.
00:01:54.700 When Trump uses a tariff, it's an international emergency on the CBC.
00:01:59.100 But when Ottawa protects an industry behind a wall of quotas and massive over-quota tariffs,
00:02:04.360 we give it a nice bureaucratic name like supply management.
00:02:08.740 Very sophisticated, I must say.
00:02:10.960 I call it the Quebec Dairy Cartel.
00:02:13.320 And yes, I'm being deliberately provocative here.
00:02:15.920 But look at how the system actually works.
00:02:18.420 The government helps control supply, import access is restricted, and consumers are insulated from the full force of foreign competition, therefore paying more for the same product.
00:02:31.460 You can defend that system if you want.
00:02:33.760 Canadian farmers, especially those from Quebec, certainly do.
00:02:36.800 But then at least you've got to be honest about what it actually is.
00:02:40.580 Don't build a fortress around parts of your own market and then clutch your pearls when
00:02:45.220 the American president says, fine, we'll play that game too.
00:02:49.340 And dairy isn't the only complaint.
00:02:51.700 Trump administration is currently pointing to Canadian restrictions involving American
00:02:56.100 alcohol, of course, dairy, vehicles, lumber, as justification for this latest round of
00:03:02.660 tariffs.
00:03:03.800 Remember the American booze that disappeared from Canadian shelves during this whole trade
00:03:07.800 war?
00:03:08.740 Exporters of American wine and spirits have been getting hammered recently.
00:03:13.540 Now, put yourself in the position of an American farmer,
00:03:16.840 one maker, or factory worker.
00:03:19.200 You watch foreign governments protect their politically sensitive industries,
00:03:24.160 and you watch American products get caught in retaliatory measures.
00:03:28.260 And then you're told that America is somehow the bad guy
00:03:31.800 for finally saying enough is enough.
00:03:34.340 That's why I think people misunderstand Trump's entire trade strategy.
00:03:38.060 This isn't just about Canada.
00:03:40.120 Trump's basic argument has been that for decades, Republicans and Democrats, both administrations
00:03:47.220 alike, were too willing to accept trade arrangements that would disadvantage American manufacturing
00:03:54.360 and workers.
00:03:56.200 And Joe Biden certainly was an example of that.
00:03:58.740 These issues go back through multiple presidents, multiple decades, but Trump is the one who
00:04:04.800 is willing to walk into the room and say, if you put a wall around your market, don't be shocked
00:04:09.860 when America does the exact same thing. And that's exactly why Mark Carney's strategy deserves
00:04:15.240 scrutiny here. Because if you're Mark Carney, you're not negotiating with some abstract economic
00:04:20.940 theory. You're negotiating with a country whose economy is over 10 times the size of yours and
00:04:27.000 the country that buys most of the products your country produces. And your plan is what exactly?
00:04:31.960 keep poking at them until they become more accommodating? Brilliant. Right now, Canadian
00:04:38.240 negotiators are in Washington trying to stop the 50% tariffs from landing on roughly $28 billion
00:04:44.960 in Canadian exports. And reporting says that the two sides still have significant differences.
00:04:50.700 That's not Twitter. That's not online. That's real businesses, real paychecks, and people who
00:04:57.140 couldn't care less about whether Mark Carney gets to give another tough guy speech about
00:05:01.020 standing up to Trump. And this is where I get cynical, because politically, who benefits from
00:05:07.140 this fight continuing? Trump is a very convenient villain for the liberals. Every time negotiations
00:05:13.400 break down, Carney gets to walk in front of the cameras, wrap himself in the Canadian flag,
00:05:18.360 and tell Canadians that he's defending the country. Okay? But at some point,
00:05:24.600 defending Canada has to produce results for Canadians, right? So now the pressure is on
00:05:29.260 Mark Carney not to deliver another speech, not to find another way to blame Trump. Make a deal
00:05:35.300 because if this tear is hit and Canadian workers start paying the price, eventually somebody's
00:05:40.320 going to ask a very uncomfortable question. Was Mark Carney actually trying to end this fight
00:05:45.120 or did his government become so politically invested in fighting Donald Trump that they
00:05:50.420 forgot who was going to pay for it? And I have a feeling we're about to find out.