PJ The Belt - September 20, 2026


Canada WON'T SURVIVE Trump's Final Move..

TRUMP JUST PUT MARK CARNEY ON NOTICE

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

186.58

Word count

1,513

Sentence count

98

People

Also mentioned:

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Last month, we made the right decision to suspend our negotiations with the United States.
00:00:06.560 Another B.C. pulp mill is permanently closing, leaving around 400 workers without a job.
00:00:12.600 A.V. Nackawick pulp mill set to temporarily shut down at the end of October due to challenging market conditions.
00:00:20.980 It's official. The bridge is burned between the United States and Canada.
00:00:24.540 And no, I'm not talking about the new Gordie Howe Bridge out in Detroit and Windsor, which was recently inaugurated.
00:00:30.300 I'm talking about a much more important nexus between the United States and Canada.
00:00:35.000 Because after months of elbows up, buy Canadian, boycott America, fight Trump, yada yada, the whole nine yards.
00:00:42.260 Well, congratulations, Canada. We got ourselves a fight.
00:00:45.960 The negotiations have officially collapsed and the USA has now imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
00:00:54.220 So it's tough to see where this goes.
00:00:56.280 I think both countries, the way I look at it is both jurisdictions are trying to make their exes jealous.
00:01:01.140 The Europeans, by offering Canada something they would never offer the United Kingdom,
00:01:05.180 is trying to get the United Kingdom a little more interested.
00:01:08.100 And by Mark Carney going over there and trying to make nice with the Europeans,
00:01:12.020 hopefully he was thinking, I guess, that maybe that would get the attention of Donald Trump.
00:01:15.980 I'm not sure that stuff works in real life.
00:01:17.980 We'll see if it works in larger diplomacy.
00:01:20.940 is as a stepping stone to the U.S.
00:01:24.500 And because we still don't have a proper agreement with the U.S.,
00:01:27.400 I think there's a lot of people that are going to look at Canada and say,
00:01:29.560 you're a great economy and all,
00:01:31.220 but you're 40 million people with three oceans surrounding you
00:01:34.100 and the U.S. on the fourth border there.
00:01:36.080 If you don't have clarity with the U.S.,
00:01:37.700 what exactly is the attraction of a market of just 40 million people?
00:01:41.940 And for all the talk of trying to deepen our ties to Europe,
00:01:44.840 Europe is an integrated market more or less of half a billion people.
00:01:48.080 40 million is a drop in the bucket.
00:01:49.600 the UK, Italy, Germany, France, they're all more than 40 million. So they're not going to look at
00:01:55.280 Canada as something that's going to tip the balance for a lot of their businesses, unless
00:01:59.600 there's also the access that comes with another 350 million people in the US, 100 million people
00:02:03.840 in Mexico. I think it's important to note that Canada has essentially a free trade agreement
00:02:08.500 in place with Europe that's merely waiting ratification in a lot of European capitals.
00:02:13.880 One of the key sticking points, of course, is supply management. And that might be something
00:02:17.460 that's familiar to us here in this country because it's one of the sticking points with
00:02:20.800 the Americans as well. It seems that a lot of the world doesn't like this policy that we have in
00:02:24.880 place and that we're refusing to put on the negotiating table. While the words are very
00:02:28.860 nice coming from the Prime Minister and von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission,
00:02:33.220 it's hard to know where we would actually take us beyond the CETA. And sort of someone who looks at
00:02:39.000 it, hard to see. In terms of what it would mean, you know, I spent a lot of years working in
00:02:42.960 Brussels. I was actually a member of the Brussels Bar. And so I'm familiar with these accession
00:02:47.080 process and how long they take and you know the palace intrigue i mean the canadians are having
00:02:51.640 fun discovering how how the powers of an american president relate to the powers of congress on trade
00:02:57.640 wait till you get a look at the european president's powers relative to the member states
00:03:02.600 relative to the european parliament we might actually be looking favorably on the on the
00:03:07.560 american experience and now the canadian federation of independent businesses says that
00:03:12.440 40% of small Canadian exporters are directly hit by this new round of tariffs, with nearly
00:03:19.300 one-third expecting their revenues to drop by 50% or more. I want you to let that sink
00:03:24.900 in. That's half of the revenue, because this is where the cute political slogans run into
00:03:30.380 economic reality. It's easy for a Liberal cabinet minister with a government paycheck
00:03:35.380 to say, we have to stand strong against Donald Trump. The whole other bowl game when you own
00:03:40.000 manufacturing business and your American customer stops ordering altogether. Or you work at a mill
00:03:45.620 in a small Canadian town and production gets cut in half. Or you're a Canadian distiller who sells
00:03:51.180 half every product into the United States. Maybe Mark Carney has 340 million replacement customers
00:03:57.200 hiding somewhere in Ottawa, or maybe he'll find them in China or something. Americans to this
00:04:01.920 point haven't retaliated on our wines and spirits. And 50% of the spirits that are produced in Canada
00:04:08.300 are sold in the united states that will not be the case for the section 338 tariffs and i think
00:04:13.480 that's a bit of a warning to canada that you know if you're being tough because you think 85 percent
00:04:19.020 of your trade is not covered by tariffs um have a look at what this feels like we have to admit
00:04:24.220 that what is happening right now is certainly not good news for people who might be thinking about
00:04:28.740 investing in canada a lot of them are interested in access to the american market that has gotten
00:04:33.200 more complicated. In the lead up to this tariff deadline, I mean, I spoke with some textile and
00:04:38.140 clothing manufacturers, and they were saying they were already feeling the impact just in the lead
00:04:43.200 up to this. Layoff notices were going out. Production was being scaled back. So a lot of
00:04:48.920 people here in this province are really going to be hurting in the coming days and in the coming
00:04:52.900 weeks from these tariffs. You know, we've got over a million companies in this country, and you
00:04:58.620 We cannot subsidize every business indefinitely into the future.
00:05:04.360 It is not a long-term policy, strategy policy.
00:05:07.980 They've got to get back to the negotiating table very quickly.
00:05:12.300 Our research showed that the vast majority of small businesses in Canada were not eligible
00:05:19.200 and those relief programs missed the target, generally speaking.
00:05:27.000 I think the prime minister is telegraphing to Canadians and to Canadian businesses that this is going to be the status quo going forward.
00:05:35.600 You can't replace the United States. Not tomorrow, not next month. Not because Mark Carney gives another speech about diversification.
00:05:43.160 The United States is the massive, wealthy market sitting directly beside us that Canadian supply chains have been built around for generations.
00:05:51.340 And now Carney says that he walked away because America asked too much and offered too little.
00:05:56.860 Fair enough. Fair enough. That's his version.
00:05:59.760 Trump administration is saying something very different.
00:06:02.100 U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer said that Canada walked away from terms that they had agreed to earlier in the week.
00:06:08.900 And 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.
00:06:15.680 There are many businesses across Canada, small and medium sized, who woke up that morning going, I don't know if I have revenues anymore.
00:06:24.420 What am I going to do with my bank? How do I make payroll? How do I look at my employees?
00:06:30.200 So 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.
00:06:41.020 He really can't stall on that.
00:06:42.600 And she says the goal of these programs has to be more than just saving jobs, but actually saving industries.
00:06:50.980 And she says the programs will need to be more tailored than previous supportive industrial support programs
00:06:57.860 because these tariffs will not hit all industries and nor will they hit the industries that are being hit uniformly across them.
00:07:06.500 Now, in terms of Canadians in general, remember that the U.S. tariffs now, in effect, mostly hit American consumers buying Canadian products.
00:07:14.360 So if Canada's counter tariffs do go into effect September 8th, that's when prices here will go up.
00:07:21.500 And this is where we get into the part that Ottawa doesn't like talking about.
00:07:26.080 Canada is not some innocent free trade angel randomly being bullied by Donald Trump.
00:07:31.340 The White House specifically accuses Canada of discriminating against American commerce.
00:07:35.480 We 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.
00:07:55.040 And this is why Alberta and Saskatchewan deserve a lot more credit than they get.
00:07:59.980 They never joined that ridiculous boycott in the first place.
00:08:03.840 They left the decision to the consumer.