PJ The Belt - August 18, 2026


Trump has Mark Carney CORNERED on CUSMA..


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

167.76

Word count

1,532

Sentence count

102


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Canadian goods could be slapped with a new U.S. tariff in less than 48 hours.
00:00:04.880 It's a 50% hit on those individual tariffs, and it could take effect a minute after midnight Wednesday.
00:00:10.840 Canada's Minister for U.S. Trade remains in Washington this morning.
00:00:14.580 Dominic LeBlanc had another meeting with the top American trade negotiator, Jameson Greer, yesterday.
00:00:20.180 About $28 billion in Canadian goods could be targeted if there is no deal and tariffs kick in on Wednesday.
00:00:26.160 Thousands of Canadians work in the industries potentially affected here.
00:00:29.580 And businesses concentrated in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec are really facing the brunt of it.
00:00:35.440 And I think that's the lesson here.
00:00:37.620 Eventually, reality catches up.
00:00:40.020 You can spend months and months attacking Trump.
00:00:42.540 You can spend months pretending Canada has all the leverage.
00:00:45.940 You can spend an eternity telling liberal voters what they want to hear.
00:00:50.040 But when jobs, investment, trade, and economic growth are on the line, suddenly the conversation changes.
00:00:56.700 And that's why we're watching Canadian politicians line up for meetings in Washington.
00:01:01.800 Makers of textiles and clothing, the industry says sales have already been lost just from the prospect of those tariffs.
00:01:09.640 Alexander Silberman shows us why thousands of jobs are at stake.
00:01:14.500 What if the innovation of several North American...
00:01:16.480 In this Quebec textile factory, workers make specialized fabrics to be turned into protective clothing.
00:01:23.080 Our methods allow for a multitude of innovations.
00:01:26.700 In an industry already hanging by a thread,
00:01:30.100 the threat of 50% tariffs on Canadian clothing and textiles
00:01:34.780 would be a devastating blow to many manufacturers.
00:01:39.000 The fear that it creates isn't just a Canadian fear,
00:01:41.900 it's also a fear in the U.S. of doing business with Canadians.
00:01:44.820 The Canadian textile industry, it's fragile.
00:01:46.940 It's fragile as it is.
00:01:48.340 Textiles and clothing made in Canada,
00:01:51.160 currently duty-free under Kusma,
00:01:53.280 are now targeted under a range of goods set to get hit with U.S. tariffs on August 19th.
00:02:00.640 Even just the possibility of tariffs is already hurting the industry.
00:02:05.960 People have already been laid off. Orders aren't coming in.
00:02:08.580 U.S. customers are possibly searching for other suppliers.
00:02:13.560 Canada's textile sector employs about 100,000 people, according to the Industry Association.
00:02:19.780 with the bulk of jobs in fashion and clothing based in Quebec and Ontario.
00:02:25.700 The association representing Montreal's fashion industry
00:02:29.080 says clothing companies would be especially hard hit.
00:02:34.720 Four in five pieces of clothing cut and sewn in Canada head south of the border.
00:02:40.260 And in recent years, small and medium-sized manufacturers
00:02:44.420 have brought production back to Canada to get duty-free access to the American market.
00:02:49.780 We have 5,000 more jobs in cut and sew production here in Quebec than we had 10 years ago.
00:02:58.020 We could lose this know-how in our sector.
00:03:01.240 The industry warns if tariffs hit, the trend of more production here at home would quickly reverse.
00:03:08.020 Well, would you look at that?
00:03:09.760 After spending the better part of a year attacking Donald Trump over and over again,
00:03:14.360 attacking his administration, talking about how Canada was going to stand up to America,
00:03:19.140 fight back against tariffs and show washington that we don't need them now they're all heading
00:03:24.820 into the united states basically begging for a deal so suddenly you have the same people who
00:03:30.140 spent months talking tough against trump singing a very different tune and why because reality has
00:03:37.520 arrived tariffs are still hanging over canada's head and the canadian economy is struggling so
00:03:43.540 all of a sudden you have these politicians who seem to have discovered that the canadian economy
00:03:48.060 couldn't survive without a deal with the united states 28 billion dollars in canadian goods could
00:03:53.580 be targeted if there is no deal and tariffs kick in on wednesday thousands of canadians work in
00:03:58.940 the industries potentially affected here and businesses concentrated in bc ontario and quebec
00:04:04.540 are really facing the brunt of it canada's goal is a comprehensive deal that would obviously
00:04:09.180 eliminate the threat entirely but sources tell cbc news negotiators are worried there may be
00:04:14.380 no way to avoid it. Rafi Bouchikanyan joins us now from Ottawa. Rafi, what are sources telling
00:04:20.040 CBC News about what could stand in the way of a deal? Mark, it won't be much of a surprise to
00:04:25.580 anyone who has been following these issues. Sources are pointing to that ban on American
00:04:32.740 booze in place in most provinces in Canada that the Americans have been quite noisy about. They
00:04:39.700 have said they want that gone. And the federal government, negotiating tactic or not, says it
00:04:45.300 can't just snap its fingers and make that ban disappear, because provinces control the liquor
00:04:51.320 boards that have removed American alcohol off their shelves. And the provinces say that is
00:04:58.780 in retaliation to the earlier sets of American tariffs that have been put in place since U.S.
00:05:05.020 President Donald Trump returned to power in the first place and kick-started this ongoing trade
00:05:10.540 war. So that brings us to a bit of an impasse, because the provinces are saying, you know,
00:05:16.000 remove those tariffs or lower those tariffs significantly, and we can talk about putting
00:05:21.140 your alcohol back on the shelves. And according to sources, the Americans are not lowering those
00:05:27.560 tariffs enough to satisfy the provinces, to satisfy the Canadian side, especially,
00:05:32.920 it appears the tariffs on softwood lumber, one of the hardest hit sectors, and that's how we got to
00:05:40.680 this current state of affairs. And Rafi, give us some perspective on where things stand right now
00:05:45.600 in negotiations. Well, the two sides are still talking, so it's not like nobody's picking up
00:05:51.740 the phone anymore. U.S.-Canada Trade Relations Minister Dominic LeBlanc is still in Washington.
00:05:58.280 That's a bit of a change from what we've seen on recent trips he's done.
00:06:03.220 You know, he tends to go to Washington and then come back to Ottawa for the weekend and then go back.
00:06:07.060 And this time he did not go home.
00:06:08.940 They had that virtual meeting.
00:06:10.840 He and his U.S. counterpart, Jameson Greer, yesterday.
00:06:15.420 And LeBlanc's office did send us this statement about that meeting.
00:06:20.080 We'll put it up on your screen as I read it to you.
00:06:22.400 It says, Minister Leblanc and Chief Negotiator Charette had a constructive virtual meeting with United States Trade Representative Jameson Greer, which lasted one hour this afternoon.
00:06:33.320 They took stock of the work that has been done by their respective negotiating teams and discussions are continuing.
00:06:39.880 So trying to sound optimistic there toward the end, you know, we had not stopped talking.
00:06:44.780 This is what makes this whole thing kind of funny.
00:06:47.200 We were told Canada was going to fight back.
00:06:49.620 we were told that america needed us more than we needed them and that we could stand up to
00:06:55.460 washington and win even politicians who build their political brand around opposing trump
00:07:01.180 are suddenly having to face reality i mean it makes sense once you get past all the slogans
00:07:06.580 and all the political theater reality is pretty simple canada needs access to the american market
00:07:13.860 more than the other way around and canada cannot afford years of economic conflict with its largest
00:07:20.200 trading partner the tough talk sounds great at a liberal convention but reality is a whole other
00:07:25.920 ball game well our neighbor to the north is in a race to avert new tariffs the new levy on canadian
00:07:33.500 imports is set to take effect on wednesday but americans might have a little more to spend soon
00:07:39.400 thanks to tariff refunds trickling down to consumers.
00:07:43.920 Madeline Rivera has more on that from Washington.
00:07:47.900 The tariff war is heating up once again.
00:07:50.300 We're just days away from crippling new import taxes hitting Canada,
00:07:53.640 America's second biggest trading partner.
00:07:56.100 Earlier this week, the U.S. offered a new proposal
00:07:58.320 that would trim back some of the tariffs, but Canada rejected it.
00:08:01.420 And now officials there are suggesting if a deal isn't made by the deadline,
00:08:05.140 they'll pivot to other markets.
00:08:06.900 Everybody wants to do more with Canada.
00:08:09.400 except the United States. And we're on track to have access, free trade access to 3 billion
00:08:13.680 consumers. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., big shipping companies like FedEx and UPS have
00:08:17.920 gotten more than $100 billion in tariff refunds from the Treasury Department. And now they're
00:08:22.820 starting to pay that money back to consumers who were originally charged many times after their
00:08:27.340 product was already shipped. The most big shippers say the amounts are relatively small so far.
00:08:31.600 That's very positive. I mean, that just tells us that these companies were absorbing the tariffs
00:08:36.920 when they were happening, not passing them along to consumers.
00:08:39.880 And with less than three months to go to the midterm elections,
00:08:42.360 the White House is doubling down on its tariff policy,
00:08:45.060 while Democrats are vowing to oppose it.
00:08:47.440 We're setting prices so that the Chinese can't dump anymore,
00:08:50.940 and we're setting tariffs to say build it here.
00:08:53.320 The new tariffs go into effect August 19th,
00:08:55.680 impacting more than $20 billion worth of goods from Canada.
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00:09:05.920 Thanks for watching. See you in the next one.