Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ No, America doesn't fight wars for Israel—and it never has

00:00:00.000 Tonight, does America fight wars for Israel?

00:00:03.580 It's June 30th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:06.460 We fight for freedom!

00:00:09.160 Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:00:20.940 I keep hearing this slogan from TikTok pundits, 0.54

00:00:24.980 No U.S. Wars for Israel.

00:00:27.340 It's one of the top messages Qatar's online influence army is promoting these days. 0.98

00:00:32.880 But is it true?

00:00:34.560 When was the last time American troops joined Israel in a war?

00:00:38.780 When was the last time Israel asked for American troops' help?

00:00:43.160 Do you know how many U.S. troops are stationed in Israel to protect it?

00:00:46.980 How many military bases the U.S. maintains in Israel?

00:00:51.140 In fact, the U.S. has never had a military base in Israel.

00:00:54.540 There are no barracks with thousands of U.S. troops there.

00:00:58.460 Thirty years ago, the U.S. stationed a handful of experts in Israel

00:01:02.280 to help operate Patriot missiles for a few months during the first Gulf War.

00:01:06.420 And then they did that same again recently.

00:01:08.880 But those are temporary exceptions to the rule.

00:01:12.220 There are no American bases in Israel, and never have been.

00:01:15.620 Now, compare that to Arab and Muslim countries in the region,

00:01:20.020 including several dictatorships that are hostile to America and even sponsor terrorism.

00:01:25.420 I mean, let's start with the worst, Qatar itself. 1.00

00:01:29.580 The U.S. built the Al-Udayd Air Base in Qatar 30 years ago.

00:01:35.020 It now has 10,000 U.S. troops and about 100 U.S. aircraft base there.

00:01:40.380 For some reason, U.S. taxpayers spend, I don't know, 10 to 12 billion dollars approximately

00:01:46.120 every year operating that base, which defends Qatar.

00:01:50.300 I mean, I get it.

00:01:51.360 Qatar's government would likely fall within months if it weren't propped up by a foreign power. 0.82

00:01:57.000 Qatar is an authoritarian dictatorship.

00:01:58.800 It's hated by its own people.

00:02:00.880 The last emir of Qatar became dictator by staging a coup against his own father.

00:02:07.600 Qatar has 3 million people in it, but only 300,000 are citizens.

00:02:13.440 90% of the people there are temporary foreign workers or servants with no civil rights.

00:02:19.420 If they didn't have oil money there, they would just be an empty patch of sand in the desert

00:02:25.000 that no one would care about. 0.84

00:02:26.760 But they're staggeringly rich due to dumb luck and geology, 0.93

00:02:30.900 and they've taken that money and poured it into things like terrorist groups like Hamas, 0.89

00:02:36.740 propaganda outlets like Al Jazeera, that's owned by the Qatari royal family,

00:02:41.260 and influence operations in the West, becoming by far the top donors to U.S. universities.

00:02:47.840 Isn't that weird?

00:02:48.480 And they have a pretty smart strategy of hiring influencers, hiring pundits around Trump.

00:02:56.640 You've probably seen some of that lately.

00:02:58.800 250 influencers on the dole.

00:03:01.600 Anyways, back to Americans going to war for Arabs. 0.53

00:03:05.780 Over the course of time, that one U.S. base in Qatar has cost U.S. taxpayers $35 billion,

00:03:13.320 including construction and upgrades,

00:03:15.560 not even including the cost of the men and the operations who work there. 0.71

00:03:20.700 Why are U.S. taxpayers paying to prop up a royal family of depraved billionaire layabouts 0.99

00:03:25.760 who actually hate America and sponsor terrorism? 0.88

00:03:28.640 Why are American soldiers putting their lives on the line for some desert royal family? 1.00

00:03:33.520 Now, I don't know the answer.

00:03:34.920 I think there's a small chance it might have to do with Qatar sitting on top of so much oil and gas.

00:03:40.780 And maybe the U.S. government thinks it's better for American soldiers to be there

00:03:44.680 to fill the void instead of Russian soldiers or Chinese soldiers or even Iranian soldiers.

00:03:51.900 And maybe the U.S. likes having a forward operating area for other wars.

00:03:56.240 CENTCOM is now on that base.

00:03:58.400 Those could all be legitimate reasons, but that's for Americans to decide.

00:04:02.860 Same thing goes for three different U.S. bases in Kuwait for their royal family, too, and two bases in Iraq.

00:04:11.620 The U.S. even has a base in Turkey, where nuclear weapons are reportedly stored.

00:04:17.460 Turkey is so authoritarian.

00:04:18.880 I really have no idea why they're even in NATO, other than, I guess, what U.S. President Lyndon Johnson used to say,

00:04:25.820 better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.

00:04:32.400 He was a character.

00:04:33.820 And you want to talk about cost and needlessly wasted American life?

00:04:37.260 Well, don't get me started on the disastrous venture into Afghanistan.

00:04:41.480 That's measured in the trillions of dollars and the thousands of lost lives.

00:04:46.620 And the shocking, hasty, demoralizing images of America being chased out, leaving behind billions in equipment,

00:04:53.760 really is the signature move of the Biden administration.

00:04:58.060 But seriously, there are at least a dozen U.S. bases in the Middle East, all in Muslim countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia.

00:05:05.840 There's even a small base with a couple hundred Americans operating in Syria.

00:05:10.520 Rough numbers, the U.S. has spent $200 billion building up its network of military bases in Muslim countries.

00:05:19.220 The U.S. Navy alone spends about $50 billion a year patrolling the Persian Gulf sea lanes.

00:05:27.060 That's obviously to protect the oil trade.

00:05:29.480 Now, my point is, none of that has anything to do with Israel or the Jews.

00:05:33.940 Tens of thousands of brave American military servicemen are taken away from their homes and their loved ones

00:05:40.660 and put in the heart of some of the worst places in the world on standing orders to fight and die for the countries

00:05:46.320 that show little allegiance to America and that few Americans could find on the map.

00:05:51.060 And we don't have a cultural or ethnic or religious connection there.

00:05:55.800 None of those countries that Americans are defending on the ground are called Israel.

00:06:01.760 By the way, it's not just the Muslim countries.

00:06:03.940 Why does America still have 40 military bases in Germany?

00:06:08.060 40 with 50,000 troops there.

00:06:10.220 Why are there even more troops in Japan in dozens of bases there, too?

00:06:15.220 25,000 in South Korea acting as a kind of tripwire in case Kim Jong-un tries to invade.

00:06:21.360 Americans would literally be amongst the first killed.

00:06:25.440 Unlike Qatar, Germany and Japan and Korea are real countries with some of the world's strongest economies.

00:06:32.220 Why is American blood and treasure sent over to protect them?

00:06:37.200 Why does America seem to never leave a country after a war?

00:06:40.160 I mean, have you ever wondered why the U.S. has a base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

00:06:44.860 You know, it's because America fought a war there in 1898 and just sort of never left, right?

00:06:52.420 That's why America's in Japan, Germany, and Korea, too.

00:06:56.580 Altogether, around the world, there's around a quarter of a million U.S. troops serving overseas in some 750 bases in more than 75 countries.

00:07:06.480 But none of those countries is called Israel.

00:07:08.820 Now, whether this is all a good idea is for Americans to decide.

00:07:14.020 It's their men and their money.

00:07:16.000 I'm a Canadian.

00:07:16.700 I love America, and I'm grateful for the fact they protect us.

00:07:19.780 By the way, I think there are some good answers to all of those questions.

00:07:23.400 Those bases protect American force around the world.

00:07:26.160 They protect American commerce and access to resources.

00:07:30.080 They're staging areas for the U.S. to react anywhere quickly.

00:07:33.380 And like I said before, if it's not America filling the void, it would probably be China. 0.65

00:07:38.940 Just look at Africa, where the U.S. doesn't have the same presence, and China is filling in. 0.92

00:07:44.020 So that's military bases.

00:07:46.320 But the question was fighting in Israeli wars.

00:07:49.860 How many actual boots-on-the-ground wars has America fought for Israel?

00:07:55.720 It's true, Trump recently deployed six B-2 bombers on a mission to blow up Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.

00:08:04.700 But I don't think he could really call that a war.

00:08:06.820 That was the final mission of the so-called 12-day war, where Israel had conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes

00:08:13.560 against targets, clearing away the surface-to-air missiles, making sure the skies were safe

00:08:18.840 before the U.S. came in in the final hand.

00:08:22.100 But let me take a few more minutes of your time.

00:08:24.800 I want to take you through America's recent wars.

00:08:27.700 And again, per the anti-Israel Twitter brigades, you tell me which of these was for Israel.

00:08:33.820 And I'm not defending these wars.

00:08:35.280 You can like them or oppose them.

00:08:37.040 I'm just listing them.

00:08:38.520 And you tell me which of the wars are the Jewish wars, okay? 0.68

00:08:41.280 Let's start with the Second World War.

00:08:43.740 Hitler invaded Europe in September of 1939.

00:08:47.220 And by the way, he started killing the Jews in the Holocaust right away. 0.63

00:08:50.220 But America did not join the war to stop that, or Germany, or the Holocaust. 0.69

00:08:54.800 America didn't join the war for more than two years.

00:08:57.880 It wasn't until December in 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, that the United States declared war.

00:09:06.560 And then, by the way, Germany declared war on America.

00:09:09.420 The war was not about the Jews for the Americans.

00:09:13.880 And then came the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

00:09:17.680 Nothing to do with Jews there, just America trying to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

00:09:23.060 Same thing in the Grenada and Panama skirmishes.

00:09:26.060 I won't call them wars.

00:09:27.700 Have you heard of the Monroe Doctrine?

00:09:29.240 It's an American foreign policy rule to keep major powers out of the Western Hemisphere.

00:09:35.140 That was the reason behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, too.

00:09:39.120 America was not prepared to have the Soviets messing around that close to the U.S. 0.78

00:09:43.240 After the Cold War was over, almost all of America's wars were about Muslims, not Jews.

00:09:50.600 The Gulf War.

00:09:51.600 Well, that was when Arabs in Iraq invaded Arabs in Kuwait. 0.75

00:09:57.260 And for some reason, America sent 700,000 troops to sort that out.

00:10:02.360 Hundreds died, by the way, for Kuwait or for oil.

00:10:06.100 I'm not sure what, but not for the Jews. 1.00

00:10:09.120 Then came the Somali Civil War.

00:10:11.560 Not sure what America was really doing there to this day, but fighting pirates is as old as America itself, I guess.

00:10:17.720 You might know the Marine song, From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli.

00:10:22.760 You ever heard that?

00:10:30.520 From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,

00:10:38.500 we fight our country's battles in the air on land and sea.

00:10:45.120 One of the first American wars back in 1805 was against Muslim pirates.

00:10:50.540 They were called the Barbary pirates in Africa.

00:10:53.880 I'll do a report one day from a small village in Ireland called Baltimore,

00:10:58.920 where the entire village, 107 people, was kidnapped and taken to an Arab slave market in Algiers.

00:11:07.740 That was back in 1631.

00:11:09.640 You ever heard of that?

00:11:10.300 So, yeah, fighting against Muslim pirates goes back, what, 400 years, 200 years for America?

00:11:16.760 Okay, let me speed up here.

00:11:18.360 Next came the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the war against ISIS,

00:11:25.560 the war in Libya, the war in Yemen.

00:11:27.620 Do you see a bit of a theme here?

00:11:29.680 Now, none of these wars, Israel was involved.

00:11:32.280 None of these, Israel sent troops.

00:11:34.520 This was not an Israeli war.

00:11:36.360 Israel did have its own wars, that's for sure, against the PLO terrorists in Lebanon,

00:11:41.940 against the Intifada domestically, against various Arab countries in 73 and 67.

00:11:48.620 Israel has had no shortage of wars, but American troops fought in none of them.

00:11:55.700 Now, it is true that Israel gets $3 billion every year in military aid from the United States.

00:12:01.640 That is very true.

00:12:03.240 That's a lot of money, $3 billion.

00:12:04.600 It is a sliver of a fraction of what Qatar and Kuwait and Iraq and the rest of them get 0.99

00:12:11.900 annually just for those bases, just the spending and the manpower.

00:12:16.520 And again, no Americans are at risk for Israel's $3 billion.

00:12:20.020 Don't even get me started on the comparison to Ukraine.

00:12:23.260 But I still think Israel should say thanks but no thanks for the $3 billion.

00:12:29.020 Israel's military budget is more than $30 billion a year.

00:12:32.240 And Israel's actually an economically strong country.

00:12:35.400 That extra $3 billion is nice, but it's not necessary.

00:12:40.900 And in fact, it's, I think, a kind of trap because with money comes control.

00:12:46.600 Anyways, my purpose today was to demonstrate that despite what some know-nothings on the

00:12:50.960 internet say, Americans have never fought in an Israeli war.

00:12:55.840 Americans are not stationed in Israel, and the American military aid to Israel is a fraction

00:13:03.400 of what America spends on military bases in some very rich countries across the Middle East

00:13:09.380 and indeed around the world, including in the richest countries like Germany, Japan, and Korea.

00:13:14.340 By the way, I think American military relations with Israel are immensely valuable to America, too.

00:13:23.520 Israel was really the only bulwark against Soviet expansionism in the Middle East during the Cold War.

00:13:29.280 Israeli wars against the Soviet-Arab alliance served to contain the Soviets' ambitions,

00:13:36.280 and without any cost of American lives, like in Korea and Vietnam.

00:13:39.280 Israel was a real-life proving ground for U.S. weapons, such as the F-16 and F-15 fighter jets,

00:13:46.940 and now the F-35.

00:13:48.520 All of those planes saw their first combat in a real-life experience against Soviet weapons through Israel.

00:13:56.020 There is no doubt that Israel's surgical strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 1980s

00:14:03.880 was the only reason why Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear bomb when America invaded Iraq a few years later.

00:14:12.120 Same thing again last month.

00:14:13.700 In the 12-day war with Iran, Israel spent the first 11 days destroying every Iranian jet plane and anti-aircraft missile site,

00:14:22.620 and then on the 12th day, America dropped bunker busters on Iran's nukes.

00:14:27.400 I'd say America got plenty of value for the $3 billion a year it gives to Israel, 0.60

00:14:32.560 at least compared to the hundreds of billions it sloshes around its other allies every year,

00:14:38.520 if you can even call places like Qatar an ally.

00:14:41.900 Of course, the bunker buster attack benefited Israel. 0.99

00:14:45.240 It also benefited every other country in the region that Iran has terrified and attacked over the years. 0.89

00:14:51.380 I count at least 15 countries, most of them Arab, that Iran has attacked over the years, not just threatened. 0.83

00:14:58.620 They even sent missiles to Mecca.

00:15:01.660 But of course, it's in America's interest, too, to take out the nukes. 0.69

00:15:05.000 That's something Donald Trump has been talking about for more than a decade, long before he was even president.

00:15:10.660 Of course, Iran has murdered and kidnapped hundreds of Americans from taking U.S. diplomats hostage in the 1970s to murdering more than 200 Marines in the 1980s. 0.83

00:15:24.480 Did you know that Iran provided most of the IEDs used against American troops in Iraq?

00:15:31.100 And then there's the recent multiple assassination plots against Trump himself.

00:15:35.240 Yet, Israel and America both had a stake in knocking Iran down.

00:15:40.700 The U.S. helped a lot of countries by bombing those nukes. 0.84

00:15:44.340 One of them was Israel, for sure. 0.74

00:15:46.700 Now, contrary to the Qatar-financed Twitter brigade, Israel did not end up dragging America into World War III or any other war.

00:15:56.520 Israel never has. 0.92

00:15:58.240 Israel and America worked together to take nukes out of the hands of a global death cult dictatorship 0.65

00:16:02.760 and left not only the region, but I think the whole world's safer for it, including the 15 countries who ran its attack before.

00:16:11.260 There are already reports about a second wave of the Abraham Accords. 0.60

00:16:15.360 That's Donald Trump's peace treaty that he's brokering between Israel and its Muslim neighbors.

00:16:21.400 That's what Hamas's terror attack in October 2023 was designed to stop.

00:16:26.540 And it did.

00:16:27.440 But now peace is back.

00:16:28.780 So the next time someone complains about U.S.-Israel cooperation, ask the obvious question.

00:16:38.180 Why are they only talking about the Jews and not the 12 Muslim Middle Eastern countries where the U.S. spends far more militarily and gets much less in return?

00:16:50.920 You might have to wait for their answer while they check with their Qatari funders first.

00:16:56.420 Stay with us.

00:16:58.780 More ahead.

00:17:03.760 It was a very newsy weekend, including in the tense negotiations between the United States and Canada over trade deals.

00:17:16.660 Donald Trump announced that he was canceling those negotiations because Canada was proposing to invoke a digital services tax,

00:17:25.220 an Internet tax, not just that, but it would have it was scheduled to start today with a massive multi-billion dollar retroactive tax payable now.

00:17:37.620 Well, this is what Trump and the White House had to say about that.

00:17:41.320 Take a look.

00:17:41.860 Prime Minister Carney in Canada caved to President Trump and the United States of America.

00:17:47.120 And President Trump knows how to negotiate.

00:17:49.840 And he knows that he is governing the best country and the best economy in this world, on this planet.

00:17:56.860 And every country on the planet needs to have good trade relationships with the United States.

00:18:01.400 And it was a mistake for Canada to vow to implement that tax that would have hurt our tech companies here in the United States.

00:18:07.840 The president made his position quite clear to the prime minister.

00:18:11.440 And the prime minister called the president last night to let the president know that he would be dropping that tax,

00:18:16.400 which is a big victory for our tech companies and our American workers here at home.

00:18:21.680 I think that's probably true.

00:18:22.900 But speaking as a Canadian taxpayer who likes the Internet, whether it's Twitter or Netflix, it's a victory for me, too.

00:18:30.080 I don't have to pay that tax.

00:18:31.740 Look at that.

00:18:32.100 Donald Trump saving Canadian taxes.

00:18:34.140 The public acknowledgement was done by Francois-Philippe Champagne.

00:18:38.360 It seems that Mark Carney talks tough and Minister Champagne is the one who eats crow.

00:18:43.840 But about 20 minutes ago, I'm recording this in the mid-afternoon, Mark Carney did speak to reporters about it.

00:18:50.120 How could he not?

00:18:50.940 It was such an about face.

00:18:52.820 Here's what he said earlier today.

00:18:54.660 Last night I had a good conversation with President Trump.

00:18:58.200 And we agreed to recommence our negotiations with a view to the 21st of July deadline that we had agreed in.

00:19:08.400 Kananaskis, Minister Champagne and LeBlanc had conversations with their counterparts as well.

00:19:14.740 We've restarted the discussions this morning.

00:19:18.020 Did you get anything in exchange for?

00:19:19.460 We have, to be clear, it's part of a bigger negotiation.

00:19:24.500 It's something that we expected in the broader sense that would be part of a final deal.

00:19:31.220 We're making progress towards a final deal.

00:19:33.020 There's more to be done, to be clear.

00:19:34.920 And as I just said, which answers the translation question, as I just said, it's a question of timing in terms of the date for the final negotiations and when the tax was coming into effect.

00:19:45.760 And, you know, it doesn't make sense to collect tax from people and then remit them back.

00:19:50.820 So it provides some certainty.

00:19:53.020 And as I just said, negotiations have restarted.

00:19:57.400 We're going to focus on getting the best deal for Canadians.

00:20:01.440 We're making progress.

00:20:02.760 There's more to do.

00:20:03.660 And we'll keep you up.

00:20:04.680 The White House said to Cade, is that how it went down?

00:20:08.740 I paid very close attention to what he said there and I really didn't learn much.

00:20:11.700 I think Mark Carney is the master of saying very little, very slowly and with a big fog machine there.

00:20:18.000 I wonder if that will continue.

00:20:19.440 It's very interesting to me because, of course, the G7 was Mark Carney's time to shine in Canada.

00:20:24.100 Donald Trump attended at least for one day.

00:20:26.240 And there seemed to be a collegiality.

00:20:28.380 Carney was quite, I would even say, obsequious.

00:20:30.720 Whenever he is in Trump's company, he calls him a great leader, a transformative leader.

00:20:35.460 But then maybe when Trump's out of the room, Carney has a different tact.

00:20:38.540 He went to Europe and recently said we're the most European of the countries and he practically applied to join the European Union.

00:20:44.680 I think that the European Union has a very different approach to many of these things, whether it's their own agricultural supply management or their approach to regulation of the Internet.

00:20:55.660 Right now, the European Union is on a major push to bring in regulation, including for content.

00:21:01.380 The United States has a very different approach.

00:21:03.580 It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

00:21:05.280 Joining me now is an expert who's been following these things, and I really enjoy following him on Twitter or X, where he is called the Food Professor.

00:21:14.080 He is indeed that.

00:21:15.440 His name is Professor Sylvain Charlebois.

00:21:17.500 He's at Dalhousie University and a professor of things agricultural and food, which are some of my favorite topics.

00:21:25.220 Joining us now is Professor Charlebois.

00:21:26.700 Thank you very much for taking the time.

00:21:28.800 I think a lot of people saw that as a slow motion train wreck, Professor.

00:21:34.540 We knew this showdown was coming.

00:21:36.380 We knew it was a risk.

00:21:37.960 Maybe Mark Carney thought Donald Trump didn't mean it when he had sent signals against it.

00:21:42.820 What do you make of what happened this weekend over the digital services tax?

00:21:46.040 Well, I don't know much about the digital sales tax per se.

00:21:52.060 I only strictly follow the food industry and food policy.

00:21:57.160 But one has to recognize how timing, the timing of rescinding the DST was certainly not ideal.

00:22:10.140 It made Canada probably weaker and not stronger, unfortunately.

00:22:14.100 And I've always been of the mind that when it comes to geopolitics, Canada is not really a good country to deal with its own geopolitical reality.

00:22:25.360 I mean, we don't necessarily understand the orders of things.

00:22:30.080 And let's face it, we are north of the only superpower in the world.

00:22:33.600 And we are really prisoners of our own geography.

00:22:37.180 We can't move Canada geographically.

00:22:41.100 So we have to deal with Americans, whether we like it or not. 1.00

00:22:45.940 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:22:47.100 And I understand Mark Carney.

00:22:49.020 I understand what he says he's trying to do when he wants to diversify away from that dominant market.

00:22:54.700 I get it.

00:22:55.800 But it's just so dominant.

00:22:58.060 It doesn't there is no way to offset a loss in America through Europe or even through China.

00:23:05.580 I think the Trump administration is emphasizing its social media platforms.

00:23:11.160 It's I feel like Trump has sort of done a deal with them to get those companies to become more free speech oriented.

00:23:17.240 And there's a lot of law.

00:23:19.200 I mean, Trump's a dealmaker.

00:23:20.400 And I saw a very senior officer for Meta, that's the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, tweet his thanks to Donald Trump.

00:23:31.080 So this is very much a team effort.

00:23:33.680 This huge social media industry, which is dominated by America, having America's backing against trade restrictions.

00:23:40.760 I think that's going to be a pretty powerful force.

00:23:44.180 And I don't think Canada had a chance.

00:23:45.980 The EU might because they're big and mighty.

00:23:48.800 But Canada never had a chance on that, did we?

00:23:51.380 No, no, absolutely.

00:23:52.820 I think you're right.

00:23:53.880 I mean, basically, we needed an American to liberate Canadians when it comes to communications and dealing with some of these platforms.

00:24:01.720 But I do see a parallel between what happened over the weekend and the agri-food sector, to be honest.

00:24:08.680 We've been talking for many years now about supply management, which is essentially a system that restricts production as much as possible.

00:24:19.920 We have quotas.

00:24:21.280 If you want to produce milk, poultry or eggs commercially in Canada, you need to own very expensive quotas.

00:24:29.100 It's a very restrictive market, and we have high tariffs on imports.

00:24:33.200 So it's basically we produce what we need, which is actually supply management comes from the Canadians' school of thought, which is very Marxist to a certain extent.

00:24:45.860 And so I do believe that in Canada we don't have one single politician willing to do anything with supply management.

00:24:54.960 But there's probably one person who has the willingness and power to change anything when it comes to supply management.

00:25:02.760 That would be a non-Canadian, and that would be Donald Trump.

00:25:06.880 Yeah, wouldn't it be amazing?

00:25:08.780 And I think he's mentioned it probably more than anything else other than the auto industry.

00:25:13.140 Trump has repeatedly said he would like to rationalize the auto industry and the steel industry, which I think is related.

00:25:18.560 I mean, that's a very big industry.

00:25:21.080 That's, I think, the second largest in terms of its economic value in our two-way trade, oil and gas being the first.

00:25:28.640 But he does talk about dairy.

00:25:31.760 I haven't heard him talk so much about poultry, but he sure talks about dairy.

00:25:36.040 And, you know, I know that it's a very intense lobby.

00:25:40.160 I know both the liberals, and to be very fair, the Conservative Party of Canada are very deferential to supply management.

00:25:48.100 This might be a showdown.

00:25:50.320 And I don't know if, I don't know how, I mean, Trump, when he gets into these dramatic flourishes, sometimes people say, oh, he's just being a showboat or that's just his personality.

00:26:02.680 I think he really means it on this trade stuff.

00:26:06.480 And even if he doesn't, other countries are operating like he means it.

00:26:10.980 What is the likelihood that supply management for dairy, at least, gets out unscathed from these trade talks?

00:26:19.640 Yeah, I mean, the way I see it is as follows.

00:26:23.100 I mean, unlike the DST, I do think that supply management is a non-issue from an economic perspective for both countries, to be honest.

00:26:31.500 They have a lot of dairy on their side. 0.99

00:26:34.720 And Mr. Trump is not stupid.

00:26:39.360 He understands that dairy of the SM5, and I would include poultry, broilers, turkey, and eggs, of the SM5, dairy is probably the one target. 0.88

00:26:51.120 Why?

00:26:51.400 Because dairy in Canada is highly uncompetitive, unlike eggs and poultry.

00:26:55.820 I would say if tomorrow we end the quota system in Canada, they probably would be able to compete, but not dairy.

00:27:02.800 Dairy would collapse entirely.

00:27:04.520 And that's why I think that Mr. Trump focuses mainly on dairy, which is 80 percent of cash receipts within the system itself.

00:27:11.220 But I do believe that it's really a non-issue economically because Americans have a lot of dairy in the United States.

00:27:17.940 In Canada, I don't think Canadians would want to exclusively eat and consume American dairy products either.

00:27:26.040 But I do think in principle it is a really big issue because – I mean I just came back from Brazil last week and just talking about supply management in Canada, a lot of people, when they roll their eyes on it and try to understand why would an industrialized country have a system like that, which is very, very bizarre.

00:27:44.780 It's the only country in the world with a system like this.

00:27:47.400 So I do think as what Trump just did with DST, liberating Canada, we could potentially see an American president liberating Canadians when it comes to dairy marketing, dairy product marketing in general.

00:28:02.900 So I could see Donald Trump seeing himself as the liberator for Canadian consumers, if you will.

00:28:09.140 You know, I reread The Art of the Deal recently.

00:28:12.980 I read it a very long time ago and then I reread it in 2016 and then I read it again when he was reelected because I think he really explains his personality.

00:28:22.960 And some people who think he's just being dopey or goofy, I think they misunderstand that it's quite planned and he's got a style and he's been practicing living this way for 50 years.

00:28:36.020 So there are ways to decode what he's doing.

00:28:39.140 And so, Professor, I don't think he would care if he's viewed as a liberator of Canadian dairy consumers.

00:28:46.100 Here's an idea I'm going to throw at you.

00:28:48.880 Perhaps he realizes that the dairy cartel is extremely protected by the Canadian establishment, which it is, both the government and the opposition.

00:28:58.180 So perhaps if he makes a lot of noise about dairy and threatens dairy, which he might not care about as much as Canadians do.

00:29:05.860 I think that's what you're suggesting, Professor.

00:29:08.340 Yeah.

00:29:08.780 That maybe he can at the last moment do a deal with Canada if he comes off really tough on dairy and then said, fine, I'll give you your dairy.

00:29:17.720 But in return, I want a large concession about something that I care about.

00:29:22.180 So maybe he's making a fuss about dairy precisely because he knows it's so dear to Mark Carney's heart and Pierre Polyev's heart and the block of a croix, of course, and the NDP.

00:29:33.320 So I don't know.

00:29:34.040 Maybe if you're saying it's not that big a deal from the American side, maybe he's out for bigger fish to fry.

00:29:40.080 I don't know.

00:29:40.620 I can only imagine how those negotiations are going.

00:29:44.980 No, I think your instinct serves you well.

00:29:47.560 When you look at Bill C-202, which just got passed by both the House of Commons and Senate, if you look at the vote in the House of Commons, all MPs, all MPs voted in favor of 202, which really grants immunity to the SM5 from any concessions during future trade talks,

00:30:09.420 including with the United States.

00:30:11.280 So Donald Trump can see this as a lightning rod, a political lightning rod in Canada, and we'll see that as a way to rattle things in Canada domestically.

00:30:21.640 And you would enjoy having that as a tool to get what he really wants.

00:30:27.720 It's not necessarily access to our dairy market, but there are other things he's after, like our minerals, water, and things like that.

00:30:35.740 But I do see supply management as being weaponized against us as a result of adopting Bill C-202.

00:30:43.780 Very interesting.

00:30:45.100 Well, we'll keep watching this carefully.

00:30:47.320 Obviously, a bit of an embarrassment for the Carney government.

00:30:50.400 I'm sort of surprised that they were contemplating doing something that would have been seen as provocative right in the middle of the negotiations when they're just about a few weeks away from it to pull that move.

00:31:02.100 Trump likes to say, you don't have any cards.

00:31:05.860 That was a phrase he used with Zelensky when he came to visit.

00:31:09.800 I feel like that's true with Canada because although we think we – like I remember during the leaders' debates, they were all asked by the moderator, what American products are you personally boycotting?

00:31:20.320 And they said, you know, alcohol or whatever.

00:31:23.460 Like that's not going to bring America to its knees.

00:31:26.120 The fact that people are not buying bourbon is not going to cause Donald Trump to switch course.

00:31:30.860 I just feel like, you know, it's a blessing to be next to such a giant because we have access to their economy, but it's also a danger.

00:31:38.640 And I think that maybe Mark Carney's elbows-up comment is better for a campaign than in actual negotiation rooms.

00:31:45.960 I don't think we have a lot of cards to play, and I say that as a Canadian.

00:31:50.200 No, absolutely.

00:31:52.360 I think it's – regardless of the outcome here, I think it's important to recognize that America will remain our number one partner regardless.

00:31:59.120 And despite Donald Trump's style, I do think that most of the media has actually focused on style and not necessarily on the message, on content in general.

00:32:12.040 When you look at the facts, when you look at strategy, Donald Trump has been pretty consistent and predictable as well because I hear the word unpredictable a lot these days, and I don't think that Trump is unpredictable at all.

00:32:28.160 I think he's very predictable, and we need to understand that geopolitics are not simple.

00:32:33.480 And when it comes to the United States, we need to remain allies and work with the United States despite Donald Trump's style in general.

00:32:42.540 Well, I sure hope that our Canadian government negotiating team has reread Art of the Deal because he – Trump really goes through some of his greatest deals and explains why he said certain outrageous things and the purpose of making outrageous offers.

00:32:57.760 Like, it really is a trip through his mind as a negotiator.

00:33:01.820 So I hope our team at least understands it.

00:33:03.840 It seems like you have a good understanding of a two-professor.

00:33:06.440 It's really great to connect with you.

00:33:07.580 I'm grateful for your time, and I'll keep following you online at The Food Professor.

00:33:12.740 Thank you for having me.

00:33:13.680 Thank you for having me.

Rebel News Podcast - July 01, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ No, America doesn't fight wars for Israel—and it never has

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