Canada-US Trade War Cancelled - Trudeau looks weak, as usual
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
180.83658
Summary
Trade war didn't happen. Canada and the US did not go into a trade war, which is a good thing because it would have been awful for Canada if they did go into one. Justin Trudeau is a weakling and his trade deal with the U.S. was a complete waste of time.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. So I am happy and slightly narcissistic to announce that I was
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barely right. Canada and the US almost went into a trade slash tariff war, but they did not like I
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predicted. I was so shaky on my prediction, I started preemptively saying I was wrong on the
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show. So I am happy to see that it didn't actually happen, not just to keep my prediction record up,
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but also because it would have been absolutely awful for Canadians if we got into a trade war
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with the United States. This whole thing could have been avoided. If back in September, Justin
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Trudeau didn't fart around and actually talk to Donald Trump about border security, a lot of people
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are going to say this wasn't about border security. Well, then why was the phone call between Justin
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Trudeau and Donald Trump that ended this thing all about border security? People kept pointing to
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falsely that Trump kept saying that he wants Canada to be the 51st state, that he doesn't care about
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whether or not we secure the border, that he's doing this because of trade imbalances. Yes, Trump says
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a lot of stuff. By the way, always follow the rule that you take Trump seriously, but you do not take
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him literally. Canada kept taking him so literally that we wasted tons of time talking about Canada 51st,
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why Canada should be its own country and whatnot. That was never actually the problem. That was
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never the issue at hand. The issue was always border security, which if you looked at Trump's
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officials who actually know on pen and paper what Trump wants, they kept saying border security and
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you guys don't spend enough on military and we're flipping the bill for you. I don't even agree with
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with Trump when he argues that we have a trade imbalance with Canada. There's literally no country
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that any country has a trade balance with. Either you are sending them more stuff or you are buying
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more stuff from them unless you sat down and tried to like have an account and figure out how much
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stuff you had to buy from each country to keep it at a net zero trade relationship. Countries trade with
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each other because they can get something cheaper from them or they don't produce something and they're
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buying it. That is the only reason that countries have trade imbalances and it's perfectly legitimate.
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But that's just a side issue. Trudeau's a weakling. This entire thing showed he's politically inept.
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And by the way, Mark Carney and Doug Ford are so screwed right now. Doug Ford might still be able to win
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a majority government, but his entire reason for calling the early Ontario provincial election is gone.
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He called this thing even though he's not the Prime Minister of Canada and doesn't need a new mandate
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to negotiate with the U.S. President. Even Trudeau doesn't need a new mandate to negotiate. You have
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a mandate. Everyone expects that in your mandate you're going to negotiate with other countries.
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But Ford decided that as the Premier of Ontario, he needed a new mandate because there was something
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going on with the U.S. that isn't even going on anymore and barely had anything to do with him.
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Guys, if you live in Ontario, please vote for the new Blue Party of Ontario. Check them out. I have
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them linked in the description below and pinned at the bottom of the comments. If you don't have
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a new Blue candidate in your riding, consider running for them, honestly. Even if you're just
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going to be a paper candidate, if there's nobody else, have a real Conservative option on the table.
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Do you guys like Pierre Polyev and the Federal Conservatives? If you do, New Blue is basically the
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one-to-one provincial version of the Federal Conservatives. The PCs in Ontario are basically like
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the Federal Liberals. It's crazy how bad they are. But moving on to Mark Carney, Mark Carney was
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begging for this terrafore. He wanted it because it was the only crisis that he could kind of
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like sort of like deflect from the terrible Liberal record. Mark Carney wanted this fight because it
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would make him seem like a strong, reasonable man to negotiate with Trump. And Polyev is too much like
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Trump so you can't vote for him. Even though whenever we compare Trump and Polyev, really you're just
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saying that a Conservative in one country is like a Conservative in another country. Trump, if he was in
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Canada, would be a perfectly mainstream option. The thing is that Trump is an American president, so he
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seems out of step with Canada because he's not Canada's president. He's not Canada's Prime Minister.
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He does his own thing and he doesn't care about Canada's interests because that's not his job.
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I would like a Canada first politician to actually care about our interests.
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The ridiculous thing is, and this demonstrates the stupidity of so many of our politicians,
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as this terrafore looked like it was going to be real and I thought it was going to be real at one
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point, that who was out there proposing that we should cut taxes, proposing that we should cut
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regulations? You know, maybe cutting wasteful government spending and not hiring as many useless
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workers into the federal government. Nah, nah. Provincial governments were hiring hundreds of
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new people to work what we can literally say are fake jobs. Jobs which if they went away, nobody would
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miss. We never did any of that because, nah. We'd rather delve headfirst into socialism. Let's take
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American liquor off our liquor store shelves because that will solve the problem. It's not like we should
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one, try and secure the border, and two, try and lower taxes so we're more competitive. Let's pretend,
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hypothetically, we actually do secure the border. We spend three percent of our GDP on defense like we
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were proposing to do. We do all that and that's still not good enough for Trump. Let's just pretend
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Trump wasn't being reasonable at all and he wasn't going to be satisfied with anything.
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Why wouldn't we cut taxes? Why would we not try and make ourselves more competitive? That's what we
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should do but the problem is in this country we are stuck with the worst politicians possible so all
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they wanted to do in response to Trump's tariff war was retaliatory tariffs which all it does is it
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kicks the consumer in Canada in the head so the government gets to feel better about fighting
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the U.S. and McKinsley and other lobby groups were actually pushing for dollar for dollar tariffs and
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celebrating it as a good thing because it would get the government more money and by proxy their lobby
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group. Lobby groups need to be like borderline banned in this country. It's nuts how much they
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stump against the Canadian taxpayer and they demand more bloated government budgets so that their
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friends and their people that they work for, the people they lobby for, can get more money for doing
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literally nothing like pencil sharpening quality work. Anyways, that's it for me today guys. I'll see
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around later. I just wanted to react to what was going on with the U.S. trade war. I just happened
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to be wearing like a suit and tie during this whole thing so I seem rather dapper to talk about this
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breaking piece of news but hopefully you guys like the show. Make sure to like, share, subscribe, do all