The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Canadian officials FAIL on US tariffs - Jagmeet's NDP won't force an election!

00:00:00.000 I'm going to say right off the bat in this video that obviously I disagree with U.S. President Donald Trump putting a 25% tariff on all Canadian products being imported into the United States.

00:00:13.020 He has concerns about the border, our defense spending, and other things, but it's still not a fit response to the actual issue at hand.

00:00:21.280 Now, moving on to Canadian politicians' response to this, let's at least stick with Canadian elected officials because it doesn't really matter what someone says if they're not actually in government.

00:00:33.200 Canada's elected politicians are taking the dumbest possible approach in response to the tariffs.

00:00:40.640 They are turning this into a trade war, and you could say maybe it was inevitable, maybe Canada would have to respond in some way by tariffing certain U.S. products, and I could agree to that.

00:00:51.280 Tariff certain ones register our discontent.

00:00:55.140 But the problem we have here in Canada is we are already overtaxed, overregulated, and we even have provincial trade barriers between our provinces.

00:01:05.000 They might not work like literal barriers, but if you go into certain jurisdictions in Canada, you cannot sell certain products into another because there are certain red lines around where dairy can be produced and sold

00:01:18.720 and where different other sort of farm products and other finished products are allowed to be sold without being taxed more.

00:01:26.080 So why would our response be more taxes?

00:01:29.520 That is what we are doing by trying to do dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs.

00:01:34.660 I know some of the premiers and Trudeau are doing it in stages, which is a little bit better, but at the same time, the problem is that it doesn't matter if Canadians are willing to fight a trade war.

00:01:45.900 We can't fight a trade war because our politicians suck at their jobs, and we're all broke.

00:01:50.520 We do not have the bandwidth to fight with the Americans.

00:01:53.820 We can have a bigger fighting spirit than they do, but it doesn't really matter when every single province with combined provincial and federal taxes pays more in income taxes than even the highest taxed state in the U.S.

00:02:09.320 It's absolutely insane that we thought that we're going to be able to get them to back down, intimidate them.

00:02:17.300 Well, I want to go through some of the statements that different premiers and Justin Trudeau have made in the aftermath of Trump putting in place the 25% tariffs

00:02:27.140 and why this is rhetorically, I guess, smart in the short run.

00:02:31.840 But if we're thinking in the medium to long term in terms of Canada's economic health, this is very foolish,

00:02:37.640 and they are doubling down on the reasons why Canada's economy is weaker than the U.S.

00:02:42.920 Before I get into it, guys, remember to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment.

00:02:48.600 What do you think about the trade war is the obvious question of the day.

00:02:52.120 Here is Ontario Premier who just got newly elected from his snap election, Doug Ford,

00:02:58.060 talking about taking booze off the shelves, American booze off the shelves of LCBOs to get back at them.

00:03:05.260 Is off the shelves.

00:03:06.660 Who?

00:03:07.960 Is off the shelves.

00:03:09.120 Also, starting today, all U.S.-based companies will be banned from taking part in government procurement.

00:03:17.760 Every year, the province and its agencies spend about $30 billion on procurement,

00:03:24.240 alongside our more than $200 billion plan to build infrastructure.

00:03:30.600 U.S.-based businesses will now lose out on tens of billions of dollars in revenues.

00:03:36.640 They only have President Trump to blame.

00:03:39.120 He's literally cancelling Starlink, by the way, which you could say is trying to get at Elon Musk,

00:03:44.340 who is one of Trump's advisors.

00:03:46.660 At the same time, are you going to replace Starlink with the Canadian version of Starlink?

00:03:51.320 That doesn't exist.

00:03:52.380 So what Ford's doing here is kicking Northern Ontarians in the face and forcing them to have worse internet access

00:03:58.960 because we think that ripping up a contract with Starlink,

00:04:03.000 which really doesn't affect Elon Musk that much or Trump is going to be the secret sauce to winning this trade war.

00:04:08.600 It's foolish.

00:04:09.160 I'm also urging all 444 municipalities to do the same.

00:04:14.680 And I'm thrilled to see some are already stepping up.

00:04:18.340 For example, Mayor Patrick Brown in the city of Brampton and many other cities.

00:04:23.960 As part of this government-wide procurement ban, we're going one step further.

00:04:28.660 We're ripping up Ontario's contract with Starlink.

00:04:33.880 It's done.

00:04:35.160 It's gone.

00:04:36.300 We won't award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province and our country.

00:04:43.740 It's foolish.

00:04:46.580 Again, you can say, and you can have that gut instinct that we should fight back.

00:04:50.340 We should put retaliatory tariffs on them. 0.94

00:04:52.160 If they tariff us, we tariff them.

00:04:53.940 Okay, a tariff on them is really us taxing our own people to import American goods.

00:05:01.260 Yeah, you could say, well, we shouldn't be buying their goods if we're in a trade war.

00:05:04.460 The problem is, if there's not a cheaper Canadian alternative, what's the point?

00:05:09.640 We are simply paying more for our basic needs.

00:05:12.960 And we wouldn't be importing it if we could get it here cheaper in the first place.

00:05:16.780 We actually already have a lot of tariffs on American dairy, cheese, other farm output goods, certain raw materials.

00:05:25.380 We tariff them quite a bit on certain products.

00:05:27.580 So we already are kind of hypocritical.

00:05:29.720 I was just checking out what Fox News was trying to say about this.

00:05:32.620 And they were already saying, well, Canada already tariffs us on a bunch of our products.

00:05:36.460 So they can't complain too much if we tariff them.

00:05:38.680 And it's like, yeah, the blanket 25% tariffs are way bigger than what Canada has on them.

00:05:46.100 Yeah, we have like 250% dairy tariffs, but that's just dairy. 0.99

00:05:50.140 At the same time, it does undermine our ability to make an argument to Americans themselves that this is unfair when they can see, well, you guys were technically tariffing us before.

00:05:59.680 And it's like, yeah, and that's technically true.

00:06:02.960 And now we don't have a leg to stand on.

00:06:04.800 Like, let's, I don't want to highlight this because it's so stupid looking.

00:06:09.140 All the liquor going off of Canadian shelves.

00:06:12.480 I guess we're going to really hurt Kentucky by taking all their bourbon down.

00:06:16.300 My goodness.

00:06:19.840 Who actually cares?

00:06:21.640 Is this, like, I know maybe certain governors aren't going to like this, but this is not going to be what ends up causing the trade war to end.

00:06:29.740 I think what would be more effective, not just in terms of sustaining the living standards of Canadians, but also ending the trade war faster, we cut our taxes.

00:06:41.760 We reduce our regulations hardcore.

00:06:45.220 So then we actually become the better jurisdiction to set up shop and do business in if there's tariffs or not.

00:06:51.660 The problem, again, like I said at the start, is that we're overtaxed and regulated.

00:06:55.340 That's why a lot of jobs are already going down to the U.S. pre-tariff.

00:06:59.960 So what we're doing right now is we're trying to circle the wagons, but we're circling the wagons around a patch of land where there isn't any real resources we can live off of.

00:07:09.360 We have picked a very stupid ground to try and fight on.

00:07:14.060 But anyways, I wanted to highlight this other comment that Doug Ford made before I move on to David Eby and Justin Trudeau.

00:07:18.800 So this was just patently ridiculous and demonstrating how this is all just an ego-stroking exercise for some people like Ford.

00:07:26.900 You know, to the president, I'm a different type of cat.

00:07:29.860 I'll fight tooth and nail.

00:07:31.260 I'm not going to roll over and get annihilated.

00:07:34.280 I'll fight right to the death.

00:07:36.380 Not that there's going to be any deaths, but, you know, the economy.

00:07:40.420 I will go out.

00:07:41.360 He has no idea.

00:07:42.540 He has absolutely no idea.

00:07:45.040 Okay, well, I hope that you're willing to bankrupt Ontarians before anyone in the U.S. is going to feel nearly as much stress.

00:07:54.140 That's the problem here.

00:07:55.420 It's not me being unpatriotic, pointing out that we can't win a trade war.

00:07:59.160 It's just the facts.

00:08:00.840 Should we try and secure the border better?

00:08:02.700 Because I have not seen any of these politicians try and secure the border better.

00:08:05.760 Is Trump's concerns kind of inflated, overblown?

00:08:09.220 Probably.

00:08:09.620 At the same time, we have an economy a tenth of the size of them, so maybe it's not the best move to start, like, trying to push the envelope and pretend, like, he's being ridiculous and we're going to fight back.

00:08:21.360 Like, okay, well, you know, that guy has a machine gun and we have, like, a .22 pistol.

00:08:27.580 This is not exactly, like, a fair fight here that we're trying to get involved with.

00:08:31.460 Rather than, sometimes you just kind of do what the person wants a little bit, so that even if they try and tariff you anyways, we could have called his bluff.

00:08:39.400 We could have shown to the American people that he wasn't serious.

00:08:41.780 But now, we don't even know if we actually did do something substantial to secure the border, if he wouldn't have tariffed us or not.

00:08:47.420 It's ridiculous.

00:08:48.400 Canadians are reasonable.

00:08:49.980 And we are polite.

00:08:51.720 But we will not back down from a fight.

00:08:54.760 Not when our country and the well-being of everyone in it is at stake.

00:09:00.220 And now, to my fellow Canadians, I won't sugarcoat it.

00:09:06.140 This is going to be tough, even though we're all going to pull together, because that's what we do.

00:09:13.400 We will use every tool at our disposal so Canadian workers and businesses can weather this storm.

00:09:19.980 So, from expanding EI benefits and making them more flexible to providing direct supports to businesses, we will be there as needed to help.

00:09:30.380 So, he's talking about subsidies.

00:09:32.200 He's talking about more welfare and subsidies.

00:09:34.380 And yeah, well, some people lose their jobs and maybe we can give them targeted support.

00:09:37.860 Sure.

00:09:39.300 Cut their taxes.

00:09:40.620 Find the industries that have the 25% tariffs and cut their corporate taxes in half.

00:09:45.940 Do that.

00:09:46.400 But the problem is, our federal budget, we are in a $62 billion deficit because of all the wasteful spending that the Trudeau government already engages with.

00:09:56.520 So, we can't really cut taxes without cutting wasteful spending.

00:10:00.840 We should be doing both.

00:10:02.040 If we have a competent government, we'd be getting rid of tons and tons of stupid fake job programs.

00:10:07.000 And we would be using the room we've created in our budget in order to slash taxes everywhere.

00:10:13.600 Our corporate taxes in Canada, I believe federal corporate taxes, are like 18%.

00:10:19.340 Actually, more like 28%.

00:10:21.100 It's ridiculous how high corporate taxes are in this country.

00:10:24.640 Our top-level income taxes are crazy high.

00:10:27.480 We should be slashing it all.

00:10:28.780 I even read a Fraser Institute study the other day that in British Columbia specifically, if you were to reduce the top-line tax bracket from 20.5% down to 14%, the province would barely lose any revenue.

00:10:41.900 Because you're taxing people at such a high volume that they just stop working after a while.

00:10:47.460 And so, if you reduce the taxes, your actual growth in the pie of the economy will more than make up for it in the long run.

00:10:54.520 But we can't learn any lessons here in Canada, apparently.

00:10:58.040 And we're just going to continue doing more socialism in response to troubles coming down the pike.

00:11:05.060 But Canada, make no mistake.

00:11:07.600 No matter how long this lasts, no matter...

00:11:10.120 My goodness, how long this lasts?

00:11:12.300 If it's going to last more than a couple months, dude, back off.

00:11:16.060 What the cost, the federal government and other orders of government will be there for you.

00:11:21.500 We will defend Canadian jobs.

00:11:25.360 We will take measures to prevent predatory behaviour that threatens Canadian companies because of the impacts of this trade war, leaving them open to takeovers.

00:11:36.740 We will relentlessly fight to protect our economy.

00:11:41.880 We will stand up for Canadians every single second of every single day.

00:11:47.840 This is why it's so hypocritical.

00:11:49.640 This is why I'm highlighting Doug Ford, Justin Trudeau, and I'm about to talk about David Eby.

00:11:55.200 These guys are the highest taxed...

00:11:57.560 These guys are in charge of the highest taxed jurisdictions in the country.

00:12:02.160 And they're here to say, no, we have your back.

00:12:04.280 Like, no, you haven't.

00:12:05.080 You've literally not had our back at all.

00:12:07.460 You've made life worse for people.

00:12:09.140 And then you're here to, like, take credit.

00:12:11.620 You're here to tell us, no, no, no, don't worry.

00:12:13.880 We're here to fight for you.

00:12:16.220 Here is a great post from my friend Daniel Boardman about this whole thing.

00:12:22.100 He says,

00:12:22.700 Canada's plan to fight Trump.

00:12:24.380 Raise everyone's taxes by $3,000.

00:12:26.740 Give everyone $2,000.

00:12:28.600 Give Mark Carney's companies the remaining $1,000.

00:12:31.720 Print a bajillion dollars.

00:12:33.420 Insert empty slogan.

00:12:34.760 And that's the problem.

00:12:35.480 These people are doing the exact same thing they did for COVID, and they're expecting different results because they're insane or they're deeply dishonest.

00:12:44.520 Okay, well, here's David Eby's response from...

00:12:49.480 Here's his response to the tariffs.

00:12:52.500 We didn't ask for this fight that the president has brought to Canada.

00:12:56.740 By the way, though, if there is a politician in Canada who asked for this fight, it was David Eby, because he is the man who is letting fentanyl and other drugs flow freely around his province, including handing out government-created drugs to addicts, flooding the streets with hydromorphone pills.

00:13:15.780 It's nuts.

00:13:16.340 He is the poster child that Trump needs to justify the tariffs because this guy does not care about border security and drug enforcement at all.

00:13:25.900 British Columbia.

00:13:26.700 But I'll tell you this, we're not going to shrink from it.

00:13:33.080 The president wants to hurt Canadians.

00:13:36.080 If he wants to hurt British Columbians, then we have no choice but to respond in kind to the United States.

00:13:44.860 Our response is pretty straightforward.

00:13:49.440 It's a message to Americans about what this is going to cost them.

00:13:53.380 Everything from the cost of pasta to the cost of a home or a car or to turn on the lights or to fill up a tank of gas is going to go up in a way that is noticeable and significant for American families, for Americans who work in manufacturing.

00:14:14.620 By the way, think of how hypocritical this is.

00:14:18.660 He's talking about how they should know how much, because the Trump administration is doing this, how much pasta is going to go up in price, how much gas, housing is going to go up in price, all of your critical minerals.

00:14:30.440 How can we not apply this to the stupid taxes and regulations that people like David Eby pass?

00:14:37.840 Every time he passes something and people tell him, you know, the price of everything is going to go up because of this.

00:14:42.900 Well, don't you believe in climate change?

00:14:44.760 Well, don't you believe in equity?

00:14:45.960 Don't you believe in the tolerance?

00:14:47.760 Every time somebody calls these guys out for their big government policies that makes people's lives worse, then you're wrong.

00:14:56.680 But if Trump makes Canadians' lives more expensive, then the government's going to call him out in the same way more conservative, you know, economists, more conservative politicians call them out for being complete hacks.

00:15:10.160 This is absolutely insane.

00:15:12.500 I actually did appreciate the new blue party of Ontario calling out Ford and the PCs for all of the taxes that they've raised, for all the taxes they've refused to lower over the past decade or so, since 2018, at the same time that they're attacking Trump because he's the one making people's lives expensive.

00:15:30.200 It's like, no, that was you guys, by the way.

00:15:32.700 Anyways, I'll let David Eby finish this one up here before I want to move on to Jagmeet Singh now using this as a catalyst to avoid the next election.

00:15:41.260 The factories that you work in, the inputs that you use to make the things that are sold around the world, have just become significantly less competitive.

00:15:51.380 Your jobs will be taken by people living in countries, other than the United States, who have access to the raw materials that Canada provides without tariffs.

00:16:04.440 You know, we could actually manufacture those goods in Canada instead of the US, not from like a protectionist perspective that we should tariff people who make the products so that we have to build them here.

00:16:14.660 And like, it's like some autarky economy. I don't, I'm not, I'm not in favor of autarky, but you can lower taxes enough that people will manufacture in your country.

00:16:24.720 Ireland did it. Singapore did it. Other small jurisdictions have done it. Ireland's not exactly small.

00:16:30.100 And you could say, well, we're not Singapore, we're Canada. Why not be Singapore with resources?

00:16:36.040 Why not be Singapore with oil and gas and aluminum mines and coal mines? Why not? It sounds great to me.

00:16:41.500 We could produce steel and then make things out of the steel if we lowered taxes enough and become the economic boom zone of the entire world.

00:16:51.180 And then we don't have to import, we don't have to import labor, cheap labor also, if taxes are super low and people can pay Canadians very high wages to do work,

00:17:01.420 knowing that they are, can still be hyper, hyper profitable at the same time.

00:17:05.860 Anyways, well, here is Jagmeet Singh now taking this as his best opportunity to say, oh, you know, maybe we need to push off the next election for a while.

00:17:15.340 There's already good evidence that Mark Carney was never going to call an early election because there was a by-election happening in Halifax in April.

00:17:23.640 So why would they schedule a by-election for Halifax in April if the federal election was going to be called before April?

00:17:31.500 And even then, you're not going to call a federal election literally right after a by-election wraps up.

00:17:36.660 That seems fairly silly. And it might even hurt your brand in the province of Nova Scotia to have suddenly a by-election in Halifax.

00:17:45.160 That guy gets elected. The whole province focuses on the by-election.

00:17:48.500 Then a week later, that person has to then run for re-election because the party was obviously just using that riding as a litmus test for their overall national campaign.

00:17:56.880 You want to vote down the government at your earliest opportunity.

00:18:01.780 Do you still stand by that statement? And do you think now is the time for an election?

00:18:06.220 Now is the time to put workers first.

00:18:08.880 We need supports of workers first, put in place working an election afterwards.

00:18:14.240 This tariff work could go on for four years. So how long would these measures that you're suggesting go on for? And how are we paying for it?

00:18:21.600 So the employment insurance should be permanent changes to the employment insurance that cover workers when they're impacted.

00:18:27.320 And then the measures in terms of economic stimulus, we need it immediately. We need a short-term fix.

00:18:33.860 And as we move towards building a more resilient economy, we can look at ways to adjust it.

00:18:38.120 Do you see this legislation, or if it would require legislation, receive royal assent before you'd be comfortable going to an election?

00:18:45.480 Do you just see it become law or pass through the Senate and return back?

00:18:50.180 Yeah, I don't want just a lip service. I want protections in place for workers passed and implemented, helping out people.

00:18:58.080 We literally have a dire situation. 25% tariffs on our country will mean potentially hundreds and thousands of workers lose their jobs.

00:19:10.940 So to Canadians listening, my commitment to you is I promise I'm going to fight to protect your jobs.

00:19:17.040 I promise I'm going to fight to make sure workers impacted get help.

00:19:20.340 And I promise that I'm going to put in place supports that I can do so that people who are worried about the cost of living that's already so high going up, I'm going to fight to make sure life is more affordable.

00:19:29.260 I just decided to let that entire clip play all the way through there.

00:19:33.760 So yeah, there's not going to be an election.

00:19:35.640 He dodged the question about, well, this could go on for a long time.

00:19:39.620 If you're saying you don't want to have an election in the middle of it, couldn't you now make the case that you're not going to hold an election until you have to in October?

00:19:47.100 And by the way, you can technically still push the election back by another year because our charter says elections every five years.

00:19:53.940 And it was not until another basically piece of legislation that was passed basically saying the election should happen every four years.

00:20:01.380 Maybe Carney and Jagmeet Singh and Blaschet were basically say that, well, it has to be five years because we're in the middle of an economic crisis.

00:20:08.920 We can't have an election now.

00:20:10.620 I doubt that would happen, but maybe it could happen.

00:20:13.220 It could be a strong possibility to at least try and make the argument.

00:20:16.260 But yeah, he doesn't want to do it.

00:20:18.040 And what's Jagmeet Singh's solution to this problem that we're having right now?

00:20:21.680 And he's going to have influence over the legislation that Carney's liberals passed in response to all this.

00:20:26.880 More socialism, just more protections, more taxes, more taxes to try and defend industries in Canada that, by the way, don't even exist.

00:20:35.600 We can't take the products that are being taxed from the U.S. and then just start making them overnight in Canada.

00:20:43.180 We might not have the factories.

00:20:44.400 We might not have the actual infrastructure to provide those services and products ourselves in the short run.

00:20:51.980 And yet we're going to put in place tariffs without even thinking.

00:20:55.600 This is not just going to be something that's going to hurt certain select industries.

00:20:58.760 This hurts everyone as soon as you put tariffs in place.

00:21:01.220 If we didn't put tariffs, we could then try and support those specific industries that rely heavily on exports into the U.S., while also trying to make the economy more competitive through tax cuts and other measures.

00:21:14.320 Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys.

00:21:17.460 This is going to get messy.

00:21:18.780 I'm going to try and cover it day to day.

00:21:20.120 Remember to like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment, do all that great stuff.

00:21:24.300 I'm about to go check out a Mark Carney event that's happening in Calgary.

00:21:27.620 I'm already wearing my liberal gray sweater, so hopefully they let me in.

00:21:32.840 And if not, I guess I'm just going to have to go sit in the cold and cry about it or something.

00:21:38.120 Anyways, see you guys all later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - March 04, 2025

Canadian officials FAIL on US tariffs - Jagmeet's NDP won't force an election!

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