The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 04, 2025


Carney got slapped by Trump - Liberal media spins it as ＂mini win＂


Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

181.54836

Word count

3,670

Sentence count

224

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Wyatt Clunock explains why the Digital Services Tax is not a win for Canada and why it's actually a disaster. He also explains why Canada should have never passed the DST in the first place.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.
00:00:03.080 Ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney and his liberal government objectively caved to President Donald Trump of the United States on the digital services tax in order to get back to the trade negotiation table,
00:00:15.600 the liberals online, in the media, and in the party itself have been spinning overtime in order to try and make this seem like a big liberal victory.
00:00:25.760 It wasn't. It was deeply embarrassing to the country. I have said it many times before.
00:00:31.400 We should have never passed the digital services tax in the first place.
00:00:35.240 We should have never attempted to implement it during trade negotiations.
00:00:38.960 And then we looked really stupid when it took Donald Trump forcing us to drop it for us to actually get rid of it.
00:00:45.400 It was a tax that was already bad for Canadians.
00:00:48.140 And then you implemented it during a trade negotiation when it's effectively just a tariff on U.S. tech firms.
00:00:54.120 It was obviously a major fumble for the liberal government who thought they could get away with something like this,
00:01:01.340 thinking that the U.S. wanted to sign a trade deal so desperately that they were just going to put up with it.
00:01:07.760 They weren't. They didn't.
00:01:10.000 And now we had to do a giant climb down and people both in the liberal party and the media were pretending it wasn't a climb down.
00:01:16.760 I haven't I talked about this in a short, but I haven't talked about this in an official video yet.
00:01:21.800 But we actually do have a liberal MP who tried to come out and combat all of the correct takes that Carney caved.
00:01:31.360 And that was liberal MP Dr. Hendy Fry, a woman who really should know better. 0.99
00:01:37.440 She is a veteran liberal.
00:01:39.240 She has been in the liberal party as an MP, I believe, since the 1990s.
00:01:43.360 And she said here, the idea that Canada caved on the digital services tax shows a narrow understanding of negotiation strategy.
00:01:52.500 We are playing chess, not Chinese checkers.
00:01:55.420 It's a long game of skill, not a gotcha tactic.
00:01:59.920 OK, well, one, I don't think anyone in the liberal party should ever be saying that they're not doing something Chinese related,
00:02:06.960 considering that they have a massive problem with foreign interference with the CCP.
00:02:11.500 They play Chinese checkers a lot.
00:02:13.980 You know, let's make that very clear.
00:02:15.820 The idea that no, no, no, guys, we didn't get owned.
00:02:18.940 We were not embarrassed.
00:02:20.240 We actually got a half W out of this whole L.
00:02:25.080 No, they totally lost.
00:02:26.840 And now they are saying that because we're back at the table, we actually did something right.
00:02:30.920 See, we demonstrated to the Americans that we may do something that they don't like, and that's going to get us a better deal,
00:02:37.580 even though Trump said that I'm not going to make a deal with you at all if you do something I don't like.
00:02:42.040 This isn't a win.
00:02:43.020 There's no way to spin it.
00:02:44.340 But even more than people like Dr.
00:02:47.160 Hendy Fry and people in the liberal party, the media has been on overtime on this thing.
00:02:52.660 Here is the headline.
00:02:53.900 CTV News has been the worst, objectively, the absolute worst.
00:02:57.180 But some of the media have actually been doing a pretty good job covering it.
00:03:02.640 You know, it's hard to deny reality for too long.
00:03:04.820 But look at these headlines from CTV News.
00:03:09.120 It says business.
00:03:10.480 It really should just say opinion.
00:03:12.180 It says it was a bargaining chip.
00:03:14.260 Foreign affairs expert on Canada rescinding digital services tax.
00:03:18.420 How is it a bargaining chip?
00:03:20.360 We've already gotten rid of it, and we've already said we are going to officially repeal it in legislation.
00:03:25.860 There's nothing else.
00:03:27.180 We can get from the digital services tax rescinding other than getting back to the table because that's what Trump put on the table.
00:03:35.060 He said, I'm not going to negotiate with you guys on trade unless you get rid of the DST.
00:03:39.260 We got rid of it.
00:03:40.120 Now we're negotiating again.
00:03:41.600 That's not going to stop Trump from demanding more because that was not even something he assumed that he was going to have to ask us to get rid of because we just started implementing something.
00:03:51.420 Then negotiation for no reason that wasn't a direct attack on his economy.
00:03:58.180 But that wasn't the piece of media from CTV News that I want to cover today.
00:04:03.060 I want to cover this other interview they put up just a couple days ago, and they brought on an economics expert to talk about how this was actually a win-win if you think about it.
00:04:15.020 The headline from this is mini-win for Canada as digital services tax dropped experts said.
00:04:22.360 This was not a win, but I need to take you through this interview because it's embarrassing.
00:04:27.500 It's embarrassingly silly to be pretending like this was a mini-win by us being chastised on doing exactly what Donald Trump said when we previously thought we were going to be able to weather the storm and keep the DST in place effectively just so Carney can reduce the deficit.
00:04:43.880 We are running a $90 billion deficit this year, and he needed an extra $7 or $8 billion from the retroactive tax that was then going to continue in the future in order to make himself look like what he was advertising during the federal election.
00:04:56.560 Somebody who was going to put Canada's fiscal house back in order.
00:05:00.040 He kept saying, house back in order.
00:05:01.280 We're masters in our own house.
00:05:02.780 He is very much not in control when it comes to the economics of the country, which is hilarious because his whole thing is he's a good economist, apparently.
00:05:11.620 Mark Carney's whole thing is he was Trudeau's economic advisor, the governor of the Bank of Canada in England.
00:05:16.200 He worked at Goldman Sachs.
00:05:17.740 He brought massive profits to Brookfield Asset Management.
00:05:20.980 The problem with Brookfield Asset Management, though, is if you actually look into them, a lot of their money comes from government contracts.
00:05:28.500 It comes from being within industries early that the government subsidizes.
00:05:33.760 It's not because of keen business acumen of Mark Carney cornering a market where there was high demand.
00:05:40.800 Brookfield Asset Management would find industries that the government was throwing billions of dollars at, whether you were productive or not, and then they made money doing that.
00:05:48.800 But now let's get into this interview.
00:05:50.420 Now is Julian Karagassian, economist, pardon me, and former special advisor at the Ministry of Finance.
00:05:57.680 Julian, welcome.
00:05:59.680 Well, thank you, Ernie.
00:06:00.860 Thank you for having me.
00:06:01.900 So let's start with your thoughts on whether this is a hit or a miss for Canada.
00:06:07.260 Could it mean that we have more trade leverage heading into negotiations with the U.S.?
00:06:12.940 I love that question set up first before we get to Julian Karagassian.
00:06:17.200 Do we have more leverage now after getting clobbered in the face?
00:06:21.840 Are we better off?
00:06:23.820 Was this actually good that we got, you know, slapped around?
00:06:28.140 What is this?
00:06:28.980 Like the ending to Rocky III?
00:06:30.860 He's like, he's getting killed out there.
00:06:32.760 No, he's getting angry.
00:06:34.140 It's like, what is Carney trying to like build up like courage by getting like apps utterly destroyed before the real negotiations start?
00:06:41.220 I think it was a clever tactic by Prime Minister Carney to hold on to this tax to the last minute.
00:06:49.420 And then President Trump came in at the very last minute, the Friday before, and pulled out of the talks.
00:06:54.820 So it bought us a little time.
00:06:56.760 And it gives the appearance that we've made a concession as we head towards this July 21st date.
00:07:03.220 So there's a, I think there's a, we, yes, we did make a concession.
00:07:07.480 What do we buy?
00:07:08.420 What do we buy time for continuing to fail in the trade negotiation?
00:07:11.900 I don't get what we're buying time for.
00:07:14.780 What we need to do is drop our mark or what is it?
00:07:20.780 Why am I forgetting it?
00:07:21.960 Well, you know, the marketing boards, the supply management, that's what we need to get rid of in order to get a good trade deal with the United States.
00:07:27.820 Trump doesn't want to trade with us unless we get rid of the crazy tariffs on dairy, cheese, and other products, chicken, whatnot.
00:07:34.920 That's what he's looking for.
00:07:35.900 And that's what he's still driving towards.
00:07:37.300 The other media is actually being more honest and saying that Trump actually has a good chance of getting us to at least heavily modify the supply management system so some U.S. products can start entering.
00:07:47.300 But him saying we've strategically given a concession to look, you know, to make ourselves seem friendly to the U.S.
00:07:54.580 No, no, no.
00:07:55.060 We ticked them off and then we kind of bought it back.
00:07:58.680 They're still annoyed, probably.
00:08:01.100 But apparently this is like, I don't know what, like, the fact that he worked for the Ministry of Finance probably under the Liberals is probably a good sign that this guy's delusional.
00:08:10.620 Mini win there.
00:08:11.900 We also had to back win there as we head towards this July 21st date.
00:08:17.840 So there's, I think there's a mini win there.
00:08:20.440 We also had to back down publicly and give in on this tax.
00:08:25.560 But I think that was a good strategic, good tactical maneuver by the prime minister.
00:08:30.080 Now, the parliamentary budget office had estimated that this isn't exactly the retreat from Dunkirk in terms of it being like a tactical victory in terms of us reconsolidating ourselves.
00:08:42.240 No, we got caught out.
00:08:44.020 It's like if we had a, we like sent a bunch of tank columns down a road and they all got absolutely wiped out.
00:08:50.180 We're like, well, we've made, we've lulled the enemy into a false sense of security by just doing something extremely stupid and getting punished for it.
00:08:58.520 Tax would bring in more than $7 billion over five years.
00:09:02.880 What does the loss of that revenue mean for Canada?
00:09:05.360 Well, it's coming, you know, that loss of that potential loss of revenues coming at a time where we have incredibly large challenges and pressures on federal and provincial budgets.
00:09:18.560 We've got pressure, obviously, coming right from Washington to boost our defense spending sharply to 5% of GDP.
00:09:24.740 We have pressures from healthcare on transfers, payments right across the board.
00:09:30.340 And also there's a, there's a sovereignty issue as a sovereign nation.
00:09:35.040 The, the digital tax, the digital services tax, that's a domestic policy.
00:09:39.540 And so what we're seeing from the, it's a domestic policy, but in fact, every policy could be argued as domestic policy.
00:09:47.380 Other than Shopify and some very small tech firms that operate from Canada, I guess Ubisoft would be paying the digital services tax, but who, we don't really have big tech giants exactly outside of Shopify.
00:10:01.740 The U.S. has Apple, it has Amazon, Google, many other, Facebook, we have Uber, they all operate in Canada.
00:10:10.060 And so we were going to take 3% more of their revenues on top of the corporate tax they already pay, on top of the other regulations that they have to follow that cost them a lot of money.
00:10:19.900 They, we are, we're going to implement a 3% higher corporate tax on them.
00:10:24.920 And we're considering this a domestic, purely domestic policy, even though 90% of the tax is going to be paid by American firms.
00:10:32.280 It's obviously a tariff that has this backward justification of us saying, no, no, no, it's domestic because it's, it also affects Shopify.
00:10:39.760 We were in the middle of negotiation, negotiating with the EU to give them a loophole around the DST.
00:10:47.380 So at the same time, we passed it saying, well, it applies to everybody equally.
00:10:50.720 We were immediately telling the Europeans how to get out of it, which made it seem like we were just attacking the Americans, probably because they were. 1.00
00:10:57.060 Trump White House says they're telling their allies that you have no sovereignty over your domestic policy.
00:11:02.580 We will use leverage in terms of access to our market to cancel any policy that we believe interferes with our business interests.
00:11:13.460 Now, he says that, but we have supply management that blocks so many agricultural goods from the United States entering Canada.
00:11:21.500 I hate this hypocrisy.
00:11:24.120 We are the only country on the planet outside of like communist dictatorships that have such a backwards way of doing agricultural policy with supply management.
00:11:34.220 It's stupid.
00:11:35.160 And that he's here saying, well, they're trying to use trade leverage in order to affect our domestic policy.
00:11:41.000 Well, what's supply management?
00:11:42.280 Was that only a domestic policy?
00:11:43.880 Because the wording of it sounds very, you know, pro-Canada.
00:11:48.660 Well, it's a domestic policy because it's about trying to help Canadian farmers.
00:11:51.960 It's also trying to prevent American farmers from being able to sell into here.
00:11:55.940 It's also trying to prevent Canadian farmers not in the quota system from being able to produce eggs, milk, cheese, dairy, any dairy products, chicken.
00:12:05.760 The thing is that it's a burden on us.
00:12:08.040 So if Trump is somehow able to get rid of supply management in our country through trade pressures, more power to him in my mind.
00:12:14.580 Well, let's talk about interprovincial trade barriers.
00:12:17.480 They have been removed, at least at the federal level.
00:12:21.380 How much of a boost to the economy are we potentially looking at?
00:12:26.100 I think, by the way, the trade barriers have not been removed.
00:12:29.300 The biggest trade barrier is supply management that is guaranteeing a certain supply of the market, a certain portion of the market, a certain amount that certain farmers are allowed to sell into the market.
00:12:41.640 It guarantees them.
00:12:42.560 And they're all from Ontario and Quebec pretty much.
00:12:44.920 So the problem is that the biggest interprovincial trade barrier is the fact that we guarantee certain amounts of business to farmers in certain provinces.
00:12:53.340 We guarantee that provinces are allowed to shut down pipelines if it comes into their jurisdiction, even though it's affecting the entire Canadian economy if they're saying no.
00:13:01.980 We are guaranteeing First Nation ban councils endless consultations for any project that is even in their vague territories.
00:13:12.780 I say vague because we have this crazy concept of title land in Undrip in Canada that we follow that allows bans to constantly claim that their territories are bigger and bigger and bigger and that, you know, mining companies and oil and gas companies need to speak to them in order to get approval for that project, which really just turns into like a shakedown.
00:13:33.100 From the removal of so-called federal barriers to provincial trade, I think those are largely symbolic in terms of direct barriers to trade.
00:13:43.000 But the feds have incredible influence in tax spending and borrowing powers to promote infrastructure, to promote competition policy right across the economy.
00:13:53.280 In terms of the boosts to the economy, if all provinces and territories were to actually eliminate the most egregious interprovincial trade barriers, I don't think the sum would come to $200 billion a year, as we've seen.
00:14:08.560 But it will allow us to increase our productivity.
00:14:12.840 It will create for the first time in Canadian history a truly internal economy.
00:14:17.840 It will allow people to move more easily across the country.
00:14:20.840 But I think it's only a small part of the puzzle or of the new economic model that we need to create for the 21st century, because our current model sells a lot of stuff to the big neighbor next door.
00:14:34.080 This current model is under attack.
00:14:36.800 And so we need to create a new 21st century economic model based on that.
00:14:41.400 And the thing is there, I actually kind of largely agree with some of the things he's saying about, you know, that we need to knock down a lot of the provincial barriers.
00:14:51.500 And if we do that, we can actually gain massive amounts of productivity.
00:14:55.240 But again, he is missing out that we are the federal supply management system is the biggest trade barrier in Canada.
00:15:01.320 It's telling which farmers are allowed to produce things and which are not allowed to produce things, which tends to be very regional.
00:15:07.640 Again, Quebec dairy farmers profit from the system, but not Alberta or Saskatchewan dairy farmers.
00:15:13.600 They have very limited supply that they're allowed to put into the system where the Quebec dairy farmers and some in Ontario are allowed to add in massive amounts.
00:15:22.580 And even then, they're even held back because there's still a cap.
00:15:25.900 There really shouldn't be a cap.
00:15:27.020 And so when we're talking about all of this, and then we're talking about how the current system of us trading with our neighbors to the south is under attack, it's, but by who?
00:15:36.640 But by who is it under attack from?
00:15:38.720 Yes, Stalin Trump is raising tariffs on us, but he's doing it because we've had tariffs for the longest time.
00:15:43.800 We have this stupid mentality in Canada that if something bad ever happens between the US and Canada, it must be the United States' fault.
00:15:51.900 We had tariffs on them first.
00:15:53.320 So when we start getting mad at them that they want to have a 10% across the board tariff, it's very hypocritical when we have 250% tariffs on specific products that are actually produced quite a bit in the neighboring border states.
00:16:07.260 You think Wisconsin doesn't have a lot of cheese that it would sell into Canada if the giant cheese tariff wasn't there?
00:16:13.820 They probably would, but we've blocked them.
00:16:15.860 And so Trump rightfully is allowed to be mad that there is this hypocrisy in Canada that we're allowed to protect our own economy, but they're not allowed to protect their economy.
00:16:26.040 But this isn't even protection.
00:16:27.220 It's actually bad for your economy to have tariffs on the other guy.
00:16:30.180 So in doing this, by putting pressure on Canada, we'll actually make a trade more free on both sides of the border, which is the right thing to do.
00:16:38.320 But yeah, overall, the media, though, has been just pretending that the liberal government's been doing more than it has been.
00:16:46.360 Their interprovincial trade barrier legislation with Bill C-5 trying to reduce barriers, trying to basically give cabinet the approval to just say yes to projects.
00:16:55.820 That's not really real.
00:16:58.120 And I understand why the conservatives voted for Bill C-5.
00:17:00.980 It's basically saying to the liberals, here you guys go.
00:17:03.720 You guys get to have the power in order to fast track projects that you like through cabinet by saying all the regulations and restrictions are out of the way for this project because we like it.
00:17:14.620 And see how many projects they actually approve.
00:17:16.620 I guarantee, based on their own ideology, they are going to be very sluggish because the liberals are protectionists at heart.
00:17:23.980 And when I say protectionists, I mean interprovincial protectionists.
00:17:27.260 They want projects for Quebec and Ontario.
00:17:30.260 They do not want projects for Alberta and Saskatchewan.
00:17:33.580 They don't really care about those projects.
00:17:35.460 They have a base, a constituency that they're going to serve.
00:17:38.180 And within that constituency are also environmental activists, indigenous activists who do not want productivity, who do not want more projects.
00:17:48.660 And so, but the media, again, is doing this thing, pretending like some big coup has happened.
00:17:53.200 And we're now going to start firing on all cylinders.
00:17:56.000 Again, what Carney has done, he has symbolically pretended like he wants to get something done.
00:17:59.880 He has just outsourced the blame to the provinces, to indigenous groups, to environmental groups, and says, I'm going to say yes, but they have to say yes, too.
00:18:06.320 It's a Weasley tactic to say that, yes, I'm going to say yes, but everyone has to be in consensus, knowing that a few of those parties are never going to say yes, even though he could actually overrule them.
00:18:19.420 But anyways, that should be it for me today, guys.
00:18:22.220 I'll probably have to keep covering this DST thing over time because it is a big story and it is flavoring how the trade negotiations are going to go.
00:18:31.120 Again, getting rid of the DST was not a mini win.
00:18:34.100 It wasn't any win.
00:18:34.980 It was nothing.
00:18:36.560 We looked stupid.
00:18:37.440 We got slapped about.
00:18:38.380 And now our big consolation prize is that trade negotiations are going to continue.
00:18:43.320 Oh, but we bought time.
00:18:44.840 For what?
00:18:45.880 Well, we're going to hold out longer on our stupid trade position, which is inevitably going to get knocked down.
00:18:52.180 We're going to have to make rightful changes to supply management.
00:18:54.880 By the way, if we make changes to supply management, not only will our entire economy be more productive, prices will go down.
00:19:01.600 People will be better off.
00:19:02.600 Carney's trying to ballyhoo this middle class tax cut he's giving out.
00:19:08.560 Again, we had leftists saying the 3% revenue tax on digital service companies, like anyone selling digital services or goods, Amazon, Uber, Google, Shopify.
00:19:20.620 It was only 3%, while Carney only lowered taxes 1% under $50,000.
00:19:27.580 You don't even pay taxes on the first $18,000 to $19,000 of your income.
00:19:33.140 And we're considering this a big deal?
00:19:34.640 They put out this ridiculous math where they're like, hmm, the average Canadian family is going to go into Ireland.
00:19:40.920 A Canadian family can save up to $830 on their taxes.
00:19:45.140 Okay, big whoop, dude.
00:19:46.720 Actually, when they did more proper estimates about how much the real average person is going to get back from this, it's about $230.
00:19:53.240 You know, basically, don't buy Starbucks for a month if that's your coffee of choice and you've saved the amount of money that Mark Carney was generously giving you back.
00:20:04.340 But anyways, now I'm just rambling again.
00:20:06.400 Anyway, so guys, make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment, do all that fun stuff.
00:20:11.280 And I will see you guys next time.