00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.160Is it just me, or does Canada's trade strategy feel very incoherent right now? So incoherent,
00:00:13.300it may leave you with the impression that Prime Minister Mark Carney and his political allies
00:00:18.320have no clue what they're doing. Case in point, this video of Doug Ford in Washington, D.C.,
00:00:25.540now sounding like he definitely wants a trade deal with the trump administration
00:00:30.020despite previously attacking trump in ads that he was running down the united states and removing
00:00:35.860american booze off store shelves in ontario we're in washington dc meeting policy makers
00:00:43.140business leaders to talk about how we can enhance and grow our economies on both sides of the border
00:00:50.260let's create more jobs more opportunities more investment we love the us and i know americans
00:00:55.300love Canadians. We're having great meetings. We're going to get this done.
00:01:00.180Now, over here, notice how he also said that Americans love Canadians. He didn't say Canadians
00:01:05.440love Americans because based on the messaging that the Doug Ford PCs have done in Ontario,
00:01:11.080that's definitely not the line that they're taking. But look at the book that he's holding
00:01:16.720in his hand there. It says, Building Fortress North America. Well, that sounds positively
00:01:23.660Trumpian in a lot of ways. Check out what he wrote in the header of this post. This week's trip to
00:01:30.560Washington was a chance to make the case for Fortress North America. The message I took to
00:01:35.300American business leaders and members of Congress was simple. Workers on both sides of the border
00:01:39.900are better off when we drop tariffs and work together to build a stronger, more prosperous,
00:01:45.180and more secure continent. Okay, so it sounds like Doug Ford is in the position that I've
00:01:52.780always been in. Yes, I don't like the tariffs that Trump put on Canada's economy. At the same time,
00:02:00.180we should also probably be trying to figure out a way of getting to zero tariffs, and that might
00:02:05.520involve having to get rid of supply management tariffs that we have on the United States
00:02:10.200on things like dairy, poultry, and other such products. Doug Ford is the guy who, again,
00:02:17.500ran anti-Trump ads to the tune of like 15, 20 million dollars in the United States
00:02:24.540attacking Trump that got some of the original trade talks canceled.
00:02:29.100This is the guy now going down there saying that we need to have,
00:02:32.660we need to talk about building Fortress North America.
00:02:35.620And by the way, it's not just Doug Ford.
00:02:37.860Behind the scenes, they're saying that the federal liberals
00:02:40.600and our trade minister to the U.S., Dominic LeBlanc,
00:02:43.920is also doing this same strategy, saying that, hey, aren't we better together? We should try
00:02:50.020dropping tariffs on both sides of the border so that both of our economies are stronger.
00:02:55.440And it's like, well, that was always what people like Pierre Polyev and me were saying,
00:03:02.080that we should figure out a way of deciding, okay, if you drop this, we'll drop that,
00:03:06.900and we'll try and get to zero tariffs. But the Carney liberals and the Ford PCs were always about,
00:03:13.080No, Trump's in the wrong. He should just drop it. He should drop it without getting anything because he's the aggressor here. And maybe he is. That's up for argument. It doesn't really matter, though, because we're in the situation now. So how are we going to get out of it?
00:03:28.200We're not going to get out of it by telling Trump that he's actually super wrong about what he's doing, and he should just end it now without us having to drop anything like supply management tariffs or get rid of things like the digital services tax or the tripling of the streaming tax.
00:03:44.800Now, the Liberals have been slowly moving towards this in the background because they did get rid of the digital services tax and did cancel the tripling of the streaming tax.
00:03:56.440But at the same time, they won't admit that they are moving towards the kind of zero tariff environment that Trump is demanding.
00:04:03.980They are, in fact, going around the world and still talking about how all of the middle powers need to band together and Canada's diversifying our trade away from the United States.
00:04:13.560I just want to show this clip right here about talking, well, about Carney talking about how Canada is the most European of the non-European countries.0.51
00:04:23.460The new world will be built out of Europe. Canada is the most non-European of European countries. And we are currently transforming our cooperation with the European Union.
00:04:41.620Last June, we reached a new partnership with the European Union that has strengthened our cooperation on climate, technologies and trade.
00:04:54.440In February, Canada became the first non-European member of the SAFE mechanism, an initiative by the European Union on Defence Procurement.
00:05:06.880We have already established 56 partnerships on critical minerals in more than 10 countries,
00:05:15.180primarily in Europe. Now, I'm highlighting this because Carney is doing this at the same time
00:05:21.200LeBlanc and our trade negotiators are down in the U.S. trying to make concessions. But he's
00:05:26.940gone back on the road, I think, to try and pump up his sort of like anti-American bona fides.
00:05:32.960look, I'm moving away from Trump. I'm now growing our Canada's trade exports with Europe and with
00:05:44.700Asia and whatnot. We don't need those Americans. At the same time, behind the scenes, he's like,1.00
00:05:48.520we desperately need you. What do you want us to drop? We'll do it. And by the way, I'm not even
00:05:53.540criticizing him for making concessions. By the way, if he was playing proper hardball, he could
00:05:58.380demand concessions from the United States too. And we would be in a real negotiation,
00:06:02.460but he hasn't actually improved our economy in any way. So the man is walking around with zero
00:06:08.100leverage. I just looked it up before I made this video. Our trade exports are nearly down 1%
00:06:14.820since he became prime minister. And you could say, it's just 1%. Who cares? Well, shouldn't
00:06:20.300we be growing our exports? The problem is, is that we are trading about 5.8% less with the United
00:06:26.440States in terms of our exports are down 5.8%, but they represent 75% of our exports. And yes,
00:06:33.760we've increased our non-US export by 14%, but you'll notice that that is not that good compared
00:06:40.740to 5% of 75. I'd rather have 5% of 75 than 14% of 25, and that's why we're overall down. It's hard
00:06:50.540to diversify our trade when those countries don't really have that much left to really spend on
00:06:56.380canadian goods when they're busy trading with each other or the u.s who can make better deals
00:07:01.600with them we are shipping our goods right across the atlantic i guess hoping that we're going to
00:07:08.540be the cheapest version of whatever they're buying which is pretty hard to believe but here's now
00:07:13.200carney talking about how he doesn't actually expect to be talking about trade with donald
00:07:17.400trump at the g7 uh so as of now uh trump only has one bilateral with one g7 leader that's macron
00:07:25.400Do you expect him to have the headspace to talk about trade in Canada?
00:07:30.800And do you think there'll be a meeting?
00:07:32.320I think the principal discussions on trade are going to be held between Minister LeBlanc,
00:07:39.880our chief negotiator, Janice Charette, and their counterpart, Jameson Greer, Ambassador Greer,
00:07:46.080Secretary Besant, will be the principal aspects.
00:07:49.360This G7 is going to have a, as often happens with G7s, a very heavy geopolitical element to it, given very fluid events in the Gulf.
00:08:01.700And I would say as we, you know, on this fine day, trending in a positive direction.
00:08:08.200He's trying to switch topics here, but effectively what Carney is trying to do is downplay any expectations for results.
00:08:15.240So he's just saying, oh, I don't expect to talk to Trump about trade. Why wouldn't you? Isn't that like the biggest thing on your docket with Trump? It's not like it's the G20 where there's so many world leaders, maybe you're not going to be able to get a three hour meeting with the president. It's the G7. You are one of seven countries in the G7. And you don't think you're going to be able to bring up trade with Trump while you're there.
00:08:38.220again it's because Carney is there's a few things going on here one he sucks at negotiating so let's
00:08:44.560just get that out of the way two he's also having to do a bit of a political tightrope walk right
00:08:49.640now where he has to pretend he doesn't need the United States at the same time he knows he does
00:08:54.860and he has to try and please Trump make certain concessions without Canadians really knowing
00:09:00.520about it to try and get to a trade deal but again the problem with that is Trump doesn't want to make
00:09:06.040a secret trade deal with Mark Carney, where Trump's not going to be able to say that he got
00:09:11.260something out of it, he's going to be able to want to actually declare victory here. And Carney
00:09:15.380doesn't want to give him the victory because if he gives Trump something that he can declare victory
00:09:19.340over, and Carney can't say, no, actually, I'm the real winner here, it's going to affect the
00:09:24.300liberal base who might defect over to the NDP because they wanted basically complete obstinance
00:09:29.700all the time to the Americans. And the thing with Carney's trade strategy overall is if you're
00:09:37.140going to diversify trade, go all in on it. Now, I don't actually think that's the good thing to do.
00:09:43.080I actually think the Fortress North America play is smart if you did it a year ago. Now,
00:09:49.060now is better than never, but you should have been doing this a while ago. It's just been a
00:09:53.840big waste of time not doing it. That's still the best play. But if you were to diversify trade,
00:09:58.040Go all in on it. Cut your taxes. Cut your regulations. Make Canada a far cheaper place to do business so we can lower our product cost so then we can actually export to Asia and to Europe and to other areas of the world with actual credible prices to be able to negotiate over.
00:10:18.820The problem is we have really high prices overall because it's just not a very good economy to work in, which also has been setting us back in trade negotiation talks with the Americans because, well, we just don't have that much leverage.
00:10:34.120And the thing is that just because we're smaller doesn't mean we can't have leverage.
00:10:37.200Polyev and many other people have been saying, if you actually cut your taxes and your regulations and you made it a far easier place to do business, then you would actually be able to credibly say, maybe I don't need the U.S.
00:10:47.740But right now, the U.S. is more credible when they say, I don't need Canada, which Trump actually did say recently when he said, maybe I'm not actually interested in even renewing Kuzma, and it'll just go away and the tariffs will start applying to everything.
00:11:01.800You know, maybe he's probably somewhat bluffing because it would hurt the United States to be tariffing everything coming in from Canada.
00:11:09.160At the same time, obviously that would hurt us far more than it would hurt him at this point.
00:11:14.360And what we could have done is built up on a domestic economy where that wouldn't have been true.
00:11:19.840But now I want to move on to another clip here where it's Kearney reacting to Polyev criticizing him for going overseas and basically continuing to sign meaningless agreements to pretend he has some momentum on trade.
00:11:33.700Despite what you mentioned in your preamble about what you've been able to accomplish on this leg of the trip, there has been criticism from the leader of the opposition saying that Canada already has a trade deal with Ireland and what you're doing on this leg of the trip is not at all helping Canadian workers whose jobs are affected by tariffs from the United States.
00:11:56.380I wanted to get your response to that.
00:11:57.560Well, we have a couple of things. We have a trade deal with Ireland, but we don't have ratification, full ratification of the trade deal with Ireland. So one of the things that, and I want to commend the teacher.
00:12:09.340I'm just going to speed this part up. Basically, he's saying that, well, both chambers of the Irish legislature had quite passed the trade agreement yet, which meant it could be vulnerable to be thrown out later.
00:12:23.240It's like, well, I don't think there's a really required you to show up there. There's a very non-controversial agreement. If anything, you could have probably just got on the horn with the Irish prime minister and president and said, hey, can you guys push for that thing to be passed?
00:12:36.440and it could have been passed in an afternoon nobody would have been complaining about it that's
00:12:40.740why it was ratified pretty much in whole but let's skip over a little bit over to him trying to
00:12:44.960explain his overall trade strategy here ireland will be president of the european union values
00:12:51.080and the link between those so it's it comes together at a time where there's an enormous
00:12:56.000opportunity and i would remind that the scale of this economy the european economy is absolutely
00:13:02.320enormous this is an economy of more than 400 million people it's one of the richest economies
00:13:09.280and it is under penetrated by Canadian businesses now one of the reasons why that in fact you can
00:13:16.060do different analyses of this but directionally the opportunity for Canada in Europe is as big
00:13:23.340as in if not bigger than any other economy now to explain to the leader of the opposition who
00:13:29.800will try to clip it. I'm sorry, but now he already knows he messed up because he knows that the leader
00:13:34.820of the opposition, Paliyev, is going to clip this, and he should. I'm sorry, just because Europe has
00:13:41.360more people than America doesn't mean it's a bigger economy. America's economy is still bigger
00:13:46.280than the economy of every single European country, and we could even throw the Middle East in there
00:13:51.260too. Sorry, you're never going to be able to actually have an export economy that replaces
00:13:57.880of the United States with a place that you have to ship things on boats to get to. Yes, we also
00:14:04.720ship things on boats to the United States because at times it's more efficient, but we can also
00:14:09.200truck things over the border. You can't replace that. You cannot trade enough with Portugal,
00:14:15.760with England, with France, Sweden, northern Macedonia. There's no way for us to replace
00:14:23.740the United States in terms of quality exportation with the EU, unless we just slash our taxes and
00:14:30.740regulations and we become a more efficient economy. But he doesn't want to do that.
00:14:35.700Instead, he keeps basically posturing about how I'm totally going to start trading with the EU
00:14:40.840a lot. And it's like, well, no, they don't really have much more capacity to buy goods. That's why
00:14:47.460we have not been able to fully replace the United States by exporting elsewhere. And by the way,
00:14:52.620our exportations elsewhere are netting less money overall because of the increased transportation
00:14:58.420costs on the goods we're sending. To the leader of the opposition, we will try to clip that and
00:15:06.080not follow through. Add this. Opportunity means what more? What more can you get? What more can
00:15:13.500we, how more can we grow? What more can we get? How more can we grow? It's turning into a Dr.
00:15:19.140Seuss book. No, there's not more that we can get in Europe. The free market is this wonderful thing
00:15:27.840that apparently you're experienced with. In fact, the free market is not stupid. If Canadian0.89
00:15:34.120producers could get more money trading their products into Spain, Italy, France, the United
00:15:41.380Kingdom, into Norway, they'd be doing it. They weren't doing it before, not because the U.S.
00:15:46.860was strangleholding us. We're only in a stranglehold of trade efficiency. It's super
00:15:53.600efficient to trade with the United States. You get the most bang for your buck for your product,
00:15:57.720so you send it down there. We're not getting more. We're not finding more opportunity
00:16:02.240by going to Europe. It's at best a different opportunity, one that isn't really as good on
00:16:09.300paper or in reality. This opportunity means what more? What more can you get? What more can we
00:16:16.660how more can we grow from where we are today and the fact is it can be measured in hundreds of
00:16:21.460billions of dollars of opportunity that we have not as a country fully taken advantage of and by
00:16:28.580deepening our relationships like making it simpler to do business in ireland in europe we create
00:16:34.900enormous opportunity for canadian jobs yeah um no what all he's doing is at best preserving canadian
00:16:42.900jobs. So if you're in a lumber mill that was that was shipping to the United States, you might now
00:16:49.200be shipping a little bit more to Japan or to Korea or Indonesia or to Europe. You're more so
00:16:55.360replacing it. That's why we are having quarterly declines in productivity. Why? Yes, that is a lot
00:17:03.420to do with the fact that our immigration is going down and even the population is going down a bit
00:17:08.720In a healthy economy, if we actually had cut regulations and taxes, we would have bounced back very quickly, no matter if the population went down 2% or 3% or not.
00:17:18.700We would just be so much more efficient that our productivity, our harvest rates, the harvest rates for lumber would go up, that farm output would go up, that the products we're making would become cheaper and we'd produce more of them and we'd ship them around.
00:17:35.960We're not actually replacing anything right now.
00:17:38.500We're not growing anything with our trade in the US. Our economy is shrinking. Our exports are
00:17:43.160currently shrinking because all we've done is redirected some of the things that we were
00:17:47.760normally selling to the US over to Europe. That's not expanding a market, but he always talks about
00:17:52.700it like that's tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars for the Canadian economy.
00:17:57.620It's like, no, it isn't. That's like if I take $5 from my left hand and give it to my right hand
00:18:03.120And I pretend I've created five dollars. That's not how that works. But anyways, I want to now move on, actually, to a clip of the CBC where somebody who I disagree with 99 percent of the time and I still mostly disagree with here makes a semi good point.
00:18:19.500That being Chantel Hubert on Rosemary Barton's show a couple of days ago, where she does go after Mark Carney for the fact that he promised a trade deal.
00:18:28.380And he does have to own up to the fact that, well, whether he's going to say that Trump's unreasonable or not, he promised it and it didn't happen.
00:18:35.100All the things that Alvia lists or demands for more concessions, please organize group tourists so they are forced to come to the U.S., put booze on the shelves.
00:18:46.880I'm not hearing anything that talks about the U.S. openness.
00:18:50.900But can we remind ourselves, because at some point one needs to keep score,
00:18:56.380that at this point last year the Prime Minister believed
00:18:59.260that he would have resolved some of the main issues on the trade front.
00:19:02.620And then when that didn't happen, it was supposed to happen on July 21st,
00:19:07.500and then it was going to happen on August 1st.
00:19:16.500today it's got wow it's going well we spoke for an hour yeah yeah yeah i mean and and a bridge that
00:19:25.060that we have paid for uh that is ready to go that that that we are not allowed to open apparently
00:19:31.080because of whatever's going on behind the scenes because nobody will explain how those two things
00:19:35.460are related either and even then a little bit of clarity from rosemary barton for a change
00:19:41.720That's another thing that's been going on that's like really weird that people haven't been harping on more, that Carney has just agreed not to open the Gordie Howe bridge that was recently completed because Trump told him not to.
00:19:58.600Now, Trump's basically just playing hardball to get more leverage on Mark Carney.
00:20:03.160And heck, if you're an American, you probably might even like that sort of thing.
00:20:06.860But Carney keeps talking out of both sides of his mouth.
00:20:10.040it's frustrating because one day he talks about how good the trade relationship is with the united
00:20:15.880states and we're in talks and we're going to get to some deal but i'm only going to sign a deal
00:20:19.640that's great for canada and then the next day he's talking about oh i want to diversify trade
00:20:23.960and that's really what i'm focused on is is making sure that canada it does isn't solely
00:20:28.760reliant on the united states anymore and then we're going to get to a clip a little bit after
00:20:32.760this clip about to play where he actually says no i never said i'm going to be trying to diversify
00:20:36.840and forming a coalition of middle powers.
00:20:38.780I never said that, even though he clearly did.0.74
00:20:43.080There's no through line for me to show you guys here,
00:21:30.220The Canadian officials actually called off the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge because
00:21:34.560they were worried about backlash from the Trump administration.
00:21:36.760I know yesterday. That's that's not true. Yesterday you said it was due to technical issues.
00:21:40.660What are those technical issues? It's the discussion. As I said yesterday, the was at the request of the U.S. administration.
00:21:53.700We'll look to work through what issues they have. I'm not I don't think it's productive to to work through those in public.
00:22:01.080And our teams are working through. I actually haven't been briefed on it today.
00:22:05.680the specifics. You can tell he's lying because, again, he's doing what he always does when he's
00:22:09.940uncomfortable with what he's saying and he starts saying um and ah a lot. He said, well, I didn't do
00:22:14.300it because the Americans pressured me not to. It was for a technical reason. He's like, is that
00:22:19.100technical reason that Trump told you to do it? He's like, oh, well, you know, well, we're working
00:22:24.080through stuff and it's not productive for me to tell you what's going on. It's important we get
00:22:29.260this right. This is an asset for both countries and our people, most fundamentally, that's going
00:22:36.360to exist for decades. So if we need to take a few more weeks to get it right and get it launched,
00:22:41.620we'll do that. Now, if you actually wanted to make a power move as Mark Carney here,
00:22:46.740I could actually just see, just open the bridge, just do it. Who cares what Trump said? Just open
00:22:51.080the bridge, except he's not doing it. Like, that's why I find it so weird. He talks tough.
00:22:55.940Doug Ford also talks tough, and I'm going to remove booze from store shelves in Ontario.
00:23:02.940And then Carney's talking about how our relationship with the Americans has ended, and we're going to form a middle powers coalition and whatnot.
00:23:11.300And then Trump says, don't open that bridge that you fully paid for.
00:23:15.100And Canada did pay for the entire construction of the bridge, about $6.4 billion.
00:23:19.660And when Trump tells him not to open the bridge, he's like, yes, sir, I want to open it.
00:23:24.100Now, probably the Americans would say, well, we've been paying for your defense.
00:23:48.400And then when he's actually up against the Trump administration, just kind of starts waffling and turning to jelly, but also not even getting anywhere at the same time. It's not like he's making concessions, but moving towards a trade deal. He'll make concessions moving towards nothing.
00:24:02.660But now I want to get to his last flip-flop here, which is him talking about how, well, I never said that we were going to form a middle powers coalition, and then somebody coming with the exact quote, proving that that's exactly what he was advocating for previously.
00:24:18.740You know, to be clear, and if you look at the speech, I've never advocated that all of a sudden there was going to be a band of middle powers, you know, the M20 or something like that.
00:24:31.380But the point that I made, and I think you do see this concretizing, if I can invent that verb, hopefully it's a verb, you can double check that, David.
00:24:42.040You see it concretizing in our bilateral relations between Canada and France and relations with Europe.
00:24:48.740So just to recap one element of Davos, which is we talk in terms of variable geometry.
00:24:55.400So different partnerships with different groups of countries for different issues.
00:24:59.760Sometimes it's for outcomes like the coalition of the willing.
00:25:03.300This is just becoming just nonsense prattle.
00:25:06.400Here is what Carney had actually said back in his Davos speech.
00:25:11.060Peter McCaffrey from, I believe, the Alberta Institute highlights this.
00:25:15.440He says he literally gave an entire speech about the need for a band of middle powers, quote, the middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu.
00:25:24.760And that's the problem. Mark Carney's rhetoric has like nothing to actually do with his stance on trade.
00:25:31.740He flip flops on what he's going to do on trade pretty much every week.
00:25:36.100And this week, he's effectively talking out of both sides of his mouth.
00:25:40.000Dominic LeBlanc and Doug Ford heading down to Washington, D.C.
00:25:46.480And Carney going abroad to pretend he's still on the trade diversification train,
00:25:51.640despite the fact that he refuses to put all of his eggs in that basket.
00:25:55.080He's like putting little bits of effort into trading a little more than Indonesia or Japan or France or the U.K.
00:26:00.880And we've not actually been diversifying trade abroad because of anything Carney's been doing.
00:26:06.320It's just that when you can't trade goods into the U.S. because the tariff's too high, well, now maybe it is worth trading to Spain or to, you know, the U.K. now with your excess steel or whatever.
00:26:27.520Or, you know, we should form a partnership with Luxembourg and send them more stuff.
00:26:32.840That's not why we're sending them more stuff.
00:26:34.780It's just the free market saying, huh, Cosmoor sends steel to the United States.
00:26:39.120We're taking a real haircut on our profits here.
00:26:42.960And so usually Europe wasn't as good, but it might actually be better now.
00:26:46.300So I'm going to sort of detour a bunch of my steel off to Europe, or I'm going to detour a lot of my lumber over to Europe or aluminum or copper or whatever.