CBC in Total Denial - Carney can't handle Trump on trade!
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Summary
Wyatt Clunock is joined by Greg McEacherin and Travis to discuss the ongoing trade dispute between Canada and the United States. They discuss the Canadian government's response to the Trump administration's latest round of tariffs on Canadian dairy and poultry, the impact on Canada, and why it's time for Canada to take a real, adult position on the issue.
Transcript
00:00:03.020
One of the things that annoys me most about the tariff issue between Canada and the United States
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is how every Canadian pundit seems dedicated to not actually talking about
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what the Canadian government may be doing wrong in the negotiations.
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I need to show you this segment from CBC's Power and Politics,
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where supposedly they have a Conservative, Liberal, and NDP representative discuss the issues
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and every single one of them will refuse to lay a finger on the Mark Carney Liberal government's
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over-promising on the trade issue and their inability to actually negotiate with the Americans.
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We just sit around saying, Trump's bad, right? Orange man bad.
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Okay, some of those things can be true. I don't think the tariffs are exactly fair.
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I think supply management tariffs on dairy and poultry from the U.S. are not fair to the United States,
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but the tariffs that the U.S. is striking back with are disproportionately large.
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You could say that's a negotiating tactic. Fair enough. You could say that's not fair.
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But by the way, what does it change for us to sit around just saying how unfair it is over and over again?
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Eventually, you actually need to have a real adult position on what you are going to do
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in order to get to a better trade deal. So I need to show you the segment from the CBC.
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Then I need to show you some other stuff I had posted on X about this because I at least think
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I raised some good questions about what is Mark Carney doing right now?
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I've said this on other episodes, but I also want to reiterate it here because it's just been baffling to me
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how basically Carney's doing nothing. At the time, we're supposedly in a crisis,
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and he keeps saying that the negotiations are very intense. He's traveling to PEI.
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He's going to the Northwest Territories to meet with people he's met with dozens of times before.
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But here is the CBC segment. And by the way, guys, like the video, subscribe if you're not a subscriber,
00:02:05.860
Greg, I'll start with you. I don't even know how to set this up just because I feel like we've been
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talking a lot about this, but it does seem like a bit of an escalation perhaps from the president
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today, at least on the rhetorical side of things, saying that there really isn't much of a negotiation
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Well, I'm glad you asked me about Jeffrey Epstein because really what I want to...
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Oh, my goodness. Greg McEacherin's so funny, guys. Trump and Epstein.
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It's funny because that's something the left is attacking Trump over right now with no actual basis to it.
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Yes, Trump was friends with Epstein in the 90s and then kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago in 2002
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and then helped give information leading to his first conviction back in 2006.
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So what are you talking about? But it was that just annoyed me off the bat.
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But that's going to set the theme for this five minutes that we're going to watch through.
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Everything else, if you if we're looking at this and we should be, this is our job is to look at what
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the impact on Canada is. But if you look at things in Washington and the bigger picture,
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the president is in a lot of trouble, probably the most trouble he's been in thus far.
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His base is angry with him. Gallup polling is not going great for him. Other polls, not so great.
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His polling is actually totally fine right now. You can not like Trump. Obviously, you can do whatever
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you want. His polling is really not that bad right now. I'll pull up real clear politics that does a
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aggregation of all the different polls. The problem right now, we're trying to say that Trump's doing
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really bad because of Gallup, is that there's Trafalgar and Insight Advantage. Insight Advantage
00:03:44.160
being one of the most accurate in the country. And those put him actually quite well up. I'm going to
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quickly bring this up on screen so you guys can see it. But these are the current approval rating
00:03:56.220
polls. And naturally, there is a lot of anti-Trump rhetoric out there. So he's always going to have
00:04:02.340
a more negative approval rating than someone like Barack Obama would have had, or Joe Biden would
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have had early on in his presidency. But you look at this, and it's like, on average, a 51.3%
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disapproval rating, 46.3% approval. It's pretty dang close. And it's usually easier to dislike a
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politician than like a politician. And then when you go to Insight Advantage and Trafalgar, again,
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Insight Advantage after Big Data poll was the second most accurate pollster in 2024,
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they give him a positive two. But there's a Gallup poll out there that gives Trump a bad rating. So I
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guess that, you know, rather than actually doing analysis about the trade conflict and what Canada
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could do, let's just keep talking about that Trump's unpopular. Did you know that? People don't
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The impact of his decisions around trade, we're starting to see them. We mentioned last week,
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month over month, the car travel to the United States from Canadians. I saw a couple articles
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this week about the impact of the good provinces that have done bans on American alcohol, shame
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about Saskatchewan and Alberta. But that is sending a message to them as well. So there's a lot of other
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things. And then if you watch the broader clip today, when sending a message, okay, that's great.
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How are we going to turn that message into a trade deal? That's the problem. There are people out
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there like Greg McEachern, who just care about the symbolism of what Canada is doing. Who cares
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if like average consumers are deep hurt by this and he can keep buying himself heavily patterned suits.
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He was asked the question. It wasn't as centered on Canada as some of the, if you just take it in
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that little slip. So he's got a lot of issues. The problem with, if he pursues the tariffs,
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the estimates right now is on average, this is going to cost Americans $2,400 extra a year.
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The impact means that coffee for Americans will go up, shoes, appliances. And then when he's talking
00:06:07.380
about copper, copper goes into everything. So I know that it is our, you know, like as Canadians,
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we, you know, we tense up, but there are a lot of other problems as well. And the other thing I just
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say to folks that are watching is there's a really interesting slash weird article in the New Yorker
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on the trade secretary Lutnik. And he, I guess at one o'clock in the morning when he's in bed,
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Trump calls him and they discuss things. And one of the things he mentioned was we talk about Canadian
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steel. Now I can't wait for Saturday Night Live to come back on. I could just see, you know,
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like someone playing not, not, not Lutnik with like, you know, cold. What is this? I know none
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of us like the CBC, but I'm usually expecting a sort of base level of confidence, if not very rigid
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professionalism from their people. What is it? We're talking about who he would like to see playing
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Howard Lutnik on SNL and what, how would he like the skit to look? Can we talk about what Canada
00:07:11.780
has to do to get to a trade deal? Well, did you know that Trump's not as popular as you think in
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America? Okay. Carney's not as popular in Canada as some people would like to think. And him failing
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on this trade deal could sink his approval ratings pretty hard. I know people are saying, oh, well,
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you know, Carney's actually still doing quite well. I saw this from Polling Canada, not to put like a,
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you know, a voice like that on Polling Canada. But like people, it's more so the people that
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interpret the stats that Polling Canada post, they're like, oh, well, Carney's actually super
00:07:41.620
popular right now. It's like, yeah, kind of. He's popular because he's in a honeymoon phase.
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But when your approval rating is only 52 to 56% in your honeymoon phase, that means when you're out
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of your honeymoon phase, you're going to be below 50%. And once Canadians realize that he has no
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intention of making a pipeline, that the trade deal didn't get done when he promised that he knew
00:08:03.180
how to deal with people like Trump, and we might actually be paying 35% tariffs on non-US
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MCA compliant goods for the next few months before we strike a new deal, that's going to hurt him
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really bad. And US MCA compliance is not a get out of jail free card, because it costs more money
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to become US MCA compliant, because it requires more sourcing of materials from only within Canada,
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the US and Mexico, you have to have all the manufacturing done in Canada, you know, material
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sourced here has to be like, oh, there's extra paperwork and whatnot. It still adds costs to the
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average good. It's just better than the tariff. So a lot of people are not going to be super
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impressed with the economy in a few months, if Mark Carney doesn't figure this out. And we have
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these people, and Greg McEachern, by the way, is the liberal strategist. We have these people talking
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about what they'd like to see on SNL, cream in their face and a princess phone. But this is really,
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really bizarre. So, you know, I think that the premiers did good work this week. You know,
00:09:04.520
President Obed from ITK was on before he's having conversations, we need to keep doing what we're
00:09:10.780
doing. And, you know, if you look at what the Treasury Secretary said last Sunday, or what he said
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last Monday, he was hinting at delays. So it's really tough. It's like trying to put a thumbtack
00:09:22.400
in Mercury. Fred, what's the next play? The next play for this government? Well, when you're
00:09:28.400
dealing with... And to preface, Fred DeLore here, not a very good campaign manager. If you're trying
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to run a campaign, do not hire Fred DeLore. He was the guy who was running Aaron O'Toole's 2021
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general election campaign. I believe his leadership too. But he is supposedly the conservative on this
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panel. A man built from chaos. What's the next play? I don't know. The issue is, like, this is
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typical Trump. This is just his postures. He publicly negotiates. He throws things out. The
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fact that Canada's... It almost feels like a bit of pride as a Canadian that we don't have a deal with
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this man, because there is no real dealing with this guy right now. Obviously, we have no idea what's
00:10:11.720
going on behind the scenes. We don't know how these negotiations are going and how they're going to end
00:10:16.020
up. We have, you know, supposedly a week to this deadline. But there's no such thing as a deadline
00:10:21.660
with Trump. There's nothing standard. There's nothing normal. There's nothing normal about this
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process. You know, I think at the end of the day, though, Canada and the US, we are two... We're each
00:10:31.440
other's most important trading partners. And there's, as Greg mentioned, there's so much pressure in the
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US as well to make sure that there's some kind of deal alleviated here. But what's the pressure in
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Canada? We keep talking about the United States, but we never get to the Canada side of it.
00:10:45.220
The problem is, although Carney is trying to pretend, you know, I've done great things. I've
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gotten a trade deal signed with France. I've gotten a trade deal signed with other EU countries,
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with the UK. I've been working on a deal with Japan or whatever. It's like, it doesn't matter.
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Trump has a better deal. Not only does he have a better deal with these countries that are more,
00:11:04.740
like, and they are the bigger economy and the more, you know, the better country to usually trade
00:11:09.400
with because there's just more going on in the US. But they now have guaranteed buying, like, deals
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with the EU. The EU is going to buy, like, 700 billion dollars of oil and gas products over the next
00:11:22.120
couple of years. They're buying certain amounts of American goods. Canada doesn't have that. We just
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have some generic thing where you might trade with us. That'd be great. And we'll try and have fewer
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duties on you. That's all we have going on. But every time any of it, one of these panels speaks
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out, it's that Trump's a man made of chaos. It's hard to make deals with him. Maybe it's good that
00:11:45.040
Canada does not have yet have a deal with him. I guess if you want to write in your blog about how
00:11:52.080
you stood up to him, and you know, you want to, like, pretend to be a big man. Yeah, I guess this is
00:11:56.700
makes you look good. It's not going to make you look good in the long run when people's actual
00:12:02.800
economic fiscal position is worse. But apparently, again, this is the discourse on CBC. You can have
00:12:10.640
these generic nothing opinions and apparently be a paid talking head on the CBC. But there's also a
00:12:16.900
lot of distractions that Trump guys are trying to throw out right now. They're dealing with a lot
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of domestic issues themselves that are not good. I'm sure that's what's keeping him up at night,
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not a trade deal, that he is a trade crisis that he has created with his closest trading
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partner. So, you know, what's the next play here? I don't think anyone has any idea.
00:12:36.100
No, I would I would say like, I agree with with what both of you have said. I think the only
00:12:41.440
difference for what the next play is, is I think the government needs to not forget that they can't
00:12:47.020
stop communicating with people. You know, the fact that we I know this happens every Friday,
00:12:50.800
it feels like he says something and we're asked to respond. The fact that the government's not and I
00:12:55.680
know you're not going to want to respond right away. And I know you're not going to want to
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I don't think we need to listen to the NDP person. I think we listen to people whose parties have more
00:13:03.040
than seven percent of the vote. What are these? This is nothing. But again, it's the Canadian
00:13:09.960
institutions that don't want to deal with serious issues seriously. They don't want to be like that Trump
00:13:16.420
guy's crazy. He's insane. It's hard to deal with him. Like, OK, now what we've gotten out of our
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systems? Have we gotten the like, oh, Trump's crazy stuff out of our symptom systems. Can we now
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actually scrutinize what the carny liberals are doing to win the negotiations? I have I've had people
00:13:36.120
online saying, well, Wyatt, they're not going to tell you what their negotiating position is. That
00:13:41.520
would be really stupid to do during the negotiation. Can we get anything, though? I don't know.
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I don't know what Mark Carney and the liberal negotiator team. I don't know what they're
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offering. I don't know what they're putting on the table. I don't know what they're demanding.
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I don't know if the negotiating team for Canada is even allowed to discuss supply management.
00:14:03.000
What we've been hearing leaking from the negotiations is that the Canadian delegation
00:14:08.260
is attempting to renegotiate rather than just get to a trade deal ASAP. We are trying to
00:14:14.720
renegotiate the USMCA agreement. I know other people always put Canada first, like the CUSM
00:14:21.140
whatever. I just know USMCA better. They're like, oh, it's CASMA. USMCA is easier to say. I'm not
00:14:28.220
going to say CASMA or whatever. But we are trying to negotiate a monster of a trade deal. At the same
00:14:36.120
time, we could just say, okay, supply management is like quotas are weakened. You know, Wisconsin
00:14:43.500
cheese farmers can now like, you know, cheese makers can now send stuff into Canada. People in
00:14:49.000
the Dakotas raising chickens can now send poultry products into Canada in a limited amount. We could
00:14:54.460
do that and probably get out of the situation, but we don't want to. Supply management isn't even good
00:15:00.080
for our country. It's good for fake national pride. Oh, we only use Canadian chicken. But it's a stupid
00:15:05.900
quota system where it's not even allowing all Canadian farmers to produce. It gives like exclusive
00:15:11.100
producing rights to certain farmers and then cuts other people out. Again, I keep saying Alberta, 12% of
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the population, 7% of the supply management quotas. But so we're trying to negotiate this monster of a trade
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deal over again, rather than just signing a new trade deal to avoid a tariff. We want the entire
00:15:32.140
trade agreement to be remade that would also require Mexico to be involved unless we cut Mexico out of
00:15:38.680
it. This would be a great thing to do five months ago, not the, you know, late July, a few days before
00:15:46.260
August. Why do you think Donald Trump says, yeah, I don't even know. I don't think we can negotiate. I
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don't think these negotiations are going anywhere. Canada doesn't want to. I guarantee it's pretty
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much because we are countering reasonable demands about scrapping or weakening supply management and
00:16:04.400
saying, can we just fix the entirety of USMCA? Can we engage in what will be like a year long process
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to change this thing instead of just signing a quick little trade agreement to alter some few things on
00:16:17.860
both sides of the border to have low for basically low or no tariffs? It would be so easy. When you're
00:16:24.140
dealing with Trump, you don't have to capitulate. You just have to give him the ability, the idea that
00:16:29.100
he won something, that he triumphed and he can go back and chalk it up as a win. You just have to
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give Trump a win. You can actually win more in the negotiation than he does. He just needs a win.
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I'm not someone sitting here saying, oh, I hope Trump destroys Canada. I love Trump. I'm Canadian.
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I want Canada to win. Canada is not going to win and then America loses. America can't lose a trade
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negotiation with Canada, even if we have tariffs on for a few months. The thing is, yeah, will it hurt
00:17:01.400
American consumers? Definitely. It will hurt Canadians more because although the tariff is on
00:17:06.560
American consumers buying Canadian goods, our economy is so weak, the indirect impact of not being
00:17:12.460
able to export as easily into the U.S. is going to crush so many businesses. We are more than 10%
00:17:20.300
of the U.S.'s population, but we have less than 10% of their economic power and we don't even barely
00:17:26.460
pay for our own defense. I can kind of see why the Americans get a little annoyed with Canada. I don't
00:17:31.580
think it's fully justified, but it's pathetic that we're in this situation where we could be trying to
00:17:39.340
actually negotiate seriously, come to an agreement that could get us out of this. And instead, it seems
00:17:44.720
like both Carney and the liberal negotiating team, as well as the talking heads on TV, just want to talk
00:17:50.740
about how bad Trump is. Again, where is Mark Carney? I know there's an itinerary for him every day. I'm not
00:17:57.280
saying that he's not where he says he is, but I'm saying, why is he in, why is he in PEI? Why is he in, like,
00:18:06.660
like, yesterday, he was, like, announcing something about, like, the tolls being removed from the
00:18:12.240
Confederation Bridge in the Maritimes. Okay, that's nice. He was in the Northwest Territories.
00:18:19.200
He's probably, tomorrow, he's probably going to, like, pop up in that tiny little spit of land of
00:18:24.220
the Maritimes that the France owns. There's, he's not, like, again, I don't require him to be in
00:18:29.420
Washington this entire time, but you think he'd be in his office and he'd be taking calls with
00:18:33.820
American Congress people constantly and senators and trying to put pressure on individuals along the
00:18:39.120
border and whatnot. You think he would be doing any sort of hardball? I'm not even saying capitulate.
00:18:45.080
Play hardball, but do something. I don't even know what he's doing. We don't know what the Canadian
00:18:49.460
position is. They don't have to spill it onto the floor with every single detail, but the Americans
00:18:54.500
never are hurt by just saying what they are doing. They generally tell Americans what their position
00:19:00.400
is and what they're asking for. Canada could say, yeah, we put a few things on the table.
00:19:05.140
Americans haven't bit at them yet, but, you know, it's all we can really do that's reasonable.
00:19:09.720
They're not even saying something that vague. We don't know if they put anything on the table,
00:19:14.260
and that's the problem. I can't actually say if we're negotiating in good faith or we're just
00:19:19.280
entering the room saying, can you just take the tariffs off? You know, can you do it for us?
00:19:24.880
Yes. I'll smile if you do it. Like, that's kind of where we're at right now, at least with the fog of
00:19:30.940
war we have currently going on, and everything the Americans are saying sounds like there really
00:19:34.740
isn't a real negotiation. They are just sitting in that room. The Canadian negotiators are saying,
00:19:39.560
pretty, please remove the tariffs, and they're like, no, and that's where we're at. Anyways, so
00:19:45.740
that should be it for this video, guys. I will definitely be back later. I'm probably doing a
00:19:51.080
live stream later today, so if you got time, I might be sitting down, and I might be doing the
00:19:56.360
same thing that Northern Perspectives is doing, watching the Battle River Crowfoot Candidates
00:20:00.820
Forum as an excuse to, you know, do something live. It's fun. I didn't do this because Northern
00:20:06.740
Perspectives was doing this. I was actually independently wanting to do it, and then they
00:20:10.880
ended up announcing they were doing it too. Great minds think alike, perfectly fine. Go watch them
00:20:15.860
if you like them better than me, but I will see you guys probably around 7 or 8 p.m. Mountain Time.
00:20:21.080
But anyways, with that, see you guys all later.