00:00:00.000No matter what's in the draft-canned U.S. trade deal that Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from,
00:00:07.320I think the biggest overarching issue here is what it seems like is happening on the Canadian side
00:00:13.280is that we are being represented by people who don't prioritize Canadian jobs before their own political interests.
00:00:22.400Mark Carney and premiers like David Eby and Doug Ford want to fight with Donald Trump.
00:00:27.320They realize signing probably any deal will hurt all of them, and so they are incentivized to never actually come to an agreement.
00:00:35.620From hearing all of the details coming out about the draft deal that we still haven't actually seen the final text of,
00:00:43.080I have taken more of an in-the-middle approach in terms of what I think about it.
00:00:48.140Initially, I thought it looked like a really bad deal.
00:00:51.040A couple days ago, it looked like it could be quite a decent deal.
00:00:54.060And I've kind of settled in the middle. In terms of auto tariffs, 7% is something I think we could probably tolerate in the medium term. You could make up for that with just probably a 2-3% corporate tax cut for those companies affected.
00:01:08.020When it comes to aluminum and steel, it sounds like it was probably still around 25%. I don't like that. But the problem is, is our government is not focused on trying to make those rates lower. They are focused on defending things like Bill C-11, Bill C-18, China trade deals, and other things that don't matter to the average Canadian.
00:01:31.760And now it seems like it's becoming pretty clear that they are motivated by trying to keep their poll numbers up and not trying to sign an actual deal.
00:01:41.040This is U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer on CNBC yesterday where he speculated openly that the Canadian side seems more motivated by by-elections than signing a deal.
00:01:52.400I don't know if it was political for them. It certainly doesn't make economic sense, but perhaps for political reasons they have some by-elections coming up.
00:02:00.140I don't know, but they came in and they wanted more, and we weren't prepared to do that.
00:02:05.340Now, I'm not saying that Carney has to sign the agreement.
00:02:09.500Again, based on what the details are, I may have said I'm still not quite there to signing it.
00:02:14.520But as my friend Chris Baker on the Baked on Things podcast has said, they've wasted a year and a half.
00:02:21.420Now, I'm not saying that why haven't you signed something by now.
00:02:24.560if you keep getting served up bad deal after bad deal, maybe I'd be totally okay with Mark Carney
00:02:29.640constantly batting them away. But as Chris pointed out, and I actually don't really watch a lot of
00:02:34.720other people's podcasts, but I always find that Chris on his Baked on Things podcast does quite
00:02:39.240a good job. He rightfully pointed out, Carney, when we were coming to this recent agreement that
00:02:44.840he eventually walked away from, said that this whole thing was weeks in the making. Weeks. It's
00:02:50.060been a year and a half and we only started negotiating this thing out of desperation a
00:02:54.880few weeks out to the actual deadline. This is why, in part, we are getting bad agreements.
00:03:01.060Carney's not motivated to get an agreement. He's not rolling up his sleeves getting in there
00:03:05.680and trying to horse trade for the things that Canada needs. There are certain things that Carney
00:03:10.440wants, but he needs to be prioritizing needs, which for the vast majority of Canadians are
00:03:16.520low tariffs. Bill C-18, Bill C-11, French language on your Froot Loops boxes, those are liberal wants.
00:03:26.320That is not something that we strictly want, and that's not something we strictly need, and we've
00:03:31.180been wasting time up to this point, and I'm concerned that Carney doesn't know what good
00:03:36.580and bad is. In fact, it seems like the highest value in terms of good is whatever is going to
00:03:41.580make him more popular before Canadians vote in by-elections. Check out here, I believe this is
00:03:47.560Sharon Corr, or it might be someone else, it might be Althea Raj. I just forget, sometimes their hair
00:03:54.820is done in a way that throws me off a bit. But she even mentions that this entire fight is quite
00:04:00.380good for Mark Carney ahead of the by-elections. Some of these people will just say it out loud
00:04:06.580that fighting with trump is of high benefit when it comes to the federal liberals now carney has
00:04:14.260like the perfect scenario he is back to the election prime minister where he has the country
00:04:20.100behind him we are still in by elections we have a quebec election we have an alberta referendum
00:04:26.100and he is back to being captain canada like the politics could not be better um for all like the
00:04:32.260The controversies that seem to be losing some progressive support, for example, on the pipeline, going to B.C.'s coast on the Building Canada Act.
00:04:40.600Now he gets to rally everybody on these programs.
00:04:44.500And I think to Andrew's point, I think the policy is like good policy, but it's also like fantastic politics.
00:04:50.160And even within his own cabinet, there were people who were concerned about what the prime minister was about to do.
00:04:56.280And now he gets to unify his caucus as well.
00:04:59.780The one point I would heavily disagree with there is it's not good policy. It's terrible policy.
00:05:05.880Good policy would get us to a good or at least acceptable trade deal. Right now, based on the
00:05:11.980limited amount of information that we have, it sounds like we had a trade deal in the middle.
00:05:15.940Certain elements were good in terms of acceptable for the medium term. We can accept a 7% tariff
00:05:23.740rate on autos for you know the next couple of years we can try and renegotiate lower with a
00:05:28.740future administration or even in the next year with the trump administration but parts of the
00:05:34.480deal are not good but mark carney doesn't seem motivated to try and to pull strings to see if
00:05:39.620he can make the good part the bad parts better and be able to keep the benefits of the good parts
00:05:45.300that we already have again he seems more motivated to please certain very narrow interest groups
00:05:51.220around culture and language policy and not wanting to burn the China deal for some reason,
00:05:57.180despite the fact that he labeled, Carney labeled, China as our top national security threat
00:06:03.900on the debate stage during the 2025 federal election. And that is clearly what Carney and
00:06:10.640the liberals are most concerned with when the Americans are saying that they would like to be
00:06:14.880able to have some control over who we end up signing free trade deals with. Now, some people
00:06:20.260are saying, hey, why should they be able to tell us what to do? What do you think a negotiation is?
00:06:25.020It's two sides trying to tell each other what to do and meeting in the middle on what they both
00:06:28.980find acceptable, what they're willing to give up to get something in return. It's like Mark Carney
00:06:34.200doesn't understand that relationship in a negotiation. Yes, they are going to say things
00:06:39.540you don't like, and you might have to give some stuff up. Now, as more information is coming out
00:06:44.520as well, it seems like it's a little more mixed on who may have been making demands at the very
00:06:50.240end. There's New York Times articles saying that Carney himself injected himself into the
00:06:55.580negotiations to make a bunch of last minute demands on the last day. There's a kind of vague
00:07:00.460quote from Donald Trump in a CNN article where he sounds like he was saying that, yeah, it sounds
00:07:05.860like me, I would make late last minute demands, but I still don't know what they actually mean
00:07:10.000by that because they don't specify what he may have demanded or if it was actually in the last
00:07:14.100day or just towards the end of the negotiations in the last few days. But it doesn't really matter
00:07:20.040because what the media and what liberals and what Doug Ford wants to do is have a debate over who
00:07:26.060scuttled this thing at the end. I still think it's pretty obvious that it's Mark Carney, because if
00:07:31.840you get to the end and they make a bunch of last minute demands, I would just come out on TV and
00:07:35.840say, we need another seven days. People are making last minute demands. Let's pause the new tariffs
00:07:40.660for another seven days because we're getting somewhere. But every time someone throws something
00:07:44.700last minute, we're not going to make a decision in two hours. We're going to need another week.
00:07:49.340But Mark Carney knows the politics side with him, with him not signing a deal and looking tough, you know, by association.
00:07:58.040I now just want to jump over to a longer clip of Jameson Greer talking on CNBC, just giving an overview of what the Americans think about the current trade talks.
00:08:07.240Then I do have some other clips I want to get to a bit later.
00:08:10.380Just remember how we started with all of this.
00:08:13.400The Canadians over a year ago, they prohibited the sale of American wine and spirits in their stores.
00:08:19.000They put limits on how many autos could go into Canada.
00:08:22.080And even before that, they restricted the sale of U.S. dairy into Canada.
00:08:26.200So lots of new and longstanding issues with Canada.
00:08:29.160After about a year of asking them to eliminate these, they said no.
00:08:32.820So we proposed some very tailored tariffs covering about 5 percent of what they send us.
00:08:38.440So pretty, pretty low amount in the grand scheme of things to have our own tariffs on those to counter out that retaliation.
00:08:44.940The Canadians came to us about a month ago.
00:08:53.780We we got we progressed to a point Tuesday night where we had enough agreement among the parties to announce that we had we had found a way to a deal.
00:09:02.700Then we set about to finalize it. And then in the last hours, I think there were things that the Canadians just, you know, they wanted more.
00:09:10.060We offered we offered them the best access to the United States of any country in the world.
00:09:15.360Obviously, there's always going to be tariffs and there's going to be that protection for American workers and companies.
00:09:21.320That's that's the president's trade policy that hasn't changed.
00:09:24.200But we sought to accommodate the Canadians by giving them by cutting tariffs in half on steel, on aluminum and extensively reducing them on autos and even on things like like softwood lumber, accommodating some element of that.
00:09:38.960Things that are sensitive for the Canadians, they simply they wanted more.
00:09:43.020I don't know if it was political for them.
00:09:44.440It certainly doesn't make economic sense, but perhaps for political reasons, they have some by-elections coming up.
00:09:49.980I don't know, but they came in and they wanted more, and we weren't prepared to do that.
00:09:54.820And that does line up partly with the New York Times reporting.
00:09:58.800Now, there is also reporting saying that Howard Lutnick, one of the trade representatives of the United States,
00:10:03.540something that even Jameson Greer says is slightly annoying to deal with when negotiating with the U.S.,
00:10:08.020is that Congress has actually split sort of like trade decision making between two separate
00:10:14.060departments. He's in charge of one and Howard Lutnick is in charge of another. People are
00:10:19.080saying that Howard Lutnick was making last minute demands, although no one ever is able to actually
00:10:24.200hammer out what the last minute demands are when it comes to any parties who are being accused of
00:10:30.320making last minute demands. But the New York Times did report that Mark Carney seemingly like,
00:10:36.380again very close to the end of negotiations started trying to throw around i guess like
00:10:42.360cutting off the keystone xl pipeline uh to try and get like more out of the americans which by the
00:10:49.000way i'm not even against that if you're engaging in some hardball negotiations good fair enough
00:10:53.940the problem is is like the things that we choose to use for leverage and the things that we put
00:10:58.880off limits, I find are so topsy-turvy. Like we're tooth and nail defending our deal with China for
00:11:07.640them to dump EVs in our economy, a big irritant to the United States that isn't even really good
00:11:13.840for us as a country in terms of things like national security and economic health. Because
00:11:18.200again, China is a patent thief. They steal technology and they're able to build it cheaper
00:11:24.200because they don't go through the R&D process. I know some people are like, oh, it's just a free
00:11:28.260market they make things cheaper than you no that's not the free market that is just ip theft that is
00:11:34.280simply them copy and pasting something that you put hundreds of millions to if not billions of
00:11:39.800dollars into developing and then they're just slotting it out cheaper because they didn't have
00:11:43.860to actually do the homework uh but we're for some reason unwilling to give that up we're unwilling
00:11:48.800to give up bill c11 we're unwilling to the online streaming act we're unwilling to give up bill c18
00:11:55.120the online news act and for why like we could use those things to lower tariffs more because
00:12:01.020everything has value there is no such uh maybe the u.s would say they have a floor for how low
00:12:07.320they're willing to have steel and aluminum tariffs go yes the steel and aluminum industries in the
00:12:12.620united states and the associated unions are very pro tariff just as all like industries tend to be
00:12:18.560they love being protected in their own countries and they don't want free trade although usually
00:12:22.800when it comes to a different industry that they rely on cheap goods from they like free trade when
00:12:27.480on when it comes to those products because they need it for their manufacturing of theirs uh but
00:12:32.880like even if the u.s says 25 steel aluminum is a floor for us that's as low as we'll go
00:12:39.140are they is that as low as they're willing to go if we gave them a few things that we don't really
00:12:44.360care about all that much if we just said okay c11 c18 they're gone as well as we'll rip up the china
00:12:49.400a deal now if steel and aluminum go down to 10. If they go to 12, we'll sign that. Would they say
00:12:55.520no? Because steel and aluminum industries in the US, if they are pro-protectionist, they're still
00:13:01.180going to get over it because before Trump, steel and aluminum tariffs were zero, so they can't say
00:13:05.480that somehow he hasn't done something for them. There's a way here I'm basically trying to say
00:13:10.000that everyone can walk away happy. But as Peter McCaffrey here comments on, he says,
00:15:06.140And for the China deal, I want another 5% off, because you're going to have tens of thousands of fewer China EVs coming in through Canada, and in exchange, I want that honored in some way.
00:15:17.140That would be a better way of doing it.
00:15:18.620And then say, let's team up against China, and let's block their steel and aluminum and cars out of our economies, and let's have a fortress North America pact.
00:15:26.380But instead, we are just going ape, and on both sides of the border, we're now having a stupid pie fight that's getting us absolutely nowhere.
00:15:34.900And even though I am critical of Mark Carney and the liberals, most especially because I'm a Canadian and I should be always more critical of my own side because I want us to be the best that we can be, obviously, my criticism is not going to elude the Trump administration, who have also been engaged in really dumb fights, really dumb rhetoric, and even just saying, like, Canada's ripping us off.
00:15:57.020no. Now, there's things that Canada should be a little humble about. America does mostly keep
00:16:02.420the Western world safe. We don't really pay all that much into our national security than we might
00:16:07.500if the U.S. didn't do things like that. But Canada's not ripping off America. Again, this is kind of
00:16:13.240the Trump bluster that he wants everything built in America because he kind of sees America as like
00:16:18.120a business that he's running. And you want your business getting the most business possible rather
00:16:23.500than the country is made up of many businesses and many individuals, and it doesn't help your
00:16:28.800own people if they're having to buy jacked up priced steel and aluminum made within your country
00:16:34.280that's only extremely expensive because you're preventing competition from the rest of the world
00:16:39.340and it's heavily deflating the amount of supply available to the average consumer.
00:16:45.000That's not good. I absolutely disagree with Trump on that. But again, me disagreeing with Trump and
00:16:51.120me thinking Trump can be very ridiculous at times, does not get our own government off the hook to
00:16:57.880try and negotiate a good deal, especially since Carney said he was a great negotiator. Why is he
00:17:03.780not in command of the negotiating team? Why was he in Italy in a different time zone where even if
00:17:09.140you want to keep up with things, it's going to be a little bit difficult. He's literally going to be
00:17:13.620catching some Zs while you have Dominic LeBlanc and Janet Charette talking with Jameson Green and
00:17:22.080Howard Lutnick. Again, there's a big pie fight going on, and who scuttled the deal? I would say
00:17:27.600ultimately Canada did it because we said we were just fully walking away rather than saying,
00:17:31.660I don't like this deal, and if Trump's going to impose tariffs on us, that's fine. I want to keep
00:17:35.980negotiating because I'm not going to be pushed into a bad deal last minute. Again, there's some
00:17:39.720good elements, again, there are some elements I don't like. But based on the way Mark Carney has
00:17:45.320been talking about things, it's like I can't even rely on his definitions of what good and bad mean.
00:17:50.920He seems to be calling certain elements of the deal that are good, bad, and certain elements
00:17:55.860of the deal that are bad, he doesn't even really mention. Not that he's saying that the 25% steel
00:18:00.660and aluminum tariffs are good. But my goodness, can we have a clear-eyed foreign policy? Mark
00:18:08.640Carney promised us at Davos. He said that we need to be clear-eyed about how the world is,
00:18:13.840not how we wish it to be. I agree. So why are we constantly, again, getting into pie fights,
00:18:19.480bun fights, whatever type of food fight type metaphor you want to use with the Americans
00:18:25.080about how they're mean? It's like, okay, Trump can be rude. Let's move on. And Trump even denied
00:18:31.840that he, in a true social post today, and I tend to believe him, not that Trump's some great truth
00:18:37.720teller just i don't see him having any real reason to to lie about this one he said that he had no
00:18:43.480he made no comment in regards to wanting to affect like the french language in canada like he's been
00:18:50.160accused of uh this was posted by jasmine lane today i always like to kind of just use other
00:18:55.220people's posts as i see them even if i could have just gone and got the original donald trump truth
00:19:00.020social post but heck it gives me an excuse to endorse jasmine lane i endorse jasmine lane
00:19:06.000she says here Donald Trump confirms the falsehood that they were going after the French language
00:19:11.160it was only about Bill C-11 and C-18 which obviously restricts American tech companies
00:19:16.520ability to distribute Canadian news in Canada in terms of Bill C-18 it affects my ability to open
00:19:22.580up my own TNT Facebook page that I've been locked out of since 2023 and C-11 ends up basically
00:19:28.940heavily pumping up Canadian content on streaming services and weighing down American and it also
00:19:35.340required American companies to fund Canadian state, you know, state-funded Canadian media
00:19:41.020projects. They had a problem with that. It's a very minor thing to give up. And by the way,
00:19:45.660most Canadians don't like those things. Like, anyways, Carney can say, oh, it's sovereignty.
00:19:51.160It's cultural sovereignty. And people say, well, I like cultural sovereignty. But if you explain
00:19:54.880what he means by that, most people would be like, oh my goodness, just give it up to get a better
00:19:57.960deal. Lower the tariffs. Everything has value. If you put it on the table, you will then demand
00:20:03.300And the maximum you can get back in terms of lower tariffs.
00:20:05.840Because at the end of the day, what most Canadians care about, what affects their lives, is the tariff rates.
00:20:11.720Autos I'm fine with at the current rate.
00:20:14.940The rest of it, if we could get it down from 25 to even 15 to 13.