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Journalist Nathan Stone and Producer Josh Carmody invite you to sit down for deep dives on the rapid changes happening in Trump’s new America.
00:02
Picture this, your longtime business partner, one with whom you share a decades-long partnership, suddenly decides that you're ripping him off. Worse still, he knows that you need him far more than he needs you.
00:19
He seems to think that you ought to give up your independence and become his employee. Welcome to the Canadian experience in 2025. This is the politics of New America. On the show today, Trump's ongoing trade war with Canada, the geopolitical ramifications and how it affects the future of what was arguably the world's closest alliance. I'm your host, Nathan Stone, and with me today is executive producer, Hannah Payton.
00:48
Yes, hello, I returned from my trip to the far, shores of London, Ontario. Yeah. Almost sounds like you left the country until you add Ontario. Until I add Ontario. I mean, it is very different than being like, like I grew up in Ontario. It is a little bit like a different country, honestly. And like I say that with love, like that's my people are all there. That's like sort of
01:14
All of my childhood touchstones are there, but it is very different from being here for the last 17 years. Absolutely. I also grew up in Southern Ontario. yeah, it is a very different culture. It's a very different vibe than Nova Scotia. I prefer it here. uh
01:38
Well, yeah, there's a reason I stayed for the last 17 years. I've been here for over 20. So yeah, it's it's yeah, there's something about being close to the ocean, too. I really like absolutely. But yeah, so welcome back to the show for all of our listeners out there who may not have known. I do mention it from time to time, but we are actually based in Canada. The show is produced in Canada. So this topic today is a little bit near and dear to our hearts and constantly on our minds because.
02:08
Back in 2002, think it was, Robin Williams, the late great Robin Williams did a stand-up show on Broadway. And I remember seeing that show, I think on television, obviously. I'd never been rich. So one of the jokes he made was that Canada was kind of the apartment above a really great house party.
02:38
And we were just banging brooms on the floor trying to get them to settle down. And I think at the time that that might've held more than a kernel of truth to it. Now it feels like it's a totally different problem, right? It's gone from a house party to like a domestic disturbance. I feel like the metaphor I've heard is a crack den. Yeah.
03:07
And instead of, you know, us banging on the floor, they're banging on the ceiling, which is concerning. So I thought today, after a lot of drama this past week around Canada and the United States, all over a commercial that the premier of Ontario uh commissioned and that played on American stations during the World Series. And this is
03:37
If you haven't seen it, it's a fun little commercial and they did a really good job on it. I haven't seen it, but you just, said premiere of Ontario and my eyes like rolled south. Yeah. It's odd that probably our most Trumpian esque figure in, you know, uh, in Canadian politics, uh, would be the one to, kind of launch this.
04:06
this attack against Trump, because if anyone knows, so Rob Ford, oh God, do I have the right Ford? Is Rob Ford and Doug Ford? Doug Ford. Doug Ford, thank you. Oh my God, let me Google it. I should know that it was just there. Pretty sure it's Doug Ford. Oh yeah, yep, I recognize that creepy face. Okay, it is Doug Ford. Okay, that's good. uh So Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, is amongst
04:34
Canada's most conservative premiers. He's also a bit of a populist. A lot of his election promises were things like a buck a beer kind of thing. Now this was back a long time ago when that was still uh something in the realm of possibility before all the crazy inflation hit. But a lot of his policies are very uh Trump-lite. And then he has these wild cards where they sort of get the liberals back.
05:04
Yeah, anyway the wind blows, I think, for that guy. I think Doug Ford is in the business of just staying premier. I think that's it. I don't know that he has a lot of very deeply held beliefs, but it's worked for him so far. Ontario is amongst the more conservative uh provinces in Canada. And so, yeah, to see this happen, and he has been...
05:33
One of the most outspoken critics of Trump in Canada threatened to uh stop providing power to the United States. Canada and Ontario provide a lot of power to New York, the Great Lakes regions, those kind of areas. this isn't a new thing for him. But the commercial, uh what it did was it took a speech from Reagan in the 80s.
06:02
where Reagan is actually, if you listen to Reagan's whole speech, he is putting tariffs on Japanese autos, but he is explaining, and the part that they cut from, he is explaining that he doesn't want to use tariffs long term. He doesn't think they're a good idea, but this was an extraordinary measure, that kind of thing. the...
06:32
Yeah, so the Ford government kind of cut that all up and chose the lovely bits where, you know, Reagan's railing on what tariffs are and basically tariffs in general. And so they put that out to kind of convince conservative America that Trump's tariffs really aren't a good idea. And Trump, of course, very reasonably loses his mind over this and declares an extra 10 % in tariffs.
07:02
uh hitting Canada. And of course, the way that tariffs work, of course, this just adds an extra 10 % to Americans buying Canadian goods, but only Canadian goods that aren't covered under the current free trade deal. uh In Canada, we call it COSMA. um And in the US, I believe it's USMCA. And this is the Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement. So it sounds like...
07:31
Canada is being tariffed pretty heavily, but the vast, vast majority of goods and services that Canada and the US trade with each other are under this trade umbrella that already exists and exempt from this. So it's a little bit of an empty threat. There are a few places where US tariffs have really hurt Canada, aluminum being a big one.
07:59
the never-ending softwood lumber disagreement, and I do say never-ending, this thing's been going on since the 80s, there are pressure points that these tariffs hit, and if he does in fact up them by 10%, which is what Trump has been threatening, we will feel some pain from that. uh More specifically, American buyers will, ah which will decrease orders from Canada, making, you know.
08:29
Canadian companies feel it too, but they're not as devastating as say, tariffs on another country might be because we already have this framework agreement. So- seen a lot of small businesses sort of panic and pull their US shipping and then after a couple of days be like, oh no, everything's fine, put it back. Yeah. And that is so much uncertainty, right? And we saw this with the tariff rollout where
08:59
They weren't really sure where the, you know, who was collecting tariffs, right? Customs, border, were they collecting tariffs? There was some thought that foreign, you know, shipping companies might collect the tariffs. It's got to be maddening. ah Any size business, right? If you have to do this cross border trade in an era of such wild uncertainty. And
09:28
We are seeing that, I think, with what we've been seeing as far as the economies are slowing down. um Obviously, the stock market isn't, but the stock market and the economy seem to become completely uncoupled. So that's not really an indicator, I don't think. ah Most of the economic indicators that are a little bit more reasonable, like unemployment, um kind of, you know, those things around labor.
09:57
we have been seeing, especially in Canada here, unemployment starting to creep up. We've been seeing kind of this economic stagnation setting in, and a lot of that has to do with this. uh
10:13
with this trade war. And to put it in perspectives, this isn't an equal fight in any way, shape, form. And it's certainly one that Canada wouldn't have chosen. And there's a good reason for that. So Canada-US trade uh comprises about one third
10:41
of Canada's economy, which is monstrous in terms of sheer economic value to the country. The United States is about, hangs around 70 plus percent of our exports. They are our biggest market and no one even scratches the surface. No one even compares to that.
11:10
Yeah, it's an insane amount of exports to be just flowing into one other country. Yeah. And to be fair to Canadian companies, is, when you look at it from without context, it's very short-sighted, right? How can you have this, you know, have basically a single market buyer for your goods, but so much of what makes Canada and the U.S. kind of this, this
11:40
odd and close bedfellows for the past over 100 years is the quirk of geography that these two countries comprise most of North America. Most of their borders are with each other and our cultures are broadly similar. Now, there's obviously a lot of divergence between Canadian and American culture.
12:08
But a is a hat. A Chesterfield is a couch. Oh, those commercials. ah you've I am Canadian commercials from the early aughts. Great stuff. You know, I'm not a very. Yeah, I'm not a very. I did, too. I'm not a very patriotic person, but those those commercials still get me feeling a little bit. uh So.
12:33
Yeah, so much of our culture is so similar. And that, of course, comes from the fact that we're both, you know, this was a collection of British colonies. And the difference really is just that you had uh a country form in the fires of revolution in the United States. uh And in Canada, we just kind of waited and asked politely. honestly, I think that tells you uh
13:02
enough about kind of the founding myths of both nations to get a pretty good grasp on them. So much of the Canada-US relationship really comes down to this quirk of geography, this quirk of culture, the idea that we both grew out of the same uh British colonies. because of that, and because really Canada is very isolated in terms of
13:30
natural trading partners, right? We have a singular land border. It's a big one, but it's just with the United States. because of that, and because the United States has always been so much more populous, always had a larger economy, that natural kind of trading flow of North-South just made a lot of sense. the Americans...
13:59
One thing that's kind of, I think, maybe lost nowadays is that the Americans kind of eventually came to the same realization that the British came to with Canada, right? Because the War of 1812, right? The kind of, the simmering distrust between British North America and
14:27
the newly independent United States. That caused a lot of hand-wringing in the US Congress. They wanted to get Britain off the continent, basically. And understandably so. Their biggest threat, of course, was the British coming back and trying to reconquer in those days.
14:56
The idea that there was this vast British landmass to the north wasn't really something that they liked, but...
15:06
Canada really has never been overly militarized. Like even during the War of 1812, you know, the British sent reinforcements, Canada fought that. The whole war turned into a big nothing fest, right? know, no land was won or lost on either side. It was just... Well, the song tells me that the White House burned, burned, burned, and we're the ones that did it. Okay, yes, we did burn the White House. uh It didn't burn to the ground, but we gave it a good singeing, which...
15:35
pretty good. I believe that's originally why they painted it white. thought it was I think it was to hide the burn marks. But that might be apocryphal. I don't know. I have less damage than what's happening right now with the ballroom, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Turns out when you bring in demolition crews, they can they can really do a number on it. uh So, yeah. So so the Americans eventually kind of came to the realization that, you know, Canada was was a very easy friend.
16:04
to United States. And it was just a kind of a natural partnership. And Canada wasn't really worth expending the military might to conquer. And part of that was because, of course, for the majority of its history, it was part of the British Empire, and that would have meant war with Britain. But also just that Canada was very happy to have this relationship with the United States where uh
16:33
you know, we were trading partners, we were, you know, they were a great market for our stuff because again, without the United States, Canada is so very isolated that there's really not much economic activity that can go on. It's never had the population like the United States to kind of self-sustain like that. So, yeah, this whole relationship has really kind of grown out of uh this shared
17:03
the shared continent. don't mean to preclude Mexico from this, but these two very similar cultures uh working together. to be fair, Canada has always been the junior partner in that. And that was always a very comfortable place for Canada as well. As part of the British Empire, Canada was, you know, was one of the good little colonies that provided
17:31
uh natural resources, know, bearskin for the bearskin hats, beaverskin for, you know, a lot of hat stuff, honestly. Hudson's Bay Company. Yeah, the Hudson's Bay Company, exactly. so after kind of the Second World War was when you saw this real shift where Canada kind of stopped, not that they stopped having a special relationship with the UK.
17:59
But with the dissolution of the British Empire, Canada kind of became the United States little brother, right? And if it sounds like kind of vassalage, it basically is. Canada has always to a greater or lesser extent been the vassal state of a larger uh English-speaking empire, whether that was Britain or the United States. And for the last, yeah, like 80 or so years,
18:28
United States has been Canada's patron in terms of defense, terms of kind of uh supporting each other diplomatically, uh various kind of, you know, social things. For example, wildfires in California, Canadians send water bombers, uh vice versa when there's wildfires in Alberta or wherever. And so this relationship has been
18:55
very easy and very natural for both countries. So that's what makes all of this so puzzling to Canadians. Because even in Trump's first term, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of attention paid to Canada. But now in Trump's second term, it seems like Canada is even being singled out. And that's true within uh
19:24
The United States kind of their largest trading partners, of course, let's we can ignore China because China is its own thing here. But amongst kind of their, you know, the United States allies who who, you know, the G7 countries, Canada is the only one that a deal still isn't forthcoming. Right. There's still this this animosity. There's still this back and forth. And there's a really good reason for that. And that's because no country
19:54
in the G7 or anywhere else is so reliant on the United States. uh Canada basically does not have a functional economy without trading with the US. On the other hand, trade with Canada represents about 3 % of the United States economy, which is not nothing, right? 3 % is around what the US spends on its military. So that's over, that's about a trillion dollars.
20:24
I was going to say that has to in the trillions for them. Yeah. So not small, certainly, but not big enough to throw the US economy out of whack. Right. So.
20:41
Trump, being the zero-sum game kind of guy that he is, sees Canada, and the US needs Canada for more than just dollars, right? More than just nameless trade. The United States needs a lot of resources that Canada has in abundance. Things like softwood, things like aluminum. uh The United States military is actually very interested in
21:10
setting up shop, basically being kind of a sole source buyer for Canadian aluminum, as well as other things like uranium. Uranium, understand. And aluminum, I understand as a metal, but I don't know specifically why aluminum. Is it because it's lightweight? I think it's lightweight and it's strong. it's something that we've got in abundance. And it's used in a lot of modern military equipment. Beyond that,
21:40
I don't know the specifics. But yeah, there's a lot of resources that Canada has in abundance that the United States desperately needs because no one consumes like the Americans, right? This is 4 % of the world's population that consumes more than any other nation in the world by a wide margin, which is why their economy is so much larger than anyone else's. So we've come to a point here where
22:10
Canada has almost no leverage on the United States, but the United States still needs Canadian resources. They need our resources more than they need our economy.
22:22
and
22:25
So you get an interesting kind of point in time where an American president who, let's face it, does not care about foreign policy beyond the wins that he can get, right? He doesn't care the damage that he does to alliances or anything like that. What he cares about is the wins, you know, what can he get whilst giving up the least?
22:53
The frustrating thing, I think, for Canadians and for a lot of people elsewhere in the world that are dealing with this is that COSMA, the trade agreement, is already a pretty sweet deal for the United States, Canada has always happily sold America all of the things that America wants and needs from it. We've built so much of our economy around just being like, hey, buddy, we've got this. You want it? Sure, let's make a deal.
23:22
And for decades and generations, that was enough. But it isn't any longer because now you have an administration that really wants to throw its weight around.
23:41
ends.
23:44
There's...
23:47
There's a lot of misinformation that has gone out about Canada and the US's position around trade. A big thing was, for Trump anyway, was that the US runs a trade deficit with Canada to the tune of around $55 billion, which is very small. However, this deficit is driven almost entirely by demand for Canadian oil.
24:17
And as soon as you exclude oil, the US actually has a trade surplus with Canada. um And again, this is an administration that loves oil, right? So big on the oil industry that they're uh destroying all the subsidies for clean energy because you got to drill, uh
24:41
Well, when I was in Ontario, I was seeing constant propaganda for this pipeline. And they're all saying, it's not just a pipeline, it's a stronger economy. So it's happening here, too. Oh, absolutely. And I think the pipeline thing in Canada, if you want to hole with no bottom, uh the various pipeline disputes in Canada usually stem from the fact that we have one main oil producing region. We have some offshore oil.
25:10
in the East Coast. for the most part, Alberta, the prairies are where we get our oil from. It's very dirty, nasty oil. It's tar sand oil. Basically, it's very energy intensive to get oil from this because it's not just sticking a straw in the ground and uh up through the ground comes bubble and crude like the Beverly Hillbillies. is more of, you strip mine a huge area and the oil is of packed in with the rocks and stuff. uh
25:39
intensive way to uh mine it. And for many, many years, was just kind of too expensive. And then as oil crept up in price, it became more and more feasible. that's- now it's such a big part of our economy that people where we live are constantly moving to Alberta to work in the mines. Oh yeah. And I mean, it's been like that for what, 20 years now at least. uh And yeah, so the huge communities in Alberta only exist to feed this oil industry.
26:08
But the big problem with this is that Alberta is very, very landlocked. is in the middle of the country. It has no ports. And so it really has a single customer, that being the United States, if it wants to just build its pipelines through Alberta, through its own province. As soon as you...
26:35
go into another province's jurisdiction, you're going to need an agreement basically to run that pipeline through it. And so much of Canada is also uh Indigenous land that you're not only navigating provincial issues, but you're navigating Indigenous issues. And a lot of Indigenous groups don't want pipelines through their land. when you're trying to get Alberta's uh oil either to the West Coast or the East Coast, you have these
27:05
huge, huge uh roadblocks. And those roadblocks have been preventing this for years and years. We've had so many different pipelines get uh pitched and then eventually it all falls apart. The threat from the United States has kind of given the oil and gas industry another opportunity to try and sell this.
27:35
on broader scale as some kind of patriotic project. Whether that will work this time? It may. It may not. I think certain provinces are far more likely than others to support. think Ontario would probably be okay with that. But you still have to run it through either Quebec or you have to run it all the way to the East Coast. Nothing is certain with this.
28:02
But you bring up a good point, Hannah, because this pipeline thing is just a smaller microcosm of how...
28:11
Trump, how his aggression towards Canada, and we haven't even talked about the annexation talk yet, but how much this new American reality has impressed on Canadians and made a huge difference on how the whole country uh thinks and operates. And our last federal election
28:41
swung almost entirely on Trump. so this is the incredible influence that America has over Canada. There's no other country in the world where an American election could produce a different prime minister, a different head of state in another country than in Canada. uh Of course, so Canadians listening, you know the story, but
29:11
For our American listeners, basically what happened was the conservative uh
29:19
candidate uh Pierre Poliev. He uh was primed to win the uh federal election that happened last year and become Canada's new prime minister. We had just had about a decade of liberal rule. Our Liberal Party is kind of a centrist party and the Conservatives of course to the right. Now Canada usually has about four
29:47
political parties that win enough seats to kind of be political players in our parliament. uh But once Trump got in and started threatening our economy and our sovereignty, uh there was an incredible galvanization of support from both the left and the center uh towards
30:16
the Liberal Party's new candidate, Justin Trudeau, who had been prime minister stepped down. They ran a new candidate, Mark Carney, who used to be the governor of the Bank of England, among many other things that he's done. But that support galvanized behind him. And it allowed the Liberals to stay in power, where they were looking at a collapse of enormous proportions beforehand.
30:45
And Pierre Poliev was sort of our Trump in that he was sort of this much more right-wing than the rest of the party candidate who had been like gaining power in certain circles, but it was sort of, we sort of were like similar to how I think happened in the States looking around being like, wait, this fucking guy is going to win? Pierre Poliev was Trumpian in certain ways.
31:13
And not to say that he is gone because he is still the leader of the Conservative Party, but he was Trumpian in certain ways, but he had none of Trump's charisma. Trump, for his many, many, many faults, ah is a very good demagogue. is, to a certain base, right, to his base, ah you know, he is very, very charismatic. Pierre Pauliev never inspired that kind of, ah you know,
31:43
cult of personality around himself. so he was always kind of a weaker, uh watered down version of kind of that populist right-wing politics. And the big thing that I think really hurt him during that campaign was not coming out strongly enough against Trump. Because this was when Trump first floated his annexation ideas was around when
32:12
the Canadian election was. uh the response from the Conservatives was, I think, overly cautious, whereas the Liberals came out a little bit harder on this. it's important to realize, I think, when you're talking about this, that Pierre's support didn't collapse. The Conservatives actually
32:41
got about 38 % of the vote, which most of the time would be enough in Canada in a federal election to put your party in power. Because we have more than two parties. Maybe not as much as, you know, maybe not to give you a majority in the House of Commons, but to get you into power, certainly. And
33:08
What actually happened was a collapse of the left, uh as everyone kind of, the left and the center all coalesced supporting the liberal candidate. So we had what was basically the first very American election in Canadian history because it came down to two parties getting the lion's share of the votes. so this is all to say how
33:37
absolutely incredible American influence is on Canada, right? This is, to bring this back to the United States, which is the thing we talk about on this show, this administration and this country has such an absolutely profound effect on everything that we do in Canada in terms of foreign policy, in terms of economic policy.
34:06
You know, it's a long time ago, back in the days of Brian Mulrooney, who was kind of our Ronald Reagan. Again, very watered down, not as likable. He compared it to an elephant and a mouse. Obviously, the US being the elephant and us being the mouse. And it wasn't a bad analogy because a lot of what Canada does is...
34:34
scurries around the United States and tries not to get stepped on. And often that was kind of an accidental thing, right? US policy doing what it does and how would it affect Canada? Because nobody really thinks about us generally. But now it's more like the elephant is threatening to step on the mouse, which is a very different scenario for this country.
34:59
It's funny how we take up so much of the planet's like ground and how little we matter. I mean, it's it's partially again, kind of a quirk of geography and a quirk of politics, right? uh America, you know, how many millions of immigrants have have moved to North America from all over the world? But the lion's share of them, of course, go to the United States.
35:30
It's that's just always been the big draw, right, to go and seek your fortune. And America has always had such a good founding myth around it, right? America has had great PR for the majority of its existence, right? Being the first modern democracy, being the first kind of country to sell itself, not just through
35:59
Propaganda or anything like that, but really sell itself through media There's no you know Hollywood was an unprecedented thing. There's still no real equivalent of Hollywood I mean you've got Bollywood in India, but it for the most part you know America has always sold its culture so well and sold the American dream you know Actually read a really interesting report about how few Americans believe in the American dream anymore, but that's for another episode
36:29
So America's got an incredible PR team, both civilian and officially, right? And through its various myths and legends. And Canada has always just been there, right? We don't have that kind of forged in battle, know, land of the free thing. It was always kind of just the...
36:57
land of the calm, ordered, you know, it's kind of cold up here, but it's nice, know, a few months of the year, like that's always what we've sold. And it just doesn't compare. And it's still an issue, you know, it's been an issue up until I think the Trump administration, because this is the first time we've seen it kind of reverse. But Canada has always suffered from a really bad brain drain to the United States, just in terms of
37:25
you if you're a doctor, if you're a nurse, if you're an engineer, you know, one of these really high skilled positions, you could go to the United States and make thousands and thousands of dollars more in a stronger currency. And for the longest time, that was the land of opportunity, even for Canadians. Yeah, like my, father, it's funny, actually, I was thinking about this when you talk about the American dream, in a way, he did live out the American dream in a way that you just can't anymore in that.
37:54
He was a white English speaking immigrant, but nevertheless he was a child immigrant to Canada and was raised with not a lot of money, uh sort of made something for himself as an adult in a way that you don't really do. You don't see that story very much anymore. um But then he did, he moved to America to sort of, you know, like capitalize there and make more money there. And now he's...
38:22
moved on because what Canadian wants to be living in America right now. And that's the thing. is the first for the first time in Canadian history, really, other than when folks were dodging the draft for Vietnam. Canada has become a bit of a safe haven for some high skilled US workers. And a lot of that, of course, isn't that we offer better salaries now, but it's a
38:53
looking at where America is headed and people being like, oh, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. We haven't scrapped DEI yet. Whereas that has traditionally been just the opposite, right? People see the great party downstairs and they're like, oh man, you're telling me I can be rich and warm? It's no brainer. So
39:18
All of this kind of sets the stage for, I think, is going to be a very painful era for Canada and for Canadians. Because like I said, there's so few real recourse, or real things that Canada can do short of capitulation that can affect
39:47
America worse than, you know, the hit to the Canadian economy um as this trade dispute drags on. And especially with COSMA coming up for renegotiation as it is in 2026. If Trump plays hardball with that or if he scraps it, that's when you will see the Canadian economy basically implode. uh
40:16
Again, a third of the economy is not something you can shrug off. It's not something that you can plan to lose. And the Canadian government, for its part, is trying to diversify the economy, but that takes decades, right? There's no time, right? We can't adjust to Trump fast enough to save the Canadian economy. This was something that should have been done years ago. And various Canadian
40:44
governments in the past have made lip service announcements about diversifying trade. But time and time again, it's always been easier for Canadian companies to just ship things down to the world's largest consumer economy right to the south of us. And I don't even blame them for doing it, right? It was the easiest, best way to make money.
41:14
Now, economics is a big part of Trump's gripes with Canada, but he's got a lot of bones to pick with us.
41:26
On the sovereignty side, which is really interesting, and I'm sure he didn't look this up himself, but there's a 1908 treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, and that was the thing that officially established the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada. And Trump has claimed that it is invalid and he would like to revisit it. And so the Canadian government had to kind of gently
41:55
uh put out that in fact that that treaty has been superseded by the Canadian Constitution from 1982. um
42:06
And that the, the Patriation of Canada from Britain, which is so in 1982 is that's when Canada properly gained its independence from the UK established that as, kind of Canada's full sovereign borders. But the fact that Trump would bring up a treaty from 1908 tells me that this is an administration that is, is looking for ways to needle the country.
42:36
or looking for ways to undermine Canada's sovereignty, which has been kind of an ongoing theme so far. um The other thing, other than just kind of that, the sovereignty threats are an interesting one because like the threats to Greenland, you're never really sure how serious this administration is. However, we have had evidence that
43:05
American groups have been supporting Albertan sovereignty movements, which is something that we won't get into because it's too big of a thing. there's a lot of discontent in Alberta, which is our most American province. we should just clarify for the Americans that Alberta is, again, a landlocked country or a landlocked province in the middle.
43:28
of Canada and it would essentially be like being like, okay, like Texas is its own country. Yeah, yeah, it would be just like that. And also a lot of Alberta uh is also indigenous land. it was Alberta didn't exist before Canada, was places, uh jurisdictions that existed before Canada, Ontario, Quebec, uh you know, the the eastern Nova Scotia, New Brunswick.
43:58
those places were already kind of their own self-governing uh areas before Confederation, before Canada came together. Alberta was not. Alberta was created after that fact. So the idea that Alberta has any actual legal ability to secede from Canada is dubious at best. Also, a lot of Alberta is Indigenous territory.
44:26
ah So there'd be, it would be an endless string of things. Like this isn't like Quebec separating from Canada. Quebec was already uh an entity before the country existed. Alberta was not, which is an important distinction. Yeah, think most Atlantic provinces have more of a claim to pre-existing Canada in terms of like being their own thing that, because my understanding, my understanding of the story is that John A. MacDonald basically took all the guys who ran
44:55
the Atlantic provinces out on a boat and got them wasted and then they came back and they signed the agreement. That's that is historically accurate. Yeah. Yeah. And if you know Canada's Atlantic provinces, you'll just like, yeah, that sounds right to me. uh So, yeah, uh getting back to to to Trump's grievances here, another one that he's been harping on and Americans have been harping on this for a while. And this isn't particularly a Trump thing.
45:23
But Canada's military expenditure, Canada spends about $26 billion on its military, compared to the United States is basically nothing. That's like a rounding error for the United States. For us though, that's a fair amount. Now, the Prime Minister Carney has pledged to meet NATO's 5 % target.
45:53
in a few years.
45:57
Honestly though, and this goes for a lot of the European allies as well, Canada cannot afford a 5 % target. You know who else can't? The United States. The United States cannot afford a 5 % target for its- Is 5 % like a 5 % spending on military? Yeah, so that is 5 % of GDP going to military spending. And I've said this talking about the American military before, but it always bears-
46:24
thinking about when people say, oh, it's only 3 % of GDP or it's only 5 % of GDP, that leaves 95 % of GDP. GDP is not revenue. GDP is the total economic output of your nation. The revenue that the government takes in is magnitude smaller than that. So the United States, for example, $28 trillion GDP.
46:49
The revenue that the federal government takes in is about six trillion dollars. And then it spends about eight. And that's with spending at about three percent uh of GDP for the military. So all of these European nations, know, and for everyone in NATO to actually meet this target would have to either raise taxes, an order of magnitude's new taxes.
47:19
or make hugely painful cuts. And either way, whichever political entity does this, I think it's going to be unpalatable to most countries to actually try and do this. we'll see what happens in the next few years, but it is my feeling that this is a pie in the sky target.
47:49
Ahem.
47:52
So.
47:55
All of Canada's, all of this, tariffing Canada and stuff, of course, came from Trump using his emergency powers as president. And the emergency that he said was, of course, the fentanyl emergency, which has really fallen off the map in terms of news and the news cycle. uh But all of his actions against Canada are still.
48:21
done under the auspices of punishing the country for all of the fentanyl coming into the United States, of which Canada makes up less than 2%. I was going to say, I thought it was the other way around. It is actually. Canada does. We get a lot of drugs and guns from the United States. yeah, this is so of course Canada, the Canadian government, we said, okay, Trump, give you, we're going to
48:51
point of fentanyl's are and we're gonna crack down. So those things Canada's already made kind of a bit of an effort to address, even though again it's not really a problem. uh
49:07
But the biggest issue seems to really be that Trump doesn't like the agreements economically, politically, that he has made with Canada. And I say he because Cosmo was his thing in his first administration. And he wants newer, better deals that would be more advantageous for the United States. Since we're talking about the deals, I'm going to derail you for just a second. I need you to...
49:37
treat me like I am very stupid and tell me the difference between NAFTA and COSMA. So NAFTA, the big difference between NAFTA and COSMA isn't that they're all that different at all. So NAFTA was kind of the first kick at the can in terms of a free trade agreement between the three big North American countries. And so it came into force.
50:06
in the early 90s. And NAFTA did a lot of, it removed a lot of initial barriers uh that people on all sides wanted, mostly business leaders, right? This was a very business-friendly agreement. But what it did was it limited
50:32
the mechanisms that Canada, the United States, and Mexico could use to interfere with free uh trade. So it limited their use of, for example, things like tariffs.
50:53
What happened to NAFTA was basically in Trump's first term, he said the NAFTA agreement has been terrible for his base basically, so the folks in the Rust Belt, rural Americans uh whose plants closed in the 80s and 90s and their jobs were shipped to Mexico.
51:23
A lot of his early campaigning as a politician surrounded what a bad deal NAFTA was. But the thing was, once he got into office, he pledged to kill NAFTA. But of course, no one in the business community wants him to do this. And Canada and the United States are so economically integrated in things like uh auto manufacturing.
51:53
that you can't separate them really without killing the industry. uh So, Kuzma came in as basically a renegotiated NAFTA. It was NAFTA with a new coat of paint. And it changed certain rules and of course, through negotiations, certain protections left, other ones came in. But at the heart, NAFTA and Kuzma really did the same, do the same job.
52:22
and what
52:29
What I would say about Cosma that is kind of different is that it is more updated for the digital age, right? So much of the American economy now is their tech companies. Honestly, you could say the thing propping up the American economy is the tech companies. so Cosma being just a more recent agreement.
52:58
deals more with these kind of digital products and services as well. Whereas, of course, NAFTA, you're not really worried about that in 1993. yeah, Kuzma is basically just NAFTA updated for the new reality. uh Plus, you know, at the time, it was palatable to Trump and his base because it wasn't NAFTA anymore.
53:28
I may end up asking Josh to cut this next bit out, but the aunt and uncle I was just staying with, own a factory that makes the tube that your dipstick goes in for, among other things, every F-150 in North America. Huh. And...
53:52
thinking about how NAFTA affected the US and the motor industry in the US, that also affected them because my uncle spent, I think, two years working in Mexico because that was where they could do it. Oh, OK. Yeah. then he was able to bring it back to Ontario. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
54:21
So.
54:24
trying to remember where I was here. No, that's okay. It was just like such a funny, like the anecdote just was so odd that like you brought that up and then that's just where I just was there.
54:37
Oh yes. So a lot of Trump's grievances stem with the fact that he just doesn't like a lot of these deals, including Cosma, the deal that he signed, and wants newer, better for America uh treaties with Canada. again, Canada really doesn't have a lot of retaliatory steps that it can take.
55:02
ah because we're just so much smaller and so much of our economy is dependent on the United States. So even if we want to become more independent, it just doesn't really work. so...
55:18
Howard Lucknick, the Secretary of Commerce, uh on a call with uh Dominic LeBlanc, who is the Canadian finance minister, uh said that for Trump, he realized that the US-Canada relationship was governed by a series of deals and agreements that could be quickly nixed, quickly uh abandoned.
55:46
and that Trump was interested in dissolving arrangements related to sharing and managing the Great Lakes and reviewing military cooperation. So a lot of it is just the United States acting as the bully, right? It's the abandonment of soft power by the United States, This is all stuff.
56:14
the Americans probably could have got easier and quicker by, you know, uh coming in with diplomatic solutions, right, rather than this bombastic thing that has really turned Canadians off. But that's just not how this administration operates. They just don't have it in them. uh You know, the United States has bullied countries pretty much since
56:44
its founding, has bullied smaller countries. But there was usually a bit of an olive branch, right? There's usually a bit of a carrot with a stick. That's just not the case anymore. And Canada is the perfect example of that.
56:59
So.
57:03
One of the things that I wanted to hit on just before we go is that Pew Research released, they did some polling around Canadians views on the United States. And this was done fairly recently in the summer. their findings were that
57:28
Canadians' views on the United States were at basically historic lows at this point, which isn't entirely surprising, I don't think. uh But the dramatic collapse of this, I think, is something worth mentioning because about a third of Canadians, 34%, had a favorable opinion of the United States, which was down 20 percentage points from the previous year.
57:59
ah And nearly two-thirds of Canadians, so 64%, had an unfavorable opinion, including 39 % who said they had a very unfavorable opinion.
58:10
um Now this is important because Canada, again, is the most culturally similar nation to the United States in the world. It's, like again, we come from common roots. And to see Canadians en masse just...
58:37
want nothing to do with the United States, They want nothing, don't want to consume American products. There's been kind of grassroots boycotts, as well as boycotts that have been championed by various provincial governments. And this idea of replacing the United States, which again, we cannot do, but moving towards that, right? Being cognizant that
59:06
The people who were our friends are no longer our friends. This is a microcosm of what is happening around the world. This is what American isolation buys, is this distrust. And especially as the largest nation in terms of economic and military power throwing its weight around, this is the kind of thing that...
59:35
destroys credibility over the
59:42
I think inherited a lot from the UK in terms of both its love of capitalist endeavour, but also its uh aspirations of empire. Now, the American empire was never a formal thing, like the British empire was. But the American empire being this more informal, more flexible uh beast, where, yeah, you...
01:00:12
You know, Canada is its own country with its own laws and its own sovereign territory, but it isn't independent and it isn't functional without the United States. That's the kind of the kind of power that that America has had. uh Canada might be the most dependent, but it's not the only dependent nation that the United States has. It's certainly not the only vassal nation. Right. Europe, to a lesser degree, the EU.
01:00:39
still being dependent on American defense. This is the kind of thing that
01:00:48
the people who built the American empire in the 20th century and who got all of these dependent nations and built America as the center of the free world. This is the kind of thing that undoes that in the long run. Right. When you have Canadians and Canadian politicians very openly being like, well, maybe we should reassess our relationship with China. Right.
01:01:16
We have done so much in Canada that it's just following US example with China, right? We consider them an adversary. Why? Well, mostly because the US does. We've put 100 % tariffs on Chinese EVs. You will never, well, not never, but you won't see them on Canadian streets. Why are we doing that? Well, partially to protect Canada's part of the North American auto industry. But...
01:01:45
Also, because the Americans did it. There's a lot of groups that have been either labeled as terrorist groups because the Americans wanted us to do it. Right? So much of that soft power, that soft capital America has expended in kind of bringing Canadian culture closer in and Canada closer into its sphere, that is being undone. And that's not something that comes back quickly, right?
01:02:14
generations now who are living who have changed their opinion on the United States from positive to negative. that's something they're going to pass along. And that's something that's not going to be forgotten. Cultural memory can last a very, very long time. this is just one small example of what
01:02:42
the alienation that the Trump administration has caused in the first, you know, nine months. So it's going to be really interesting to see where we're at in a couple of years with this. And it's going to be really interesting to see if Canada can escape uh the worst of Trump's wrath and not have to give up too much of its sovereignty or not have to take really bad trade deals.
01:03:12
But from where I'm sitting right now, there's just not a lot of options for a country that is so bound at the hip to the United States.
01:03:29
Yeah. So I think that's where we'll leave this one off. uh I know we're usually very focused on specifically American federal politics issues, but this was kind of an interesting bit of digression. I think it still kind of illustrated the power and the consequences of
01:03:58
American federal politics, especially when it comes to foreign policy and especially where the United States' closest ally is concerned and how that relationship is in a very strange place uh at this point in time. I mean, the thing I pay you to do is to talk about how the Trump administration has changed how America works. And I think you've still succeeded in explaining that in this episode. Oh, hooray. m
01:04:27
Alright, well we'll leave it there then and I hope you've enjoyed this one and we'll see you next time.
01:04:36
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, give us a five star rating on your podcast platform of choice, and tell all your friends. The Politics of New America is hosted by Nathan Stone and produced by Josh Carmody. You can follow us on Blue Sky at Politics New America. This episode is sponsored by Leverage Assistance. Finding the right assistant can turbocharge your career, your business, and give you back precious time every day.
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