At Issue - Canada’s response to Trump’s global tariff assault

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

At Issue this week: Canada dodges Trump’s latest wave of global tariffs, but with some sectors already reeling, can it be considered a win? How the U.S. president’s moves are shifting the federal election campaign. And controversial candidates get booted off the ballot. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, April 3rd. Effective at midnight, we will impose a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles. While it's progress that further tariffs were not imposed on Canada yesterday, the President's actions will reverberate here in Canada and across the world. This week we're asking, what will Trump's tariffs mean for Canada and for the rest of the world?

Chantelle Ebert, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus will these tariffs change how parties are campaigning? Incredibly we also have not spoken since the Prime Minister and the President spoke on the phone so there's a lot to cover here including the fact that we did not get a universal global tariff, but we did still get hit with the automobile sector, steel and aluminum remains, and then the other quote-unquote fentanyl tariffs that resulted from the first time round, including 10% on energy. Chantal, what do you make of where Canada ended up after yesterday? I tend to agree with Mark Carney's assessment in the least bad place of bad places.

But we live in the world, for one, so we are not immune to everything that will be happening as a result of this. And second, there are people tonight who don't know when they're going to go back to work in Canada, who work in the auto sector. It's not the only sector that's going to be hit. So it's not as if some planet fell on Earth and we were spared. That didn't happen. And to say good things about the four leaders who are the main leaders campaigning in this campaign. None of them tried really hard to pretend nothing happened. Yeah, that's true. And some of them put down different ideas, and we'll talk about that more in order to respond.

But what did you make of what Trump did, Andrew, and sort of what that says, if you can interpret that, about how he wants to approach this country. Well, he blew up the world trading system is what he's done, much as he previously had more or less wrecked NATO. He's kind of going through the world institutions by which the democracies have governed themselves over the last 80 years and blowing them up one by one.

This was worse than anybody even had predicted, which is Trump's modus operandi is always to exceed expectations. And you saw the reaction in the markets today. You know, I hate to be even slightly cynical, but it's a bit of a good moment for probably any sitting prime minister. But Carnier certainly, every time he stands up in front of those Canadian flags and puts on the face of doom and announces, you know, everything that we've known about the world is over, I figure he goes up two

points in the polls because he looks, you know, he's not at that moment, apparently, he is, but he's not apparently campaigning for office. He's not even conducting a trade war. At that moment, he is explaining to people what just happened. And that's a very powerful position to be in. He's doing a good job of it. I think he's probably helping people to understand the significance of what was going on here. But you can't deny it's also, I think, to his benefit politically.

For sure. Both things are definitely true in this instance. Althea, your thoughts? I think it's really hard to uncouple the politics, like from the prime minister hat, from the liberal leader hat. In fact, I don't actually think the Liberal Party is trying to separate the two because the Prime Minister in his speeches is using the same language that he is using on the campaign trail.

That being said, it is like the perfect scenario for Mark Kearney because people are worried about the chaos and here is somebody with a resume, although the concertoes will remind us that a resume is not a plan, but he is somebody that has a unique set of qualification that seem to be in need at the moment. So people who were very angry and anxious about their economic situation four months ago are now scared and Mark Carney seems to present like aura of calm. I know what's happening and I know how to fix it. And I think that's why we've seen, you know, the polls in such a crazy red wave across this country. And you talk to liberal candidates and the response at the doors is like anything they've

ever seen, including in 2015. That being said, what the president has done is utterly chaotic, and we are going to feel the pain. Maybe most of us don't feel it immediately, but we will feel it. And so for some political leaders to kind of cast us in a positive light, I think also doesn't ring very sympathetic, very Team Canada at the moment. I think people want to know that we are all in this together and that even though you may not be immediately affected, don't think that you couldn't be, right? And so I do think that across the country and across party lines, I think that we need

to remember that. That you're referring, of course, to Premier Daniel Smith calling this a victory for Canada. I think that the fallout will hit, to your point, all Canadians at some point. Right now it will hurt most acutely those sectors that are tariffed, but if the world is headed towards this sort of upheaval, there will be a knock-on effect for Canada, Chantal. So I did note that in the Prime Minister's suit, it was quite a lengthy speech that Mark Carney delivered. He did not go into partisan attacks, did not say Pierre Poiliev's name, so kind of stuck

to what is an advantageous position. There is no way that it would be great for him to bring himself back to the liberal leader on the campaign trail, except to remind people, and he did, that he still needs to be elected on April 28 to follow through. I also noted that he didn't tell people everything is going to be OK. No, he didn't. Which I think is what Canadians need to hear, and they also heard it from other leaders. But beyond that, it is an advantage to the Liberals that this entire issue,

and I'm not sure what the alternative is. I heard criticism, Mark Carney becoming, you know, donning the suit of prime minister. The alternative is should we have no one in charge at this particular juncture? And yes, except for Daniel Smith, we will all feel the hit because when people, when an industry like the auto

industry takes a hit, everybody feels the pain. That being said, the fact that the auto industry is square in the center of this, I think I said that before, works for the liberals in the sense that Ontario is where the election will be decided. Yeah, I did hear from conservatives today, Andrew, who were very upset that they felt, you know, Mark Carney was campaigning in his prime ministerial role, but that is sort of, you know, what they're having to deal with.

I've never seen a campaign, I don't think, where the prime minister in caretaker mode has to be doing things because you can't just allow these things to happen. But it is undoubtedly very frustrating for them. Well, yeah, but he's not announcing, you know, spending programs, you know, have not gotten through parliament or anything like that. So I don't know how you can say he should not respond to a historical event like this. Yeah, yeah. I do think that there was the most interesting part

of the speech to me was just as on the defense side of things, people are starting to talk about, do we need to put together defense arrangements that don't include the United States? Talking about putting together a free trade arrangement with countries that still believe in free trade that will not include the United States. And announcing, now this may have just been

campaign bump, I don't know, but announcing that Canada was going to take some kind of leadership role. I'd like to hear more about that and see whether it's just a bluff or if he has actual some concrete idea in mind. Yeah, last word to you, Althea. I think what's interesting is that we're also hearing now from opposition leaders that they want

to participate in this Team Canada approach, and they're kind of in a way lending credibility to Mark Carney as prime minister by doing that. And we're hearing that language from the Bloc Quebecois, like talking about a bi-Canadian plan, which I didn't think the Sovereign Test Party would suggest. The other thing that I think is really interesting to note is just how different Mark Carney's tact is to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was very combative at the end of his tenure. And he had clearly nothing to lose, but Mr. Carney is taking a much more cautious approach. And it almost feels like they themselves are kind of walking on eggshells because they're

not sure what the president might tweet on any given day and yes the call went well but who knows what next week has in store. So I think that's, it's interesting. I don't know if it tells us that much about the man or if it just tells us about the man in the campaign. Okay, we're going to leave this part there. When we come back we'll look at how the tariffs are changing the election campaign yet again. That's next.

A new Conservative government will make it a priority to keep industry moving and workers working. New Democrats will bring in a victory bond, like we did in the World War. So it could have been worse, but the best part of this all is that we still have 25 days during which we will be able to have a normal campaign. So the other party is offering any compelling response to Trump, any policies that could punch through here. Let's bring back Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Maybe I'll start with you, Andrew. I did think Pierre Poilier said the most on this issue.

I think that he has said to date that he will get on the phone, he'll talk to the president, he'll get him somehow to suspend tariffs, they'll renegotiate Kusma, and he had some other ideas. But today he did seem to be talking more about it, perhaps because he knew he had to the day after this happened. I would say in the last two or three days, I think you've seen the pivot. The language today was almost entirely Trump-directed. It was a little bit combative, but also it was quite constructive.

Some of the policy proposals even bring forward that there was a very interesting capital gains proposal where if you reinvested in Canadian companies or Canadian assets, then you can defer the taxation on it. That's not the game changer that conservatives were talking about, but it's creative policy. And today talking about a GST break on automobiles, which was clearly aimed at the concerns about the prices of cars going up with all the tariffs being sprayed around in various directions. But it was all framed as a response to the crisis. And I think that's responsible.

I think that's probably. I think that's probably in his best interest. The only trouble he's facing is getting attention, you know, partly because the prime minister in any situation like this will naturally get more attention, partly because there's stuff going on around him that he can't really control that's really not helping his campaign at the moment. But him personally, I would say, has had a good couple of days on the campaign. I will say the GST car thing was an NDP idea from a week ago. Just, I'm not saying he borrowed it, but there is another policy exactly the same from the NDP.

Chantel? A lot of conservatives actually liked the past two, three days. They felt it was more on point, but most of them had this, if only he'd done this a bit sooner. Yeah. most of them add this, if only he'd done this a bit sooner. As in, during the leadership campaign, there was nothing preventing Mr. Poilier from framing himself as that person by going on, doing what Premier Ford was doing, going on shows in the US to defend the Canadian interests. I'm also curious, because he has been a lot more aggressive in this language about Donald Trump and tariffs. I'm curious as to how the significant section of his base reacts to

this given that there are significant numbers of conservative voters who actually liked Donald Trump and liked the 51st state idea. So it seems he finally decided to cut them loose because he's going to lose the election if he doesn't do otherwise. But I'm wondering if it's too little too late. Well, I also wonder if you cut those people loose, do you lose enough support there that you end up losing the election anyway?

Because to your point, Chantal, he hasn't moved to the middle quickly enough, and those people are also then lost to him. But Althea, you give me your thoughts. You have lots of smart thoughts on his base. I don't think he's giving up part of his base. I think he's trying to forge this middle ground where he's giving enough to the people that want to hear a very tough on Trump message while also keeping his own base that staunchly with him mobilized and energized and talking about a whole bunch of stuff that is of

interest to them. What I smiled when you talked about the GST off-cars because like the dirty little secret in this election campaign is that so much of the policy offerings that all the party Leaders are putting forward are borrowing heavily from each other. The plan to address Trump whether you're listening to Mark Carney or Pierre Poliev, it's basically the same plan We're gonna use we're gonna do you know targeted tariffs. We're gonna try to protect Canadian consumers as much as we can We're gonna use the money from the auto tariffs to give that back to the auto workers, we're gonna get rid of internal trade barriers, we're gonna invest more in energy development. It's basically all the same thing, even the housing plans are very similar.

The part of the problem for the opposition though, and I'll say this about the conservatives, the conservatives have the most, like the beefiest policy offering. They have spent a lot of time, a lot of energy giving lots to chew on. And some of it is, you know, you mentioned capital gains. That's actually an old like Stephen Harper promise. But they've repackaged them and they make them resonate with a certain group of people except that nobody is listening because most people are just scared of Trump and that's what they have front of center

and I don't think policy is really gonna matter that much in this election. But they're rightly, but they are rightly scared. And they, you know, we talked about the ballot box issue, question being about who can best handle Trump, but it has become refined over the past few days. And both Mr. Poitiers and Mr. Karling are saying that the day after the election, they want to get down to renegotiating the relationship with the United States. So we've now narrowed down the same ballot box question, which of the two do you want to negotiate with Donald Trump

this new trade arrangement? And it ain't going to be easy. But the problem is that when Mark Carney says that, he gets NDP and black votes. When Jeff Walyam says that, he doesn't. And that's the basic equation of this two-headed election. Andrew, yeah? I think there are some differences in policy, particularly in terms of the reconstruction, if you will, out of this. The stuff you're hearing out of Carney is much more state-directed, much more sort of industrial policy.

Walyam, it seems to me, is much more low-tax, this free-market approach. Not huge differences, but enough. Do policy win elections? Not necessarily, but they do give you clues to the leaders. They are indications of what their bottom lines are. They give you some sense of the people. But I think his last hope is going to be the debates. That's going to be the chance in an election that's more than usually focused on the leaders

and the leaders' qualities as individual human beings. That's going to be, I think, his last chance to really kind of reintroduce himself and see whether he can get things going for him again. That's hard. I mean, that's in another, not next week, but the week after. Two weeks. Yeah, then we're getting into sort of the end. Advance polls.

Yeah, the end game. That is hard if that's where they think they're going to turn it around. Twenty seconds to you, Althea. I think what's most interesting to me is that the question is now turning on leadership. Yeah. Shantan mentioned the bloc and the NDP. Now, Pierre-Paul Yaffe has been so mean to both of these parties, so it's not a surprise when it wouldn't want to turn around and help him or support him.

But it's also how the conservatives banked on a leader that had such high negatives. Why? You know, we're not seeing team around Pierre Poilieff. We're just seeing Pierre Poilieff. And is there enough time to take the focus away from Pierre Poilieff? It doesn't even seem like they're interested in doing that. That's something I think I'll be watching for in the next couple of days and weeks. Okay, got to leave it there.

Lots to talk about. We're going to continue this conversation after, later, about how parties are addressing controversial candidates. You can catch that on YouTube, the Addis You Podcast. We got to take a short break here, but when we return, we'll talk about how parties are dealing with controversial candidates. That's next. The Attitude Podcast. We gotta take a short break here, but when we return, we'll talk about how parties are dealing with controversial candidates. That's next.

We have a zero tolerance for anyone who acts unacceptably. This is the exact opposite of what we saw from Mr. Carney, who tried to keep on as a candidate, someone who had asked for his conservative opponent to be handed over to the Chinese communist government. Here to talk about how liberals and conservatives, and everyone really, handle controversial candidates, Chantal, Andrew, and Althea.

Althea, I'll start with you, because you wrote about that this week. I was stunned that Mark Carney didn't just get rid of Paul Chang. That's what you usually see at this stage of the campaign. Things pop up to varying degrees and leaders say, bye-bye, we're not taking any risks. What did you make of the different approaches here? I don't understand it.

I still don't really understand it. The story broke on a Friday. He has traveling media with him. I know he was done as media, but he could have called them back and said, we're getting rid of them, or they could have issued a press release saying, we're getting rid of him. Then they let the opposition have a field day with it for two full days. And Monday morning, I think everybody expected he would go and say,

Paul Chang is no longer the candidate. We take foreign interference seriously. You cannot even jokingly suggest that a pro-democracy advocate with a bounty on his head from China should be brought to the consulate so that you can collect this bounty. This makes no sense. And it shows a vulnerability on foreign interference, and it shows a vulnerability on the whole security question. Like, one of the biggest hammers that liberals have been using is this idea that Pierre Poliab

is not mature enough to get a security clearance. Well, here's an opportunity for you to continue down this road and you decide not to use it. Why would you not take an easy win? It's a no-brainer. I don't understand. Yeah, conservatives got rid of four candidates over the past few days. Very quickly. Obviously, to make the contrast.

But it's not just that. It's the language that he used. Person of integrity. He has my full confidence. Like, you don't need to go all out on a candidate. Someone that I don't think, Mark Carney, actually knows that well. So it was really surprising. And I think in any other contest, questions about, you know, Mr. Carney's leadership and

his judgment and, you know, how seriously do you take foreign interference? These questions would have percolated, but this is not an election campaign like any other. No, and Chantelle, it felt to me like a lack of like political instinct that he didn't do that and that he responded the way he did, I don't know. I talked to a number of liberal MPs, and none of them could understand the decision,

so I have to assume it's Mr. Carney's decision. And so, yes, you do go to a lack of political instincts. I don't know. I mean, this is a job you learn, but cutting your losses, I am convinced that people around Mark Carney told him Saturday morning to cut his losses and that he decided to set out and do the I'm going to keep this candidate thing on Monday. But the thing is I don't think any of us, maybe Andrew will surprise us, but any of us believe that this candidate would survive. So if that's not going to happen and you're tone deaf enough to kind of let this linger, it does speak to poor political instincts. That being said, dropping four candidates over what, 48 hours, also speaks to a lack of vetting.

For sure, for sure. Some of the reasons why they were dropped wasn't something they said in January. It was something that was hidden in plain sight. Yeah. Andrew, last word to you on this. Well, let me just say, first of all, I'm not terribly comfortable with leaders having the personal prerogative to hire or fire candidates, but the party certainly should have been. And yeah, look at this situation with Paul Chang.

Not only did he stand by him long after the guy should have been gone, but then the same day he quote unquote resigns, I don't actually think that was his personal decision, but they do it in the dead of night. 11.55 PM. Because they couldn't have, having initially defended him in the morning, they couldn't turn around and have him fire him in the night. But that's effectively what happened. So they don't even get the credit for finally doing what they should have done.

So I do think there's a contrast with the way in which the conservatives handled this. I think it looks good on them, frankly. But with the caveat in both parties' cases that, okay, you finally weeded out these people, but it's a little disturbing that you attracted them. And again, I'll say that on both sides of the aisle. Something about the message that these parties are giving off on the liberal side is suggesting that maybe we're soft on Chinese interference. And on the conservative side, we're soft on people threatening the prime minister or saying,

you know, NATO caused the Ukraine war. Got to leave it there. Thank you all. That is at issue for this week. What do you think of Trump's tariffs? Did Canada avoid the brunt of those attacks? Do you think political leaders are responding well enough? How important is this issue to you?

You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. We want to hear from you during this election. And remember you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We'll be back here in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.