Bulwark Takes - Canada to the U.S.: F-ing Bring It

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Sam Stein and Martyn Wendell Jones break down Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs, from government retaliation plans to Canadians ditching American products. Read More in The Bulwark, "What Fresh Hell Do We Have Today?"

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, here in America, where we are tariffing the hell out of Canada, where my guest, our guest, Martin Wendell Jones, is located. Martin, thank you for doing this. I know it's a difficult time. I know you're not on much rest, but we need to unpack the situation going on here with the tariffs. First of all, tell the viewers about your journey. You're not native Canadian, but you've been there for, all, tell the viewers about your journey. You're not

native Canadian, but you've been there for what, 10 years? That's right. My wife and I, she's Canadian. We met overseas in a grad program. We got married in 2015 and I moved to Toronto, I think two weeks before Trump descended the escalator. So I got out the door uh just in time if you will or did you yeah it's all coming back now yeah um when i first came to canada i was kind of fascinated by the culture i observed in toronto especially which is a major center of media um you know communications for the country. Most of Canada's population, of course, lives in sort of a narrow band above the American border. And there is a relatively small number of cities

that educated Canadians sort of gravitate to for opportunities and those kinds. So I was kind of more of a literary sensibility. I was interested in working in magazines. And one of the first ones that I noticed here, a homegrown product, Little Brother was the name. kind of um you know more of a literary sensibility i was interested in working in magazines and one of the first ones that i noticed here a homegrown product little brother was the name and it kind of articulates something about this sort of canadian culture yeah yeah there's a way of uh you know in which the relationship the united states is inescapable um the you know most consequential

canadian prime minister of the past century pierre Elliott Trudeau, once described this, the situation is being like that of a mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Anytime the elephant moves at all, it's going to affect the mouse, you know, even if it's nothing to the elephant. And is that mindset still, is that still the mindset of most Canadians when you encounter them or do they no longer think of themselves as mice? It's complicated is what I'll say to that. You know, in the past 10 years or the past 20 years, I should say, you know, Jan Martel, the great Canadian writer said, receiving an award that Canada, excuse me, that Canada was basically akin to the world's greatest hotel because it was so welcoming. It didn't have its own core culture. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Pierre's son, said in his first campaign for

the prime ministership, he said that Canada doesn't have like a mainstream or a core to its culture. And all of this was as a way of framing, you know, like Canada's sort of multicultural identity. People come from all over and they all make a life here. And I think that that's still true. But suddenly, even among devoted progressives and liberal Canadians, there is this dawning neoconservative mentality and this urge to protect this precious democracy in North America against the intrusions of our Southern neighbor. America's aggression has really created a fairly remarkable moment for this sort of like newfound Canadian patriotism. It's most easily seen in the recent events in Quebec with the hockey games

between the U S and Canada, where the American anthem was booed. And people were just belting out, oh, Canada. These are Quebecois that we're talking about. People whose main political party in the province is dedicated to the cause of separatism. These are not people who love the government. Let's back up for a second. Obviously, we lived through four years of Trump, and you were there for the first four years of Trump. And there were tensions across the border, of course. But my recollection is they never got to the point of this. Am I misremembering

or how would you describe the relationship during the first four years? There were certainly tensions and there were also past tariff battles during the first Trump administration. One episode lasting for a little over a year. Those are kind of seen as par for the course. Again, if you're. Again, you know, if you're the mouse, you sort of expect the elephant to move around. And Canadians are certainly accustomed to, you know, changes in American political orientation resulting from elections. Things have gotten very, very different. There used to be a sort of openness to Trump and Trumpian populism among Canadian conservatives. They emulated his tactics,

his rhetoric, his style. You know, they wanted to be these like sort of plain spoken tough guys. And some of them still are like Ontario's premier Doug Ford. They still talk in that way, but suddenly they have a very oppositional relationship with Trump because they recognize that he is making a threat to Canadian sovereignty and the Canadian way of life. I mean, it's really, it's registering as quite existential. And I think that Americans might not appreciate just how angry Canadians are over the way that Trump is treating them.

I want to get, and we'll play the Trudeau audio from today later on, but I want to get to what has been sort of perplexing me, which is like the simple question of why, like, the unstated reason is because he can't. And the show of force is actually what he's going for. It's not really the actual policy. It's the demonstration of the policy. But what is the perception in Canada of why he's doing this? The Canadian perception of the trade war that Trump has begun is that it represents a direct attack on Canadian sovereignty. It was remarkable today during – Wait, hold on.

As in he doesn't – they don't think Trump actually wants to rebalance the trade deficit or whatever it is. They think Trump actually wants to take over Canada for real. Yes. Canadians are taking Trump both seriously and literally. This was made very, very clear today during Prime Minister Trudeau's press conference. All right. Hold on one second. Hold on. Let's listen to it. I think in terms of what he wants, I heard he talked about banking again this morning in a tweet, which doesn't make any sense, because American banks, there's about 16 American banks currently active in Canada, holding about $113 billion worth of assets in this country. So the American banks are alive and well and prospering in Canada.

It's an example of not really being able to see what it is that he wants, because even the excuse that he's giving for these Paris tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false. So we actually have to fold back on the one thing he has said repeatedly, that what he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy. Because that'll make it easier to annex us, is the second half of his thought. This represents, as far as I know, the first time that Trudeau has openly come out and said what everyone here is thinking. Yeah.

Which is that it was never about fentanyl. That was the thinnest pretext. He called it bogus, as you heard. What Trudeau is saying is that the stakes really are existential, that Trump wants to devastate the Canadian economy. He wants to bulldoze resistance to his expansionist plans. And he wants to, you know, he wants to turn the entire sovereign nation the same color as the U.S. on the giant risk war that he inhabits in his mind. I don't think that really goes much further than that. But this is, you know, the trade war has been given wall-to-wall coverage since the tariffs were announced, you know, since Trump said back, you know, in the first weeks of his administration that this was in his intent. And Trudeau is really, in stating things in this plain way,

he is reinforcing the sort of national unity that's already developed in response to these tariffs. As I said before, there are people who are, you know, even I've seen people on Blue Sky, mild-mannered, well-educated Canadians who now want to dedicate their talents to the Canadian armed forces. Well, let's talk about that because you wrote about – first of all, all Canadians are mild-mannered and well-intentioned and good people, minus the four brothers. that uh canada might actually respond to this not just a tit-for-tat with uh tariffs but using their intellectual prowess to try to you know inflict pain in their own canadian type of way uh what is it are they going to like go after tesla's like how are they how are they going to do this so actually um former finance minister christian freeland said last month when tercer first announced that there should be 100% tariff

on Tesla specifically. So people are, they do know the targets that ought to be chosen to- No Trump stakes. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, there's a very interesting balance of power between provinces and the federal government here. And the provinces, each one, most of them have liquor control boards and they're, you know, these are bodies that act as the sole wholesaler for alcohol in each province.

They are, in many cases, deciding to simply stop selling American booze and also stop providing it to Canadian restaurants and hotels and bars. And this would have a devastating effect on industries, for instance, in Kentucky. Yeah. Premier Doug Ford talked about going to Kentucky as part of a larger tour where he met with a bunch of governors to tell them how bad the tariff idea was. And he said that both the governor, Andy Beshear, and Mitch McConnell both told him, don't touch our bourbon. Are you crazy? I'm going after everything. That's, of course, one. But there are a lot of other proposals floating around.

They have to do with basically disregarding protections for intellectual property, for trademark, for copyright. There's a popular meme that's floating around about, you know, generic, they're drugs, torrent, they're movies. You know, cut off energy. That's something that Ford has talked about. Ontario is a major supplier of power to Michigan, Minnesota, New York State. These are all places where there's a lot of pain that can be brought to bear very quickly through decisions like that. And also he um, he's suggested, although it sounds like Ford may have stepped back a little bit from that, but for the premier of Ontario, where two of five Canadians live is a huge province with massive, um, economic power. Um, Ford had said yesterday

that he intended to ban the export of certain, uh, crucial minerals, um, related to like defense production, aluminum, softwood lumber. There are all kinds of things that potash for fertilizer. There are all kinds of uranium for power. There are all kinds of goods that Canada supplies in huge amounts to the US. The shortfall couldn't be made up easily from other suppliers. And either like toggling export taxes or banning outright um some of these goods would have a huge effect on a variety of but also ultimately canada imports way more from the u.s than u.s imports from canada and it is no level-headed economist is

going to say that canada ends up coming out better off here i mean they're going to take it on the chin and so from a from a socio-economic standpoint mostly the socio stuff because we talked about the economics but like how do you feel culturally uh canadians are preparing for this i mean they're going to see a sharp increase in the price of goods that they depend on um we can joke about bourbon but like you know some people might actually like bourbon right and they might they might not be able to have access to it. Are they looking to other nations to fill in the gap? It will take a while to do that for sure. And then secondarily, are they conserving?

I mean, are you going around seeing people stockpile goods and get ready for tough times? There certainly has been some amount of panic buying. I noticed this last month when the tariffs were first announced, I went to an LCBO here in the suburbs. What's an LCBO? Sorry. I went to Liquor Control Board of Ontario. One of the outlets that's run by the state to control the flow of alcohol into the province.

So I went to one of their retail stores and I talked to a surprisingly candid employee who told me all about people coming in and buying by the case, their favorite American alcohols that they're expecting not to be able to see anymore. That's the kind of thing is certainly happening. Of course, looking for other trade relationships is a priority for Canadians right now. It has to be. They have no other option. There is the possibility that Canada enters into, you know, a new, closer relationship potentially with China, which I think, of course, the United States would not welcome. With Europe, of course, people are talking about potentially admission to the EU or at least into, you know, a sort of deeper relationship with the European economic area.

I mean, I guess I've just been impressed by the cultural response. I mean, you saw Mike Myers on SNL with the t-shirt, we're not going to be annexed. You mentioned the hockey games where just intense nationalism being displayed by the Canadians. Are there other examples of that, where it's just like, we're rallying behind this flag? I mean, obviously, politically, you're seeing the liberal party actually score up in the polls here. And it's just, you know, resuscitated from the dead almost. But what are some other interesting cultural examples of this? Yeah, there's a very prominent bi-Canadian movement right now. I have, I think, like three

different apps on my phone that are just dedicated to helping to source Canadian products, you know, just like scanning the shelf and figuring out the stuff that you should prioritize if that's important to you. There are, you know, it's again, it ties back to this like sort of resurgent sense of Canadian patriotism that's so unusual. You know, it's really in the early 1960s with the prime ministership of John Diefenbaker, a Canadian political philosopher, George Grant, marked the end of the Diefenbaker administration as the end of Canadian nationalism. And it's because he was resistant to putting American missiles on Canadian territory during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He ended up relenting, but that was, you know, in Grant's estimation, like that was the sort of last gasp of Canada's, you know, nationalistic project, like the possibility of Canada charting its own course independent from the United States. And he regarded that as the point that Canada instead accepted a kind of vassalage. And so that's one of the things that makes it so interesting.

I mean, of course, the Canadian and American economies are deeply intertwined and enmeshed, reliant on one another for a variety of things. There's a relationship of real national friendship, I think, between Canadians and Americans. But at the same time, I think Canadians have really realized just how different they are from Americans. And they are very dedicated to the protection and preservation of those differences and to the defense of the national sovereignty. The mindset is really almost like a wartime mindset. No one is saying it's going to be a good time. We're just going to knock the Americans out with a one-two punch. They are absolutely expecting hardship. There's something like two and a half million Canadian jobs that are directly tied to American exports that could be at risk as a result of a massive trade war. Of course, the number of jobs that

be lost would be far lower than that, but it'd still be huge considering our population is a tenth the size of the United States. Everyone is expecting hardship. No one wants for this to go ahead. No one desires this trade war, but they're preparing for it. And I think because they understand that the stakes are existential, they're far more willing to accept real pain in the course of defending that sovereignty and their independence. Well, it's just like, it's so mindless. Over what? What are we doing here? I think that's what makes it all the more hard to fathom is that the premise, the pretext is fentanyl and it's clearly not the real reason.

So anyways, thank you for doing this, Martin. I know you have very little rest, but this was very informative. And you know what? For someone who's only been in Canada for 10 years, you got a good Canada vibe, man. I went to Plaid today for a reason. Yes. Thank you. I will, I will smuggle some bourbon up there for you.

And thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. And for everyone who watched, thank you.