Front Burner - How the trade war is registering in America

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

On Tuesday, in the ongoing trade war with our southern neighbour, Canada released details on counter-tariffs that will be imposed on a wide range of American products, matching the $28-billion worth of Canadians goods that have been tariffed since the weekend. It comes after days of heated rhetoric between US President Donald Trump, his officials and Canadian leaders, namely Ontario premier Doug Ford. But how is all of this registering for Americans? Especially with both parties in campaign mode ahead of the midterm elections?White House reporter for Bloomberg and Canadian living in Washington, Josh Wingrove, joins host Jayme Poisson to parse through the American reaction to the breakdown of trade talks, the ongoing escalations between Canada and the US, and the politics behind the Trump administration’s maneuvers. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CVC's On Cover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word, leave me alone.

The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Puston. In our rolling trade war pods this week, we've brought you into the talks that fell apart and explained how the U.S. tariffs and counter tariffs stand to affect Canada's economy. Today, we're going to the other side of the border to take a look at how this is all playing out in the U.S. and consider what kind of pressure it could be putting on the Trump administration and the Republican Party, with important midterm elections just a few months away.

And we're going to do that today with Josh Wingrove. Josh is a Washington correspondent for Bloomberg News. He also happens to be Canadian and formerly was a great reporter on Parliament Hill with the Globe and Mail. He knows both sides of this really well. And I will say he has gotten an impressive number of scoops in the last week. Josh, it is really great to have you on the show. Thank you for being here. Thank you. That's very kind of you. Tell my bosses.

Give them a heads up. Email incoming. All right. Okay. So this is all moving fast. I'm going to timestamp this. We're talking around two in the afternoon on Tuesday. Prime Minister Carney announced last Friday. Canada will match Washington's new tariffs, dollar for dollar, in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families, and businesses.

That he would be retaliating on Trump's 50% tariffs that went into effect, when the talks broke down, and we got more details today, Tuesday, on exactly what the plan is. Effective September 8, Canada will impose counter tariffs of up to 15, 25 or 50 percent. Canada is going to match the 28 billion, the U.S. tariffed on Canadian products, and will target things like American steel, aluminum, dairy, seafood, appliances like stoves, fridges, freezers, perfume, wooden paper, clothes, like men's suits and T-shirts. It's a lot of the same stuff that the U.S. tariffed actually on us, right? But it's a bit different.

Just explain that to me quickly. Yeah, I think, let me just back up and say, Prime Minister Carney had like a couple of doors to choose from here, right? He calls these dollar-for-dollar tariffs. They are and they aren't. They're dollar for dollar in that they are matching a basket of goods that's the same scale. And in many cases, the same goods. And I should caution that we're still parsing through the tariff lines here.

So, you know, I'll keep a general to air on the side of caution. He's not matching the tariff scale, right? For Trump, he went from zero to 50 percent tariffs on a lot of these things. Prime Minister is adding 25 percent tariffs or 15 percent tariffs. So he is trying to, at the top level, say we're going toe to toe to toe with the Americans. But he got, I guess, a little creative, clever, pick your word. And the actual tariffs, the dollar value increases are going to be smaller than what Trump is doing. And that means Canadians will pay a lower amount.

amount that Americans will pay as a result of where we stand now with the tariff war, which by the time people listen to this, could have changed. And so I think that that is important to note. It seems like they're trying to help keep American products out to, you know, divert Canadians to buy Canadian things that might otherwise have been American purchases. And so, right. Like swap it out. You're not going to buy honey from. That's right. Somewhere in the U.S. that makes honey. Now you're going to buy honey from Manitoba. Canada's country tariffs are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by U.S. tariffs and allow them to compete against U.S. products in the Canadian market. It's all about fairness.

You know, I know this announcement was just made. I'm not necessarily looking for a reaction from the administration on the specifics of the counter tariffs, but generally how have they been responding to the announcement that Canada is going to retaliate and that there would be counter measures that are set to take effect on September 8. Canada is in Trump's head today as we sit here recording this. I mean, he's been posting up a storm, as you've seen, of course, talking about trying to rename Lake Ontario, Lake America. Here's what the post says.

The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don't expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this. And so, you know, Trump is raging, rage posting in a way. But we haven't had, as I said here, a specific response to these. We were told Friday night that if Canada did proceed with its retaliation, the U.S. would give Trump options to respond. It's not clear if that would be now or on September 8th when the tariffs, the Canadian

tariffs actually kick in. Of course, the American once kicked in at 12.1 a.m. Saturday morning, Eastern. And it's also not clear where the president's sort of frenzied announcement on Monday that he would double the auto tariffs come January. is that response or whether he would reach for something else. So it remains in flux. We haven't had a specific response from the president to these. But I'll say again, there were more escalatory options on the table for the prime minister.

He, for instance, is not targeting swing states as an example, right? Vesting stories to be done about the effect in particular in Senate races in Maine, Michigan, of course, Alaska, but also Iowa and Ohio. So, you know, you could have targeted a basket of goods to target states like that. That's not what Carney did. He did something more sector by sector, you know, input by input. And so he will not be accused or shouldn't be accused, in my view, at least, of trying to, you know, interfere in the electoral cycle or pinch Trump in an electoral cycle. Of course, Republicans might view that differently. And so I think that is an important landscape here.

Let me just pick up on that. Why do you think that he didn't. go that route, that he didn't try to cause more pain points in Michigan and Maine in Wisconsin. That's a great question for the prime minister. It's a great question. The risk of it is it would have exacerbated the current tensions in a disproportionate way. The advantage of it is it would have put more of a specific electoral squeeze on the president. That said, it's not necessarily clear that anyone needs to do that. These are not races that are generally trending in the president's direction. Six months ago, the Senate was seen as pretty likely to stay Republican. The current

balance is 53-47. Democrats would have to net four seats to flip it because, of course, Vance can split the difference in a tie. Now that's looking possible. Georgia was a state that Republicans thought they might be able to peel away. Ossoff's looking very strong. In the race for the Senate, the ARP poll of likely voters shows that Democratic incumbent John Ossoff has a nine-point lead over his Republican challenger, Congressman Mike Collins. Texas looks genuinely in play, although I kind of am not holding, you know, my breath at any one way in making a prediction. The highly regarded Cook political report shifted the contest between Democrat James Talleyco

and Republican Ken Paxton from lean Republican to toss up. The latest real clear politics average of polls between June 3rd and August 10th shows Talarico ahead of Paxton by 1.2 percentage points, 46. So he seems to have just backed away from that at a time when President Trump's polls are really, really low. I think this has kind of been lost in the shuffle, right? He's less popular than ever with the general electorate. He's at or near popularity lows, even with Republicans, although still is very popular in the party. Trump's politically in trouble.

And Carney faced the choice of like, look, a guy is teetering on a plank. Do you try to take a swing at him or do you assume he might fall on his own and not try to invoke the wrath anymore, and it seems like he went with that window. But I'll be curious when he's asked what he says about it. Tell me more about how just the fact that the Trump administration is in a trade war in Canada is playing out in these midterm races right now. Michigan, which is a pretty interesting race. Abdul Ayl Ayl Ayl Ayddhaed there has been just taking run after a couple runs over the weekend. And I think even last night at the administration.

Let's be clear, this is Donald Trump's economy right now. And he's about to make everything so much worse because he's in a vanity war with the Prime Minister of Canada. And look, like, I'm in Michigan, and you're from New York, right? So you know Canadians, man. They're the only people I know who apologize before they even did his thing. So now they're raising the tariff to 50%. What's that going to do to inflation?

Just talk to me a little bit more about how you see this issue pop up in these races. Yeah, we're seeing Democrats seize on them. Definitely, Jamie. And we're seeing Republicans either. oppose them or stay silent and try to desperately dodge the issue. You know, you never know how much have been the effect these are actually going to have on the races, but this cycle, we're seeing states that used to be swing states, but really haven't been for a long time. Ohio, Iowa, jump to mind. Those used to be pretty purple and they haven't been. They're back to being purple.

And Susan Collins has probably been the most vocal current Republican senator seeking re-election in Maine. I still think imposing new tariffs on Canada. Canada is a mistake. We produce a lot of mail that is processed across the border. If it comes back with a huge tariff on it, that increases the cost of eating, building homes. Vice President Vance went there and criticized Canada, defended these tariffs. Canada is a country that has underinvested in its military that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country, were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America.

And so how does Canada actually respond to that by treating the people of Maine fairly? No, they apply ridiculous. Not only has Collins criticized the tariffs, she didn't go to Vance's event. And so you're seeing a divide in some of these states as to where this goes. It's dovetailing as well with genuine outcry over the president's decision to lower tariffs on certain beef imports, which has the effect of undercutting American ranchers who were already hurting, who were already calling the president to help them, not, you know, undercut them. So taken together, the president's trade agenda is drawing public criticism from Republicans, I should specify in a way it hasn't before. Whether he'll back off or not is not clear.

Trump's whole mantra in everything is don't quit, don't surrender, never apologize, just keep going forward, keep fighting. And I think that that is an important thing to keep in mind on this and many things that he's face. He's administration now, including Iran, of course. I did see Gavin Newsom, the current governor of California, post about this. You know, our closest ally, our critical trading partner, and Trump is hitting Canada with 50% tariffs. What the actual F are we doing? I've seen other Democrats. I mean, I think Hillary Clinton had even posted that Trump treats Putin and North Korea better than Canada.

40% of Ohio's exports go to Canada. Something like 60% of Michigan's exports go to Canada. I can't imagine that the Republicans in those states or literally anywhere in the country are enthusiastic about this nonsense that, you know, Trump is promoting. Are you seeing the Democrats kind of crystallize around some kind of messaging here? Yeah, I think this Canada offers a more digestible foil for Americans to think of the trade war, right? tariffs on China, for instance, have a lot of bipartisan support. Trump has, if anything, been weaker on China than a lot of lawmakers would have liked them to when it comes to tariffs, at least. But hitting around Canada sort of crystallizes this issue of why Democrats see

Elaine here. That said, you hear sometimes in Canada this thought of like, well, we can wait Trump out either to the midterms or to the second administration. By the way, sources have indicated that Carney is setting up these programs that he announces to write out the whole Trump term if he has to, whether or not he'll have to do that is unclear, of course. But you see Canadians putting more and more eggs in the basket of, like, well, the next president might cancel these tariffs or, well, the Democratic Congress will try to roll back these tariffs. And I wouldn't get ahead of myself necessarily on that.

We don't know for a fact that a Democratic president would delete a bunch of tariffs. And in fact, they almost certainly would keep some of them, in particular the ones that some of the major labor unions like in the U.S., and they might want the revenue. America's got a pretty significant budget deficit right now and mounting pressures and bond markets about the size of that deficit and the mounting debt that they have. And so people are kind of like, ah, you know, we're almost two years through Trump's term. Trade policy shifts in the U.S. all the time. Maybe someday down the road, the landscape will be different. I would not bet the farm that the next president, Republican or Democrat, will make an absolute sharp immediate deviation from this, in particular on tariffs like steel.

I think it is more likely that it would be pruning, adjusting that kind of thing. But even then that president might be exposing themselves to allegations that they're abandoning certain U.S. industries. And so it's just not a guarantee. It's not a slam dunk that the Trump tariffs go away after Trump. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13. 15,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV.

15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's On Cover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word. Leave me alone. The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. There was a point in the last couple of weeks where Canada was kind of circling around a deal that they thought was relatively acceptable, right? And so if Trump loses and takes big political losses in the midterms, is it possible that they come back to those terms that they were trying to agree on?

Or is it possible that if like a Democratic-controlled House and or Senate could force them to do that? Maybe, you know, I have a hard time thinking that a cornered and wing-clipped Donald Trump who loses Congress in this scenario and is probably under impeachment proceedings is going to start looking for retreat lanes on tariffs. If anything, I think he might double down on things that he knows and loves, and the man loves tariffs. You know, I think that that is important to note. Virtually no economist loves tariffs, Donald Trump loves tariffs. It's a reality we're all living in. And so I just don't think necessarily that that is the case. Now, as I'm sure all Canadian listeners know, because this has been covered so well and broadly in Canada,

but just to sort of level set, the deal on the table would have both offered significant reductions in core tariffs. So best in class levels, right? From the American perspective, they think they were offering Canada a very good deal. And I think that they are sincere in that. Canada, remember, has one of the lowest effective tariff rates than the deal. G20, Trump's tariffing everyone. But from the Canadian perspective, the risk for Carney, of course, was he was locking in tariffs that Canada believes are illegal and violate not only the USMCA, but some of the side letters

with it. I'm old enough to remember those negotiations and there was a quote unquote side letter, which basically is like an IOU pledge on the side, saying we won't tariff your vehicles. And of course, lo and behold, here we are. And so that was the risk for Carney as they were facing this existential question of, do you want to lock in some of the best tariff rates, Trump, is agreeing to if it means you're tacitly confirming tariffs you think are illegal in the first place. But I think some version of that deal, you know, remains possible if the Americans want to move.

But there's been a lot of bad blood the last 72 hours, even more than I necessarily expected to spill into the open. And so I don't think we're necessarily going to see people running back to the marketing table. In fact, our reporting is that the Canadians do not expect that to happen before the midterms. Right. I mean, just talking about some of the bad blood in the last 70s. two hours, are we talking in part about this open fight that seems to be taking place between the president and Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And just for people listening, Ford went on the radio, telling Trump, well, he can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned. We're going to go out him full steam. Threatening to use energy as a leverage after the talks fell apart. Trump comes back

calling him a clown, calling him the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall, unimpressive brother of the late great Rob Ford. Ford shoots back. I don't respond to a dictator like President Trump, a bully like President Trump, as I said before. He's the type of guy in school that would take your lunch money one day, take your took off your head the next day, and then steal your running shoes. But I'm not going to take any advice off a guy. That's the king of bankruptcies. And he's actually terrified. Though today on CNN, I did see him say that he felt.

Things got a little heated. It got a little personal yesterday between. the president and myself. But I want to make a deal, a good deal for the American people, good deal for the Canadians. Is that what you're referring to? And you say that you're kind of even surprised by how acrimonious this is getting? I would add the prime minister's speech on Saturday, not that it was personal or anything, but I think it spoke to pretty fundamental issues that signal that they're, they were far apart on those core issues. Premier Ford, I mean, he and he and Trump share elements of style together, right? I mean, they like, they're sort of

of made for each other to have these sort of public fights in a way. I think right now, part of the prime minister's question was always what would the premiers agree to? Premier Canoe of Manitoba pushed back publicly in a way that I'm not necessarily sure that Kearney government was expecting. I get it from his perspective. Why does he want us to take the booze off the shelves? He's the who got on the phone with Donald Trump, which, you know, I don't think any of us want to be on the phone with Trump or in a photo with him. But there you go. Somebody has to do it. but thank you Mark Carney for doing it. And you can understand he got to a place

where he can recommend a deal the Canadians, but I think for the rest of us, okay. I think we should fight. I think Donald Trump... Premier Ford was a little unclear on whether he would put booze back on the shelves with the deal that was before them. It seems like almost certainly he would have needed

carefully from medium and heavy trucks, which was a big sticking point in the final hours. But I think we're seeing Premier Ford on a bit of a not walk it back to her necessarily, But he shot his shot on Monday and now he's calming it down a little bit on Tuesday. And we'll see the president, meanwhile, was quiet over the weekend. And really, you know, a little bit on Monday, but today has decided to just like post after post after post. I want to ask you about the cohesion in the U.S. administration itself.

So, of course, on Saturday. Let's talk Lutnik. Let's let us talk Lutnik. So when the prime minister spoke on Saturday, he was asked about reporting that Howard Lutnik, kind of may have derailed the deal largely in the final days and was unsatisfied with the deal and made all these kind of last-minute demands. And the prime minister didn't address it straight on, but, you know, talked about how. The Canadian team unified.

Everyone in the loop. Everyone knows what our objectives are. Collective decision-making, as I say, ultimately, I in the cabinet bear responsibility for those decisions, but unity. You cannot say that about the United States. States administration. We have also seen reporting that there has been tension between U.S. trade trip, Jamison Greer's office and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik's office. And so do you get the sense that they're all speaking from the same, is the same playbook error? They are not. That is partially

by design, right? What Canada wanted, the big carrot on the stick here was Section 232 tariff relief. That's the auto steel, aluminum, lumber tariffs that were on the table. That is all under Lutnik. And so part of the challenge here is they were negotiating with Greer, who's the U.S. trade representative, but the things that Greer was bartering away weren't his freely to barter, Lutnik has to sign off of them. And Greer and Lutnik are very different personalities. I'm trying to think of a good Canadian analogy, but it would be sort of like David Eby and Doug Ford. I mean, they're very different. Greer is a trade lawyer. He's very well-versed in trade, very smart guy, tariff issues and, you know, all the trade lingo.

Lutnik is, you know, former Wall Street guy, more bombastic. you know, close relationship with Trump, loves to kind of throw his weight around. They're just very, very, very different people. And so our reporting is the reporting of others, is that Lutnik certainly was at the center of what happened. But there's a difference in perspective. In Canada, he is viewed as this last-minute villain who sort of come in and derailed the whole thing in the eyes of some sources.

The Carney government has not said that publicly. And so, you know, they might have a different view. In America, though, there was genuine pushback in the Trump administration. the steel and aluminum producers in particular were mad all last week by what they saw reporting of the deal that they didn't really know. And our reporting is that they were calling James and Greer to complain. In some cases, we're having trouble to get through to USTR. And so they called Howard, you know.

And so Lutnik, who has always kind of had a more hawkish view of these two, three, two, tariffs, he likes them, doesn't want to water them down. Whether he was their champion explicitly or implicitly, he was aligned with steel and aluminum guys calling the Trump guys and being like, we hate this, don't do this. And Trump listens to the steel industry. He thinks that they are really in his corner. And so I think that that is an important nuance. Lutnik was not just like freelancing, or at least I don't think he was freelancing.

He was aligned with genuine protectionist sort of pro-tariff wing of Trump's party pushback. Let me just know one more thing. It's not clear that Lutnik was trying to kill them. I don't know. Like, was he trying to just keep on so many demands so what he and the steel guys thought maybe was a bad deal died, or was he just trying to squeeze more concessions at the 11th hour and it all imploded? It's not really clear to me. Lutnik hasn't said whether his goal was to bog it down so it killed itself or just to get a

better deal. Do you have a sense? I mean, we just talked about the steel industry, but I'm thinking about other kind of business leaders in the U.S. right now. I saw Joshua Belton, the head of the business roundtable, which represents leaders of major U.S. companies, say that tariffs and counter tariffs risks. raising costs for American businesses and families. He urged the government to get back to the table.

Do you have a sense that there are, like, other kind of people or groups in American business that are trying to get things back on track here? And do they have sway with this administration? There are three buckets of business groups in terms of reaction. There are businesses that explicitly benefit from these tariffs like Steel who are happy. And there are businesses who think this is all very silly. and then bonkers headwind to the economy and potentially scarring in terms of, you know, integrated economies and cross-border trade that are saying so publicly, the business council is one of them, Autostrap America jumps to mind as another. I lost count of how many Michigan chambers of commerce and regional chambers have said this.

This is very unpopular in Michigan, if you believe the chambers. And then there's a third bucket of people that won't say what they think publicly. And I think that that is an indicative sign of where it is. It's quite clear that these business groups do not want to risk the wrath of the president right now. For instance, last I checked, the last U.S. Chamber of Commerce statement was Tuesday a week ago when they warned against what has since happened. And they haven't said a word since. Or at least as I sit here, I've not seen a word from them since. And so the overall vibe, if you sort of squint and read between the lines, is that the business community hates this, unless they are,

specifically benefiting from it in their one sector, but only some of them are willing to say it publicly, and I think that that's an interesting dynamic. You know, the president, he obviously, you know, does respect business leaders. He also watches a lot of television. How has this been playing out in the American media right now? Has it been getting a lot of attention and just describe, for me, what it has looked like? This has gotten more attention than almost any Canada file has in the second term, you know, just by memory. And I usually joke like, you know,

when people ask me, what do the Americans think about this Canadian thing or that Canadian thing? The answer is almost, you know, very often they don't. They're not thinking about it. It's not on the radar. Now it is. The U.S. and Canada sliding deeper and deeper into a trade war.

The gloves are off as Canada announces new retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of U.S. goods. Ontario's premieres, his former U.S. President Ronald Reagan would be throwing up over President Trump's trade policies. What we're seeing also is it's dovetailing with preexisting sort of warning signs, I guess I would say, that have entered the Fox News ecosystem where, for instance, you know, Larry Cudlow, who used to be a Trump, an economic advisor, is now a Fox business host, is using his show to almost speak to Trump and tell him he needs to do more on affordability in the midterms.

And so Fox has been picking up this sort of, you know, anti-Canada trolling as, you would expect them to do. There's been widespread coverage on this issue. It's not clear to me what the president thinks about that necessarily because this coverage is not going to focus on what he focuses on, which is a heavily inflated view of the trade deficit or other things. But yes, this is getting a ton of attention. The prime minister's response, I think we'll get attention. And the big outstanding question is what did the U.S. automakers think about this, In particular, if Trump imposes the 50% tariff that he's talked about come January 1st, the U.S. automakers have a heavy footprint in Canada, not entirely, you know, Toyota and others manufacture in Canada. But GM and Ford are at like the crossroads of all of this.

And if they are thinking anything about this, they're not really saying it publicly, which I think also may speak volumes. And one thing that flew under the radar, Jamie, without bogging us too down in the weeds, is that Trump reiterated his threat to tariff auto parts. he's always planned to do that. It was one of his first pledges back in January of 2025. And he just never proceeded with it because it's too complicated. You can't figure out what percentage of a screw is American versus non-American. You just can't. And so, like, they haven't formally killed it, but they basically abandoned it or at least put it way on the back burner,

this effort to tax auto parts. If he does proceed with genuinely trying to tax auto parts, that would just have a profound impact on American auto production supply chains in a way that it's not clearly me, the president really, you know, grasps or hasn't been briefed on. And so we'll see. Okay, but just on that point and to end this conversation today, you have talked about how, like, he might just dig in, right? Even after the midterms, even if he incurs a lot of losses because that is his personality and also because he's, you know, he's a lot of the loves tariffs and believes in this. But at the same time, to do this is hard, right? It's hard and

complicated. And, you know, there is this sense in Canada, I think, that this is like existential for us. This is just wrapped up in all of these other threats around our sovereignty that we've been hearing for the last couple of years. Not so much in the United States. And so, like, do you think that ultimately the president has the endurance to withstand any kind of hardship or the complications of going through this trade war? Like, is it also just possible that he kind of just peters out on this? But if he's petering out on the status quo, then these tariffs are going to stay in. Yes, he can lose interest. Absolutely, he can lose interest. No, I don't think he appreciates the totality of what both the tariffs and the 50th for state rate, say, wrangling,

and everything else has done to the Canadian mood. His officials seem to understand that every time they take a swipe at Carney, Carney's poll numbers tick up a little bit. But we just don't know. And our reporting right now is that it's fluid. Some people do think that there's a window to resume talks at some moderate period of time. And others think that this is going to be parked for quite a while. And I think there are a list of Republicans who could probably get to Trump on this.

Chuck Grassley of Iowa jumps to mind Mike Rogers, Republican is running in Michigan jumps to mind. If he has trusted people in important states that he thinks are Trump states or could be Trump states coming to him on this, that could move the dial a little bit for him, I think. But it's just not necessarily clear whether that is happening. And past the midterms, we'll see. But I think, yes, Trump does lose interest in things. It seems like he's kind of lost interest in the Iran War, for example. But I think that he will not be particularly anxious to unilaterally retreat from something. It's just not the way he views it, even if it's causing damage to the U.S. economy,

even if it's causing damage to Republican midterm prospects. I think it's a tricky one. Josh, this is great. So much deep insight here. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. That is all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.