The Ben Mulroney Show - Americans are finally starting to speak out and say Canada Is Not the Enemy 

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Canada Is Not the Enemy with Guest: Rich Lowry, Editor in chief of National Review If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you. So the Donald Trump tariffs are here and then they're not and then they're here and then they're not. And the Ontario government has specifically said that we're gonna target, you know, Kentucky bourbon, right? And it turns out that may not have been a bad idea because you've got people like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who definitely knows that Canadians, the LCBO is the largest purchaser

of alcohol in the world, and if they stop buying your Kentucky bourbon, your purveyors of bourbon are going to feel it. And so he has come out pretty well. He's done this before. But here's the latest time he's come out talking about the asinine nature of these tariffs. A business from Kentucky come to me and say they want tariffs. Bourbon industry thinks it'll be hard. Retailatory tariffs will hurt them. Farmers think retaliatory tariffs will hurt them. Automobile industry thinks steel, aluminum tariffs will hurt them. Home builders think home prices will be higher

with lumber, retaliatory tariffs on lumber from Canada. Steel tariffs, we get a lot of steel from Canada as well. Average price of cars going up nine,9,000, $10,000. You see immediately there was a retreat on cars because the stock market was going to, my God, this is going to devastate the car industry. We have transporters, UPS, DHL in my state. All the people who are involved with this, this is my state. Not one of them has come to me and said, please put tariffs on it, it'll help us.

Almost every industry in Kentucky has come to me and said, it'll hurt our industry. Yeah, I think the longer this goes on, the more voices like Rand Paul's, you will be hearing, lining up to tell the president that this move was not well thought out. I mean, I think it's as simple as that. Meanwhile, somebody in the states

who seems to have gotten the idea that this was a bad idea sooner than a lot of his colleagues on the right is the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro. And I think he has been an incredible voice of reason in the war against Hamas. And now he seems to be a voice of reason in the war against Hamas. And now he seems to be a voice of reason in the war against these tariffs. This is him reminding Americans where Canada falls on the totem pole in terms of trade with the United States. Trump has said that he wants a crackdown on the on the northern border in Canada. Fine, let's get that.

Let's do that. And then let's get rid of these tariffs. Seriously, let's get them to ratchet down their tariffs. Let's ratchet down our own tariffs. Canada is the number one trade partner of the United States. They are not a financial or economic or physical threat to the United States. Treating them as such is not a wise move. It just isn't. Yeah. Taking your taking a country that is a natural ally and turning them into an enemy is creating work for yourself. Like you don't have to worry about Canada. Now, the issues with

fentanyl were issues that needed to be resolved. The issues with Canada's poorest border were issues that needed to be resolved. The problem with cartels and organized crime operating within Canadian borders was a problem that needed to be resolved. And for weeks and weeks, not only the federal government, but in whatever ways they were capable and allowed, our provincial leaders marshaled their resources to bring them to bear on these issues. The feds put nearly one and a half billion dollars into a package that would answer the questions and issues that the Americans had. And despite all of that, and despite the seizures at the border and the minimal amount of fentanyl

crossing the border into the minimal amount of fentanyl crossing the border into the United States relative to the sea of it pouring over the border from Mexico into the United States, we were still slapped with tariffs. And so Shapiro is right about fentanyl, but I believe that our government addressed them as best as they could given the limited amount of time. Here he is again talking about not just fentanyl, but about the impact of this tariff war on a potential Poliev government.

Because the reality is that Pierre Poliev, who is the leader of the Conservative Party and is excellent, a terrific leader, would be amazing Prime Minister of Canada. Pierre Poliev has been sinking in the polls since the initiation of the trade war because people in Canada are associating Poliev with Trump, even though he says he doesn't like the tariffs and doesn't like what Trump is doing. So you know what I would like? I would like lower tariffs with Canada. Sure, I'd like more border security.

I will point out at this point that the grand total of fentanyl that was caught at the northern border in the last year was 43 pounds. By way of contrast, the amount of fentanyl that was caught at America's southern border was 22,000 pounds. So it's very nice to see that an American had a take that wasn't, as I've been saying, looking at Canada and our history and our relationship with the Americans through a keyhole. He does seem to appreciate a larger breadth and more of the nuance than some of his American colleagues.

And that is a voice that Americans I hope are listening to, because he's actually kind of dead on for most of that. Somebody who, the more I hear, speak, the less I have time for is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He has been sort of the chief, talker in chief for this administration, talking about the issues at the border and these tariffs. Now, now he's moving on to talk about Trump's plan with reciprocal tariffs. Donald Trump's tariffs are, here's the idea, all these other countries, like India, for instance, when Modi was in town, right, 1.4 billion people and they won't buy a bushel

of our corn. Europe always blocking our farmers. As our farmers can sell more and more overseas, you're going to see the price of food in America come down. When? When, Mr. Secretary? Well, I think the deal starts, the deal starts April 2nd, the deal starts April 2nd of reciprocal tariffs. The president is going to negotiate country by country. He's going to drive down other countries' barriers, unleashing our farmers, our ranchers, and our fishermen. They're going to explode in value, and the prices of American produce, grow crops, produce

and fish are going to come down. You're going to drive down costs by imposing reciprocal tariffs. I mean, OK, sure, go ahead. Go ahead and see how it works. You're not going to find a single economist who says that that is how these things work. But go ahead. I can't stop you. You're the strongest, most influential, most powerful country in the world.

You're going to do what you're going to do. So go ahead and do it. This is one of those F around and find out moments because it doesn't matter how big the bigger you are, the more exposure you have to the stock market, more of your businesses are on the stock market. So good luck. Try your hand at this. Throw more tariffs at the problem and see if it goes

away. I think one of the most interesting conversations on social media that I've seen recently was conservative podcaster and debater Charlie Kirk and a Democrat governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who came together on Charlie's podcast, said Gavin Newsom had a very interesting conversion was relates to identity politics. But here's what Charlie Kirk had to say by his conversion on TikTok. By the way, should we ban TikTok? Are you? No, we should not. I used to say that. And then I started. Why'd you change your position? Because it's politically strenuous. Or Trump told you to. Well, no, definitely not. Trump. I sent out a tweet and I'm perfectly honest about this. I think you'd respect this is that I was so mad at them because they would ban me all the time. And I sent out a tweet saying like, no, definitely not. Trump, I sent out a tweet, and I'm perfectly honest about this. I think you'd respect this, is that I was so mad at them,

because they would ban me all the time. And I sent out a tweet saying, like, hey, if you guys are really for free speech, as a creator, like, let's see it. Get a call from TikTok a couple hours later. We're going to show you that we're for free speech. We're going to show you the power of the platform. Right.

And I saw real changes where our campus interactions went from being banned to now well over 2 and 1 billion views on TikTok. And so I wouldn't say expedient, I'd say impact. And also they now have changed some of their speech codes. They've changed some of their little stuff. You can, you, you, hey, enough where your son finds my content somehow. And look, I use TikTok. I was just out there. I wasn't out there to try to champion the band. It's a reversal. I just love this conversion. It's a, it's a hell of a conversion. Hey, I'm open about

Yeah, it's still a security threat and that if you don't see that as the biggest problem with tick-tock then you're not seeing the problem Couple of weeks ago as the the threat of Donald Trump's tariffs We're getting louder and louder a lot of us on this side of the border were musing, where are the voices, the reasonable good faith voices of dissent to this ludicrous policy in the United States? It seemed like everybody was lining up and just letting Donald Trump do and say what he was gonna do and say.

And sort of the other people who may be able to hold sway over him were remaining silent. At least that's how it felt on this side of the border. Well, more and more, some, like I said, level-headed, good faith people who believe in Donald Trump, who do not think that he is entirely wrong and who thinks that he's by and large putting America on the right track are standing up and saying, Mr. President, in this case, you are wrong. And the National Review is an American magazine that was founded years ago by conservative thinker Bill Buckley. And it is a high watermark for a conservative thought. There is a piece that was written that says,

that's entitled Canada is not the enemy. And so joining us now to discuss it is the editor in chief of the National Review and the author of said piece, Rich Lowry. Rich, thank you and welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hey, thanks for having me. Let me outline my bona fides really quick if I can. Sure. I thought the 51st state stuff was kind of funny. At the beginning I have utter contempt for Justin Trudeau and like any red-blooded American hockey fan

who's not in Pittsburgh, I hate Sidney Crosby. But all that said, I think this has gone too far and it's lunatic. Yeah, it seems like if Donald Trump has an issue with us this is like you know trying to kill a fly with a bazooka and a lot of us are wondering you know early on the question was why are you threatening China with 10 percent tariffs and Canada with two and a half 25 percent tariffs is is Canada two and a half times the problem to you that China is? The answer is obviously no. So you, I mean, you lay out very methodically and dispassionately why this is a terrible idea. Why don't you give us some of the highlights.

If the issue is fentanyl and migration, okay, let's threaten Mexico. I get that, but not Canada. It's just not a major problem. If the problem is dairy and lumber, all right, these have been long-running issues. I'm fine with putting massive tariffs on Canadian dairy. You guys really, you don't want to sell it to us. You just want the domestic market. And this has been a long-running dispute. Lumber and dairy, it's not a crisis. It's not an emergency justifying this massive threat. And if it's that we're trying to annex Canada, that's crazy.

It's not gonna happen. It doesn't matter what we do to you guys. You're not gonna agree to give up your independence. And the more threatening we are, the less pro-US you are. And if we ever succeeded in getting you to give up your sovereignty, you would hate us and launch an insurgency and instantly try to secede, creating a massive crisis that would harm both countries. There's no world in which any of this makes sense. Well, exactly, Rich. And I think that's the most

important thing to me in this is trying to understand what Donald Trump actually truly wants. I do not believe that what we are hearing about the reason for this, I don't think these are good faith arguments. You know, the fentanyl crisis, look, it is certainly a problem, but in terms of the scope of the problem as it's coming from Canada versus the numbers from the South, make it so that it doesn't warrant the justification and the and the the solutions that that he is trying to bring to bear on the situation. Yeah, I imagine if if Trump came up with a list of 10 things that you guys could look at, you know, you probably would get seven of the 10 depending on what they what they are. If there are various things we want you to do to crack down more on fentanyl, I'm sure you'd be willing to do it, right? Yeah.

This all could have been done behind closed doors. It doesn't have to be done with these paracets, maybe throwing you guys into a recession, just the mere threat of them, and have created great uncertainty in our economy as well, and have harmed our economic well-being. It's just not, you can't have every 30 days, Canada thinking it's on the verge of being forced into a potentially very steep recession by what has been its great friend and ally for more than 100 years. Again, I keep on repeating it, it makes no sense. Well, Rich, I wonder whether this all stems from the original conversation at Mar-a-Lago

between now former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump when they sat down for dinner and one of them asked the question, what would happen if I tariffed your country? And I think Justin Trudeau said, well, we wouldn't survive. And I think he got it in his head that he could then exact anything and everything he wanted from us, not knowing the resolve of the country were he to pursue that policy. Yeah, maybe. It certainly seems as though now they've gotten roughly the same treatment, but they get the reprieve a little earlier than you guys do the last two times. It seems

Shinebom down the president down in Mexico has handled Trump a little better. Yeah, but he's still getting the same kind of threats. And the other thing that doesn't make any sense about this, Trump negotiated the USMCA, it's up for renewal or review next year, all this stuff could be addressed in an orderly fashion. Absolutely. And he said it was the greatest deal ever negotiated until it wasn't.

And then he said whoever negotiated these deals was an idiot. But to me, there is reassurance that there are increasingly vocal people pointing this out and doing so respectfully. I mean, no one's, I'm not hearing a whole bunch of people insulting Donald Trump,

but what do you think of the impact of the markets? Everybody knows that Donald Trump holds stock market success as a benchmark for his success. And what the markets are telling him is the uncertainty, it's not good and we're not, this is not a tactic that he should be pursuing. Yeah, I think that's played a big role in both times and getting ultimately to hold his fire.

But the problem is he has two contradictory ideas in his head about terrorists. One, he thinks they're a great're great negotiating tool not get you whatever you one and to some extent that that true certainly a small central american country that just buckled and we've gotten whatever we want but the other idea that there are two great you know and they're they're going to reduce our deficit and foreigners pay it and we have economic growth the way we did in the nineteenth century so that So that leads you to believe, and he said publicly, look, there'll be some pain.

So maybe that ultimately is willing to pull the trigger here no matter what the market reaction is, and that would be debacle. Yeah, well, the difference is, Canadians by and large have accepted, we are willing to go into a recession to stop this. And he got elected on a promise of no recession. He got elected on a promise of sunny days are here now.

The best days are starting today. No short-term pain, no pain, full stop. And so we're ready for war. And he promised that America would be great as of day one. Yeah, and I mean, this thing could spiral in a very bad place. I don't think retaliatory terrorists make sense for you guys for your own interests, but I understand the impulse to do it. But you do that, and then we retaliate in some other way,

and you could get to a really terrible place. You're cutting off our energy, we're cutting off your energy to the extent we can, and you get to a situation where, I don't know, Russia versus Belarus. And why these two countries have been joined at the hip historically. I mean, Americans, no one is closer to Americans than Canadians. If you're not brothers, you're cousins. We're pretty close.

We're pretty close. Yeah. Long undefended border. We should be working hand in glove. Yeah. There are bigger threats around the world. Rich Lowry, we're going to leave it glove. There are bigger threats around the world. Rich Lowry, we're going to leave it there.

Editor-in-chief of the National Review, thank you so much for joining us.