The Ben Mulroney Show - How will the Donald Trump and Mark Carney dynamic play out short and long term?

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How will the Donald Trump and Mark Carney dynamic play out short and long term? with Guest: David Frum, Writer at the Atlantic, host of The David Frum show podcast and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And of course, you can always find us if you're not listening on the radio or a streaming app, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music. You just search up the Ben Mulroney Show and have at it. We're making a lot of hay over the first meeting between our new prime minister, Mark Carney and Donald Trump that happened just a few days ago in the Oval Office. There's a lot of ways to look at Office. There's a lot of ways to look at it. There's a lot of, I think, a lot to like. And I think there's some fair criticism

as well. But no person I would rather talk to about this than a man who finds himself in the podcast world in his own right. Since April 9th, David Frum, he's a writer at the Atlantic, host of the David Frum podcast and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. David, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. David Morgan And it's always such a pleasure to talk to you. David Morgan Let's before we go into the 51st state of it all, how are you finding hosting a podcast? David Morgan I'm learning a lot. The podcast. Thank you for asking.

We launched on April 9. We passed a million views on just on YouTube with a 50% more on the audio platform. So it's very exciting. And I invite people to listen to the latest we posted Wednesday dialogue with an Apple bomb, my colleague at the event. That's wonderful. Well, yeah, it's the more time you get in the chair, the more time you get behind the mic, the more comfortable you're going to be. And I'm just glad that you're spending a little bit of time with us today. So I'm so glad to have you because you understand both sides of the border as well as anyone. What did you make of the, since the beginning of the 51st state rhetoric and the fact that it still was omnipresent in that first meeting between Mark Carney and Donald Trump?

Well, it's very hard to negotiate with people who don't have asks that you could say yes or even no to. Normally in a negotiation, Canada and the United States have a complex trading relationship. Canadians want this, the Americans want that. Trump wants Canada to end its national existence as a sovereign country. It's like that scene in Goldfinger, where James Bond says to Goldfinger, are you expecting me to talk? And Goldfinger replies, no, Mr. Bond, I'm expecting you to die. Great line.

That's sort of Donald Trump's position. And it's hard to negotiate when someone says, my ask is that you die. So Prime Minister Carney's problem was he needs to keep the lines of communication open. But there's not a lot to communicate about. And Donald Trump delights in acts of symbolic humiliation, and it's important that you not comply or take part in the act of the ritual of symbolic humiliation. I've been often wondering about whether or not Mark Carney is the right man to negotiate with someone like Donald Trump. One of the reasons he got elected is because the Liberal Party sort of diminished the amount of daylight

between the Tories and the Liberals in terms of policy. So they were able to make the entire thing about leadership and specifically leadership in the face of Donald Trump. And then I heard that a number of people who were in the private meetings with Donald Trump said that he was very curious to learn about who Mark Carney was and who he knew and what his life was, what his connections were, what his world view was quite taken by this uber successful person. And knowing what you know about Donald Trump, is he attracted to people like Mark Carney? Is he almost admiring of him? Look, Trump's a bullshitter who doesn't know anything about trade, doesn't know anything

about policies of his own government. So he wants to talk about biographical details, because you start talking about anything specific and he's lost. But the job that Carney has is not negotiating with Donald Trump. It is actually, sorry, this is going to be complicated, it's a lot of negatives. His job is not to negotiate with Donald Trump. Canada should not be negotiating too fast. Trump has thrown the American economy, he's just, he's driving the American economy to a wall. There are going to be shortages of goods,

there's a gathering recession, and the people around Trump know this and they're visibly nervous. The situation gets worse for the United States by the week. And it would be a big mistake to start talking too early. Better to talk in the fall, after the American recession has started, than to talk now before it started. And I'm glad you brought that up, because that was something that I sort of saw on the horizon as well.

And one of my contentions early on was, Canada has girded for the pain. We were prepared for the pain. We've been dealing with pain for 10 years anyway, but that's that wasn't the bargain that got Donald Trump elected. He got elected on a promise that the Sunshine and Rainbows happens the day after I'm elected. And so what Americans are seeing is this was not the bill of goods that they were sold. Do you think, is your suggestion then, that the Canadian government needs to slow play this until after the midterms?

Yeah, not a lot. You're a million percent right. Not a lot of the midterms. But, look, the Canadian public was told Canada doesn't want this trade war. Canada didn't start this trade war. Canada has no special demands of this trade war. But Canada understands that the stakes here are national existence. And so Canadians must endure what will be painful but wasn't their fault. Trump told Americans, I'm going to go around the world taking other people's money and put it in your pocket. And it will be cheap. It will be easy. It will be risk-free. I'm doing something that's kind of immoral when you think about it. But you're going to completely get away with it and no disruptions.

So, yeah, the United States is stronger than Canada. It can inflict more pain on Canada, Canada can do it. But the Americans were told there'd be no pain at all. Right. Not ready. Yeah. So I wouldn't say wait till after the midterms, but just go slow because the American position is deteriorating fast. And Donald Trump doesn't quite understand that because he doesn't really understand how things work.

Well, you mentioned something a little bit earlier about how the people around him are getting nervous. But if you're if you watch the video from his cabinet meetings, where the likes of the Navarro's, the Miller's, the Lutnick's, you know, and everywhere around the cabinet table are just heaping praise on him. Is there anyone in his orbit that is telling him what you and I are discussing right now? Probably not directly. Here's what's happening. These people are going to tell and are saying, your children are going to have fewer toys. You know, just give you very concrete example of something that's happening, I got an email the other day from the American Association of Halloween Retailers.

That sounds like a small thing, but Halloween is the second biggest holiday in the United States after Christmas. Almost all Halloween gear is made in China. It's sold, of course, between the middle of September and the end of October. You want to have your goods from China in time for the middle of September, your order has to be in by the middle of April. Yeah. Your order is not in by the middle of April. No, it's, and so guess what is not going to be happening?

You know what each one by Halloween. Wow. I guess when the Christmas orders have to go in by the end of May, they're going to be, uh, if you want Christmas decorations, if you want some stores, you know, what is one almost 100% made in China, baby gear, car seats, strollers. Um, What happens if you're expecting a baby in the latter half of the year? You're going to find it hard to get a stroller. The goods move, it takes about 30 days, goods from the Chinese coast

to the West coast of the United States, 45 days to get them to the East coast of the United States. So when you embargo China on April 2, it's about now good stop showing Seattle and Long Beach and Los Angeles. And it's in about none of the weekly stop showing up in New Jersey and the Gulf Coast. But they're going to stop showing up. And it's not just China, because Trump's waging a trade war against the whole world of Canadians well now. And anybody he's hoping that that trade war turns into renewed trade deals that happen under what he views as more favorable conditions for the United States. I believe there's an announcement that the US and the UK are announcing a new trade deal

or at least the framework of one. Is there anything you know about that? Yeah, it's a vaporware. It's total vaporware. The US Columbia trade deal. Columbia is an how to make sure trading partner. That was negotiated during the Bush administration. It was negotiated during the Bush administration.

It was started when I was in the Bush administration in the first Bush term and it was signed by President Obama. These things take years. Yeah. They're very complicated. You don't pull them out of a hat. You don't pull them out of a hat. You don't pull them on an all-nighter. And this thing with Britain, all they've done is said Britain is going to reduce one particular tax it imposes on Google services.

And in exchange, the United States will lower tariffs on the very, very, very new cars that are imported from Great Britain. But most of the important trade issues between Britain and the United States, and Britain is only America's 11th biggest trading partner, by the way. Those are all postponed to the future. Everything complicated and difficult. So is it vaporware? There's nothing. This is not, this is an act of economic aggression by Trump administration against the world. And the way it ends is the Trump administration stops its economic aggression against the rest of the world.

Yeah, it's also a self-immolation on a national scale, the likes of which I have never seen before. David Frum, thank you so much for being here. We know how busy you are, and I know that the audience here at the Ben Mulroney Show appreciates you. All the best to you, sir. Bye bye.