The Ben Mulroney Show - Put The Elbows Away

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes Mark Warner, Canadian international trade and competition (antitrust) lawyer, to discuss tariffs. Could PM Mark Carney's combative stance backfire? If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Sometimes during commercial breaks, my mind wanders. Well, it actually wanders all the time. And I was wandering back to a conversation that we had on this show about a call between the prime minister and the president. And the president said one thing had happened. And the prime minister had said another thing had happened. And I took issue with the fact that, you know what would solve this? if he gave us a readout of the call. We never got a readout of the call.

And what we're experiencing now in this new trade war feels like that conversation on steroids because we are being told one thing by the Canadian side and one thing by the Americans. And there's this reflexive need in this country to assume that everything that comes from the American side is a lie because Donald Trump lies and is bad faith and is behaving in ways that are untoward and terrible.

And therefore, everything on the other side must be virtuous. I don't trust this government enough to accept that whole hog. And so I want to see the equivalent of the readout of the call. I want to see what was on the table. So to discuss that and where we go from here, we're joined by one of my very first guests when I moved to morning television, Mark Warner, Canadian international trade and competition lawyer, who also does antitrust work.

He's an advisor and author, a speaker, media commentator on international competition, trade and investment policy. Mark, welcome. Thank you. That's the first time I'm on with the show, your podcast. You're doing very well, I think. Thank you. I'm glad to have you.

I've been watching you doing the media rounds, and you're not necessarily elbows up. Not really. You know, I've been doing this for so long. And I started off doing it, working for a professor back in the late 1980s during the first free trade round. And so I, you know, obviously I tend to be a little more dispassionate about it. And as I like to say to people, you know, I have a bit of a 360 degrees perspective on these things because I've been a lawyer in the United States representing Canadian interests and also American interests. And I've done the same here in Canada.

And I've been in government working for the province, et cetera. I've also had a chance being at the OECD to look at how Canada negotiates and negotiating with Canada from a different point of view. So I kind of have a more, I think, let's say, this finding with some humility, a little more of a 360 degrees perspective on this than most people who commented Canada, which is one of the reasons I started commenting. Yeah. Because I wanted to fill in the blanks a little bit for people. It's hard to do. And there are a lot of blanks. Like we are dealing with a lot of blanks right now.

We were getting bullet points from the government. And I've said before, I want to trust that the words that I'm hearing from Dominique LeBlanc and from our prime minister and from everyone supporting him, I want to believe that he's right. But I'm going to need more than his word right now. And if he wants the support of everyone, they deserve to know what he knows, or at least enough that doesn't compromise future negotiations. I think that's right. I mean, obviously, you know, no government is going to give out the actual, all the, all the, the details, the specific details of the negotiations, because that would compromise the negotiations and also the relations with the other country, not that we seem to care very much right now

about our relationship, the other country. But I do think that, you know, what I think, I just, I was trying to put myself in the room about how these negotiations are being conducted. And I think there's elements of truth in what the prime minister is saying, but not full truth. And there are elements of truth in what the Americans are saying. And if you actually put them the two perspectives side by side, I think you can begin to piece out what likely happened. But I think what happened over the weekend after the prime minister's speech when he got out first was he kind of set the table for Canadians to have a very nationalistic response to this. And I don't know the people are going to listen to very much.

But, you know, there's some things that people could argue about of what he said. Like, well, the classic example would be this business about the Americans were putting pressure on, on the, Canadian negotiators to accept some sort of American veto on other trade agreements. Now, we have something not quite like that, but not necessarily all that dissimilar in the so-called Kuzman agreement that was negotiated, you know, back in 2018, which basically says that Canada wants to enter into agreement with a non-market economy, we have to give notice to the other parties, meaning the United States, and then they can choose what they want to be in or out. So, you know, there is some more modern language that the United States

including in other agreements, and they may very well have tried to put that to Canada. But I think that that's not quite the same thing as the way I think he presented it, which is kind of like, oh, my God, this is a severe threat to our sovereignty. Well, if that's true, Christopher Phelan and Justin Trudeau accepted that in Article 30 to 10 of the chrisma. So, you know, if he's going to make a distinction like that, then I think he does owe us more. Yeah. Now, if he's going to say, and I think he, I know he's not a lawyer, but not everybody can be. But I think he owes it the least to tell us.

This is why I believe what the Americans are asking goes beyond 3210, which my predecessor agreed to get. Otherwise, I think we'll left to wonder whether he's been playing straight with us. How long before the impact of these tariffs are felt at the street level here in Canada? Well, these tariffs don't really affect, you know, tariffs, the odd thing about tariffs is that consumers in the other country pays for them, you know, if they're passed on. So what we will feel is the tariffs to Canada places on U.S. imports. But our businesses are going to feel a drop in their business

because it's going to cost the end consumer too much. They're going to find they're going to source cheaper domestic product. That's true, too. So if you're looking at it from the point of view of the businesses that are selling into the U.S., then I think they will face it pretty, depending on what it is, depending on what the product is and how much demand and how many alternatives they are, they may see a reduction in demand, or they'll be asked to cut margins. So I think they'll face that.

They'll see that pretty immediately from a point of view of businesses. So that's clear. And then in terms of some of the newer things that the prime minister's announced this morning from what I understand that he wants to increase auto tariffs in January, and that's going to have a pretty immediate effect in terms of freezing. That kind of uncertainty will freeze the auto companies for making investments between now and January. So I think that's...

Just what our automotive sector needs, more uncertainty. Exactly. Yeah. And then how do you deal with that uncertainty, Mark? I mean, this stuff should be straightforward. These negotiations should be straightforward. You have something we want. We have something you want.

Let's figure out a path forward. But so much of it is... So much of it is... I think it's over-indexing on personality. And the clash is a personality. I'm thinking specifically of Donald Trump and Doug Ford lobbying insults at each other. You know, Doug Ford said he can kiss my ass and the president said that Canada and Flunky Ford need to fall in line. Those personality clashes will have very real political ramifications, which will then have massive financial and economic cost.

Well, I think that there is a disconnect between what I always say, the political markets are. rewarding Canadian political leaders for being nationalistic and responding to Trump. Trump's really obnoxious and has been obnoxious to Canada. But he has been obnoxious to a lot of other countries that aren't necessarily reacting the way we are. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's an interesting question to understand whether, you know, other, whether another prime minister with more experience or natural political experience would react

the same way. You know, I mean, I, you know, nobody, the funny thing about Mark Carney is he, a lot of foreign leaders and countries appear to be, you know, cheering him on in the back road. But what he doesn't seem to have noticed is none of them are following him. Yeah. You know, even on countries that he would play a part of his middle power alliance, they're, they're making agreements with the United States, you know, on critical minerals or just general. So if he wants to leave this middle power alliance, but nobody's following you. So it's

very tough. I think it's tough when you, when you, you know, when you sort of, when you let your emotions get this far, your ego get this far into it, which I think our prime minister has, you know, it's hard to pull back. And the other thing is, you know more about this from your family. You've got to have political courage to be willing to spend some political capital to defend an idea. And I think what happened here, in my own view, is that, you know, there was something close to an agreement in principle that was brought back to the premiers. We know that from our ambassador who presented to them. And we know from the premiers who went to camera that they weren't too impressed with it. And so obviously the Canadians went back to the negotiating table and said,

we need a little bit more. I need to give Mr. Ford in Ontario something on trucks. I need to give the guy out in British Columbia, Ebby, something on softwood lumber, maybe the duties that are escrow and the American said, what? Okay, here's our list of things you'd like to add to the table. That's kind of my state of what's going on here. So the Canadians, yeah, the Canadians say, where they're last minute demands from the Americans? And they say, well, wait, last minute demand, we think you offer some home. Yeah, but you know, Mark, the thing that I think some people are expecting is to find out that they said, you've got to give us more because if you don't, we, as a, as a government are going to take a hit in the polls. And that's going to piss me off. That's

gonna piss me off if we didn't get a deal because they dropped five points in the polls. All right, we're going to have to leave it there, Mark, but I really appreciate great talking to you again. I call you. Bye-bye.