The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Trade War is On -- What's Trump Really Want?

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

 The trade war between Canada & the US is on, & suddenly, two long-standing friends seem like hard-core enemies.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The Canada-U.S. trade war. What does Donald Trump really want? Janice Stein, coming right up. And hello there, welcome to Monday, welcome to another week, and welcome to a really difficult situation now between Canada and the United States. Supposedly these two great allies, right? We have been for more than a hundred years. Best friends, undefended border, all that stuff. Man, not today.

Things are looking ugly. Booing at hockey games. Booing. It's one thing to boo other players. Booing the national anthem of another country. You don't see that. We saw it on the weekend. We saw it a number of times in different places,

in different parts of the country. Listen, people are upset. They're angry. And they're threatening all kinds of things in terms of their own actions on how to deal with the fact that the U.S. put in 25% tariffs on a lot of different products, 10% on oil and gas. Canada retaliated within hours with their own 25% tariffs on, what, a thousand different products.

So it's tough. This can be a difficult situation now supposedly the leaders of the u.s canada and mexico the three countries involved in in this china is also involved with between the u.s and china but trump says he's going to talk to the leaders after having not talked, certainly in Trudeau's case, since he was inaugurated as president. Now, we're recording today's show before any meetings take place, so we don't know what's going to happen at those, but we can assume all kinds of things,

and we can have a good discussion about the, well, about history, like we did last week with Dr. Stein. And Janice is here with us again today, Munk School, University of Toronto, to talk about where we are and where we are, how this sits within history between the two countries on the trade front. So sit back and listen. There's a lot to learn here, just like we did last week.

But also, as you know, on Mondays, I like to give you the question of the week. And surprise, surprise, it's related to this. And so I want you to think about this one carefully. And it's a good thing to listen to this before you sit down at your laptop and start writing out your email to me. Here's the question. Have the U.S. tariffs changed how you

think about the U.S.? Okay? Have the U.S. tariffs changed how you think about the United States? And if they have changed your thinking, what's the one thing, one thing, not two, four,

ten, the one thing you not two, four, ten, the one thing you're going to do personally, what you're going to do about it? All right, so there's your question. You write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You have your email in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.

You include your name and the location you're writing from. And here's the big condition. Keep it short. I have this discussion with many of you every week who said,

oh, I wrote you a great email and you didn't run it. Keep it short. That's the key. That's how we get so many in each week. The last couple of weeks, you know, we've had a lot of emails, a lot of really good emails with a lot of good ideas. So this week's idea,

have the U.S. tariffs changed how you think about the United States? And if they have, what's the one thing you're going to do about it? You know, be innovative. Think that one through. It's not as easy as just, oh, I'm not going to drink orange juice anymore from Florida. Well, you know, you may not. A lot of people are not. But there are other things too. So think about it. Think about it carefully about what you're going to do. It may be an action like that. I'm not going to buy this, that, or the other thing. Or I'm not going to go on holidays to the U.S. or I'm going to stop watching Hollywood movies.

I'm actually going to go and boo at hockey games. Those may be options. It's Super Bowl weekend coming up. You going to watch the Super Bowl? Two American teams playing what they argue is the world championship of football. Anyway, so there are different things you could do, and I want to hear about them. So there you go.

All right, keep it short. Short means no more than a basic paragraph, not a long paragraph. We're not looking for essays here. We're just looking for your basic ideas on this. Okay, enough. Let's get started with our conversation this week with Dr. Stein and Janice's University of Toronto, the Munk School. She's the director there. She's got a great sense of history, and she's really into this subject.

So enough said. Let's get to the conversation. All right, Janice, obviously we're going to start on and concentrate on the trade war. And let me start this way. One of your areas of expertise, and we know there are many, but one of them is negotiation theory and conflict negotiation. I want to first of all understand what you make of Trump's positioning on dealing with Trudeau because we find out over the weekend that Trudeau has been trying for two weeks to talk directly to basically his counterpart in the United States,

a Trump-Trudeau discussion. Trump will not phone back or has not made any attempt to reach out to Trudeau after Trudeau has tried to reach out to Trump. What do you make of that? That's a very, very revealing piece of information that came to light last, you know, over the weekend in the Prime Minister's press conference. Look, all of negotiation is personal relationship in a sense because you're negotiating with somebody else.

And I think it was Brian Mulroney who said, you cannot give enough weight to how important the personal relationship is between the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States. This is clearly a terrible one. I don't want to dress this up. Trump has real animus toward Justin Trudeau, and I think it's reciprocated, frankly. I think that showed in between the three Trump presidencies

when Justin Trudeau let his guard down a little bit at some international meetings and made his disdain for the president clear. And if there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, a slight is something that he never forgets i think this relationship is frankly toxic now well it's interesting because before the inauguration trump was dealing with trudeau right they went to you know trudeau and his and some of his ministers went down to Mar-a-Lago. They had a dinner together, took pictures, you know, happy faces, et cetera, et cetera.

Although clearly the threat was there about tariffs. So now we have since the inauguration, since he officially becomes president, they don't talk. And you're left wondering, is this simply because they don't like each other or Trump especially doesn't like Trudeau? Or is he fearful in some fashion in actually negotiating with him or talking to him? I mean, what are we left to think here? You know, I characterize that trip to Mar-a-Lago

a little differently. Peter, I think the prime minister had to go. Given the order of magnitude that's at stake for this country, he absolutely had to go. But even during that dinner, this conversation about the, not about the tariffs. If it were about tariffs, we know what the negotiating space is but the conversation came up about the 51st state and literally the tweet started within hours of that dinner about governor trudeau so the animus was there this is mocking um there's no question. The animus was evident right from the beginning. And we've had members of his cabinet meet with U.S. officials.

You know, the finance minister has been meeting with the would-be secretary of commerce, Melania. Lee has gone to Washington several times, but there's not been a conversation between, Melania Lee, has gone to Washington several times, but there's not been a conversation between at the top as potentially the worst crisis that Canada's faced.

You know, you can go back in history and we can find the right analog here, but this is the most severe external threat that Canada has faced directly since the War of 1812. And no conversations between the two of them. What does that tell me?

It's not about fentanyl. It's not about the border. We need to fix those things, but they're really tiny. I'm not even sure it's only about tariffs, because if it were about tariffs, you've got boundaries. You look for the negotiation space and you try to make a deal. It's about something more for Trump, and that's what's making this so hard. Well, what can be more short of wanting the territory?

Well, what can be more. The most alarming thing to Canadians, frankly, is his view of the world, which you and I talked about last week, that you make America bigger by literally making it bigger. And there was a lot of comment over the weekend in Canada, especially by the premiers in this country, that this is an act of economic warfare against Canada.

And they're not wrong, the premiers, when they say this. It is an act of economic warfare because they're so sweeping, the tariffs. I mean, 25%, that is not a small tariff, and it's over everything except for the 10% tariffs on energy, which are so important to the U.S. economy. That's an all-out attack on the Canadian economy. Why do that? It's clearly not about the trade balance, which is what all tariffs are designed to correct.

It's not about a trade balance when you take energy out of it. That's actually a trade surplus for the United States. It's about something more. It's about, it's an attempt to weaken Canada, frankly. And is this all personal or does he have a large support area for that in terms of, you know, and I'm not just talking about the Trump base, I'm talking about the Trump advisors, that group around him, the 2025 people, all that.

Yeah. So I actually think he does not have a wide base among the advisors. There are tariff hardliners around him. Someone told me what was to me a shocking story that during the first Trump administration, when the Trump administration was putting tariffs on China, which after all you could argue is the biggest strategic competitor to the United States. And there's deep competition. And Peter Navarro, who was in his cabinet, well-known to Canadians,

turned around and said, why aren't we doing this to Canada? Now, I was shocked. I really was. And it was an American who told me that story. That tells us that Canada has been on the radar, but Peter Navarro, Robert Lighthizer, the old hands left over from the Trump administration, feel very strongly about trade balances

and about jobs, about manufacturing jobs in the United States. That's still within the realm of negotiation. You can still deal with that. There isn't one of them who's talking about a 51st state. That kind of approach is not there even among the hardliners, except for Trump. That is a Trump preoccupation. And he did it again.

He did it again this past weekend. He went right there in his honest, true social account. There is, you know, he is stuck on that. And that makes the negotiation very tough. But let me flip it over

for you for a second, because as a smaller party which we are it's tough for us to say that but they are nine times bigger than we are what do we know about negotiating with somebody who's much much stronger than you are. Well, the principal thing is don't taunt. No matter how the inhuman discipline that it takes not to taunt the bigger party, even if they're a bully, don't do it, don't give in to it.

So we have to be extremely careful because there is clearly a very, very legitimately angry tone in the country. But our political leaders have to put some insulation between themselves and what they say in public, no matter how tough that is. But the second piece here, we can't go one-to-one with Americans on tariffs. We can't go dollar for dollar, which is what our whole political class is telling us to do now. You don't fight on the field where you know you're going to lose. And that's what we heard all weekend. And that's what the government did.

It went one-to-one, virtually dollar-to-dollar value, although it's given, there's a 21-day break in here. If this goes on, that cannot be a winning strategy for Canada. It just can't. Well, let's say we accept that for a moment. That's clearly your feeling. But how do you deal with the other side, the bigger side, the stronger side, if they won't even talk to you?

What choices do you have? That is a $64 question. What would work against Trump? So let's talk for a minute about the other two countries that were sanctioned. Mexico, same 25%, frankly, as vulnerable, if not more than we are, because its economy is weaker. And it is, you know, the Mexican economy is configured as an alternative to manufacturing in the United States. That's what's generated the growth in the job in the Mexican economy.

That's not us. Anything like that. Gloria Scheinbaum, who's their president, actually took a deep breath. She said, we're going to think about this. We're going to look at this. We're going to consider this. She did not retaliate in the moment.

Xi Jinping, who has been the subject of repeated rounds of tariffs, again, did not respond. So of the three who were subject to these, frankly, unjustified tariffs, we're the only one who came out of the gate. And we came out of the gate with a very large-scale response. So what could we do if they won't talk to us? The deadlock is at the very top level. It's between Trump and Trudeau. You go just beneath.

So the finance minister, Dominique Leblanc, is able to talk to the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury in the White House. There are conversations going on with Holman, who is responsible for the border. And those conversations are still going on. Believe it or not, our ambassador in Washington has access. So you deploy one, you know, one level down here and you try to send the message. What does he need to win here? What does he need to say?

I win. This is progress. We can suspend these. And above all, don't humiliate him. Boy, if I went out and said that in public at a meeting, Peter, right now, in person, I would be lynched. I am fully aware. Yeah, you would.

I mean, the mood in the country, as you hinted at a few moments ago and we'll get to in a second, it's ugly out there. And with some justification. You know, I was in a diner in the weekend here in my little town of Stratford. And they're talking about not just hundreds, but thousands of jobs in this little town, because it's very concentrated on the auto parts, that they're going to be layoffs. And, you know, people are going to lose their jobs. They're going to lose their homes.

Yeah. People are angry. So to your point about the, you know, one level down negotiation, that clearly has, as you suggested, been going on. In fact, right up until the last night on Friday, I lost track of time, but I think it was Friday night, there were reports coming out of the U.S. that that level was happy with the talks that had been going on and thought there was the possibility of a deal,

but it was obviously getting knocked down at the top because they don't want a deal, or he doesn't want a deal, or he doesn't want one now. You know, he's so unpredictable. He's so erupt, which makes this so tough to get over the line, frankly. So, and I was hearing exactly what you were hearing, Peter, and he clearly decided to go full scale ahead on this. And there was optimism right up until Saturday that there might,

that he might, in fact, you know, there were so many things he could have done. He could have announced them all and said, well, but we're not enforcing them for three weeks because we're going to wait and see how much can get done. Very similar to what we did. So he clearly wanted to do this. There's no question about it.

The real issue is for how long and what happens in the United States. Let's talk about this for a second. First of all, there are markets. There are bond markets and stock markets. And we know one thing about Donald Trump. He really cares about that. And if the long-term yields for those famous 10-year bonds go up,

that's a problem for the United States economy. There are stock markets. They can't be happy about this. This is the second big challenge to U.S. stock markets. The first came from a Chinese company. That's going to be a problem for him. And it's not only Stratford where people are going to lose their jobs, it's Detroit.

Would you know, labor, Joe Fabio says, it could shut down in a week or two weeks, frankly, as the border gets gummed up with parts. We're not equipped to impose and collect the

tariffs that quickly. And there's just tremendous sand in the gears. That's going to put pressure on him. So what we have to do is we need the strategic patience here to let the pain that Americans are going to feel get voiced and have an impact on him. That's far more effective and less risky for us than lashing out or retaliating one for one. But lashing out is what's going on. I know. It seems to be every level.

You might make some leeway for Danielle Smith and the approach she's taken. But other than that, it's been all the premiers. It's been the commentators. It's been the people. When you let the, what's the saying? When you let the toothpaste out of the tube, it's hard to control it. And we saw this, you know, over the weekend at the hockey game in Ottawa, if you think it's going to be bad there, look out for what starts happening at other hockey games and look

what happens, look what happens in the, you know, so-called four nation series that's coming up or Canada plays the U S the two favorites, one many would argue in, in, in that series on both sides of the border because there are games in Montreal, there are games in Boston and this is unlike anything we've ever seen. They are our alleged best friends and greatest allies and we're always there for each other and blah blah blah, all that stuff. This doesn't look like that anymore. All of a sudden.

No, it doesn't feel like that. People are just literally furious. There's no question. And it's everybody. It's the premiers. It's the leader of the opposition. It's everybody. Now, go talk to some of the CEOs of large companies.

They're not there. Go talk to some of our former ambassadors. They're not there. There is a concern that he's a bully, and I don't think there's much dispute about that. He is one, and that you have to respond. But there is a lot of worry about going up the ladder. You know, one of the things that was in that executive order was we're doing this, and we're doing it under emergency powers.

And that's why he's focused on the border security. Because if he doesn't do that, he can't do it. So he needs an excuse that it's national security. But he can retaliate even further. And he said he was going to, that if we retaliated, he would retaliate even further. That's where the danger is. If we had stayed below, we didn't have to do nothing,

but we needed to stay below the level of what he's done to give him a reason to say to himself, well, they didn't retaliate at the level that I did this. It's tragically on us to open up the paths for him to climb down, Peter, because we're going to be the bigger loser. You know what they're saying out there listening to you? They're saying, Janice, you're a wimp here. Like, what the heck? We got to take this guy on.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that's what happens every time there's an asymmetrical war. All right. You take the big guy on. So Zelensky did that with Putin. And it's been extraordinarily difficult for him. And ultimately, as this dragged on, what really mattered, it mattered that Russia was

three times the size of Ukraine. The United States is nine times the size of us. So if it's not power alone that's going to matter, there's one other kind of asymmetry that matters, and this one may help us. And this is core to negotiations. Who cares more about the issue? That asymmetry favors us.

This whole country now, from coast to coast to coast, is focused on this issue. It's barely on the radar screen in the United States, believe it or not. You know, when the prime minister spoke on Saturday night, no American all-news network covered the top. Now, it will get clicked for sure, but there was no live coverage of the Canadian response. Americans don't care that much about this. I was in New York last week. I desperately tried to get my American colleagues to focus on this two seconds of their time until they moved on to what was bothering them so because we care

more we will absorb relatively more pain and we will stay focused but there are limits even then Peter so just any prime minister whether it is Trudeau,

whether it will be a liberal successor for a day or two at the very least, if they call an election, or it will be a conservative prime minister, it's the hardest part of the job because the audience is not at home. The audience is in Washington. Well, let me take that on for a minute.

Let me push back on that for a second. I hear you on that right now, and there's no doubt about that. As you said, they weren't covering it live on Saturday night in the U.S. on the cable channels. And quite frankly, on Friday, thebc was covering live trump's comments about trade and the american cable channels weren't which was which was quite something now having said that when all this starts to take him effect and it will take effect fast yes that auto packs for example that'll be within days yes Yes. This isn't weeks or months.

This is days. Yes. And when you start going into the Michigans and the Ohios and those states and auto plants start shutting down because they can't get the parts they need to continue the symmetry and the production line that the auto packs set up and the trade line that the auto pack set up and the trade pack since then,

when those places start shutting down and those people are out of work, they're going to hear about it. That's the goal, right? It's to let the people, that's the strategy. It's to let the Americans who are outraged by this, it's they who have to turn up the heat on him. That's the whole point. We have to stay just below the boiling point

at the official level and let the Americans do our work for us because there are going to be enough Americans who are going to be really hurt by this in the same way that the people in this shop for a diner are going to be hurt. They're going to be really hurt by this in the same way that you're, you know, the people in this shop for diner are going to be hurt. They're going to be just as angry about this because this makes no economic sense, frankly,

but they have to do the work for us. And we, our leadership has to stay just calm enough and cool enough and not taunt him. So that when he looks for that opportunity to climb down, we're there to help him do it. Well, you obviously don't think they're doing it right now. No. I think, honestly, I think we went too far last night.

I think we went too far. You know, here's why I think we went too far, because it was we're going to do to you exactly what you did to us. It was symmetrical. The whole language was dollar for dollar. Right. And that's what the two leadership candidates used exactly the same language. It had to be enough so that the people in Detroit and, you know, and other parts of Michigan and Ohio, these are after all, that's the new red wall, Peter. This is Trump territory now.

These states matter to him. It had to be enough so that there was pain and injury inflicted on them, but less than what they did to us and lost the symmetry language. If we want a deal here. Okay. I wouldn't want to be the prime minister

right now because this is such a tough road to hoe. You know, he was barely able to conceal his disdain for Trump when it was about global issues and we weren't the deer in the headlines. But any prime minister of this country has to do that now

because everything is at stake for us. It is interesting how everybody's lined up behind him, almost everybody politically, you know, whether it's Doug Ford or whether it's... Doug Ford, you know. Well, listen, you know, they're all the same with the possible exception of Danielle Smith and her positioning on

this. It's going to be interesting to see how she plays this out over the next little while. You know, we did get one gift, Peter, in the middle of all this and you're you're not going to be surprised i don't think by what i'm going to say there was a possibility there was going to be no tariffs on energy right that would have put the national unity of this country a risk in a in ways that would have been almost imaginable.

Without his knowing it, he gave us a gift when he did not fully exempt energy because that made it possible for this country to function in a united way. And the prime minister, I've never heard him talk like that. It was so solicitous of Alberta. We are not going to do anything with a full consultation with the premiers and we will not get out ahead of the premiers. That was a recognition of how important it's going to be

because oil and gas are our biggest asset. That's the biggest asset we have in this relationship along with the auto sector. And so the federal government cannot afford to lose her as a member of the coalition. But Donald Trump made that possible. He pushed her back on side. Yeah. Electricity is not far behind either.

No, electricity is right there. Quebec, Manitoba, BC, a big deal for all of them. You know, I heard a great story, and here's one about Canada-US cooperation.

You know, I was in Winnipeg a couple of weeks ago, and one of the fellows that was driving me around, the events I was at, worked for Manitoba Hydro. And I won't give his name or title, but he was up there. Kind of knows what's going on. And he said so much of their arrangement between Manitoba

and whether it's Minnesota or North Dakota or whatever, those northern states that border along Manitoba, is not written in stone. It just sort of happens. You know, in the winter when Manitoba needs a little extra hydro, they give it to us. There's nothing written down with this. No charge in the summer. When the reverse is true, we did the same. Yeah. You know, that just sort of happens because we are who we are.

We've been that way for 150 years or whatever. Anyway, interest on getting off topic. Well, you know, that's a huge asset. I mean, that's the huge asset we have going into this, which we probably don't talk enough about here. These supply chains are so intermingled and so interconnected that I actually think that the trade officials

are going to have trouble tracking because of exactly what you just described. All this stuff just float over the border. We don't count that. We just do that. And this thing that's going over today, but it's come back tomorrow. We don't have a system to track that. So much of the two economies are so intertwined in these really complex ways that are very hard to map when you go try to map them. But if you can't map them, you can't put tariffs on them.

And it's that fluidity which is going to put some insulation around this as we move through it. It's a huge asset. Okay. I'm going to take our break. I'm going to come back. And I want to go to like we move through it. It's a huge asset. Okay. I'm going to take our break. I'm going to come back. And I want to go to, like we did last week, I want to do a little bit of history here because there is history.

Even Donald Trump mentioned it the other day, this part of history. So let me, we'll get to that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. That means Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. You know, usually we focus on the Middle East and Ukraine. We haven't done that for a couple of weeks because of what's on tap for Canada and the U.S. right now in terms of the trade war that is now fully engaged. Last week we talked about history from the sense of American imperialism

in the 19th century. Here's another one that Janice threw at me this week, and it's really interesting. Not only was I not aware of this part of our history, joint history with the Americans, but also I couldn't even pronounce the name, so I've been working on that. Mercantilism or mercantilism.

Apparently both are acceptable. Talk to me about that part of our history and how it kind of duplicates what's happening as of this moment. You know, it is really an important part of our history, Peter. Mercantilism preceded the area, the history of free trade, both in Britain and actually in Canada and the United States. And now, under an era of mercantilism, the state is responsible for generating positive trade balances to invest at home.

So the state is the big economic actor. And it was a conservative position, by the way, although you'd never know that from talking to today's conservatives. And in this sense, Donald Trump is a throwback to that earlier history in the 18th and 19th century. Now, it was a big part of Canadian history. Probably our founder, Sir John A. MacDonald,

is best known to Canadians. And he put together a package, and it was a mercantilist package, there's no question about it. First thing is, you put very high tariffs on manufactured goods coming into this country. And that was against U.S. manufactured goods

coming into the country. And why do you want to do that? Because you want to support what's called infant industries. Your own startup industries who need time to grow before they can compete on a level playing field. And he did that and he didn't do it.

It's interesting. He didn't impose tariffs on resources that you needed to manufacture. Those crossed the border easily, but it was on American manufactured goods because the Americans were so much stronger. And that's the classic mercantilist. He added two other pieces to this, which became famous in Canadian history, the national policy. It was started under Sir John A., and it really lasted government after government. It had elements of this really until after World War II. Here's the second piece.

You take those balances and you do big nation-building projects. Well, we wouldn't have the Canadian Pacific Railway, which all of us know. If it weren't for that state-led, that's really what mercantilism is, state-led development, which then turns around and invests in big projects. And the third piece, which also was true of the United States,

a big push on opening up the West because without people in the West of this country, we would not have been able to protect the West from the United States. And so a big emphasis on immigration, opening up Canada to immigrants that would settle the West. You know, and that's how my grandparents came to the country at the turn of the century. Everybody who came to Canada at that point went West.

Whether they stayed West or not, that's a different story. But they went West, that's for sure. And at the core of this was um the government the state private markets weak unable to stand on their own two feet so it was state-led development in the united states mckinley was president in the in the second McDonald administration. And McKinley was the biggest supporter of tariffs. And who's Donald Trump's role model? McKinley. So there was almost those two,

the two stories run parallel to each other. They're out of sync now because we've had retrait with the United States since Brian Mulroney. And that was probably the biggest national debate we had was between John Turner, who was liberal and still argued that Canada needed protection from U.S. markets or we would lose our sovereignty and we would lose our culture and we would lose our culture and we would lose our broadcasters and we'd lose our artists if they didn't have that protection and a Mulroney government which saw the future of Canada integrated with the United States.

Fast forward 30 years to Cosmo or NAFTA II, the debate was over. Canadians saw themselves as wholly integrated. We're a North American economic regime. And then Donald Trump shows up and unwinds the whole story and takes us back to the 19th century. You know, you mentioned McKinley, and as Trump's kind of, you know, guiding right here now on Taurus.

Apparently on the day of the inauguration, you know, two weeks ago, there's a setup that works on inauguration days when there's a change of president. They get two hours to redecorate the White House while the inauguration ceremony is going on. Yeah. And so you have to, obviously, you have to have a plan as to what you want done in that two hours.

Well, one of the things that Trump wanted done was he wanted a portrait of McKinley put in the Oval Office. Yeah. And. That tells you. Well, it tells you probably more than some people would like to give Trump credit for, that he does have some sense of history or somebody whispered in his ear, actually, you know, we've done this before.

We've done this before. It kind of worked for what, 70, 80, did yeah but you see it was before it's so interesting because you know we always say uh history doesn't rhyme but it sure repeats itself doesn't it uh you know those tariffs worked um because it was only really beginning around in the 1890s, the first decade of the century that globalization really took off. And right before World War I, there was more trade and more labor moving around the world without papers, by the way. Nobody had documents.

And then at any time before World War I crashes it down. We don't recover, Peter, until 1970. We didn't get back to the level of global trade in 1914 until 1970. And then it takes off again and globalization really roars.

Those were the Clinton years and the WTO years. But manufacturing jobs moved under globalization and they moved out of North America. They moved to China, they moved to cheaper, where labor was cheaper and they moved to Mexico to some degree. And Donald Trump represents the backlash against that, frankly.

It's tariffs, not because just for their own sake, but it's tariffs to move jobs, manufacturing jobs, back to the United States. So it's reversing that whole history from 1970 on until about 2015. You know, I often like to think that one of these days we've got to do a show on the world before World War I. Because in so many areas, whether it's international relations, international trade, domestic politics,

things were very, very different. Income tax. There was no income tax. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And by the way, under Sir John A., there were tariffs, but there was no income tax. Right. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So interesting.

Just in that period before World War I, what were Europeans saying to each other? We can't have war. Our economies are so integrated. We'll never go to war again. War's over. Exactly.

Okay. We're going to call it a day. Another great conversation and another great lesson from the great Dr. Janice Stein on things. I mean, if nothing else, this whole issue has arrived in our laps in such a way that it's been able to inform us and make us better citizens in trying to understand this kind of dynamic that's going on now between us and our our closest neighbor um and uh with no idea at this moment how it's all going to play out all right uh janice so all

it does mean for sure is that we will be talking again next week so we'll uh we'll see you then have a good week here dr janice. Janice Stein and our latest conversation. I've got to bottle these things. I should sell tapes. Those Stein conversations. They're great. They really are. And we're so lucky.

As I say, almost every week, we're so lucky to have Janice Stein with us on Mondays. It kind of sets the table for the week, right? Gives us a better understanding of where we are and what are the different issues at play. We certainly have seen that through this, and this isn't going away anytime soon. Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth

will talk to Fred Delorey and Bruce Anderson because, you know, Bruce is a liberal and is working with Mark Carney on the Liberal Leadership Campaign Fred Delorey is a Conservative He's working with Doug Ford on the Ontario Election Campaign He ran the Conservatives' national campaign with Aaron O'Toole last time round.

So we're going to get their thoughts on this because this is a crazy situation where everybody's lined up on the same side, Canadians politically. And how that works at a time when, you know, liberals are in a race against themselves and conservatives are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see who the liberal winner is so they can go with them.

So an interesting time. We'll talk to Fred and Bruce tomorrow on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. A reminder that that part of the Tuesday show, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, A reminder that that part of the Tuesday show, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, is also available on our YouTube channel, which is meeting great success. I was looking at the Good Talk numbers for last Friday again. They're up around 50,000 again. It's just like fantastic for the spread of Good Talk, not just on SiriusXM,

but also on our audio podcast and now on YouTube as well. That will wrap it up for this day. The question of the week is at the top of this hour. So go back to hear it once again and start framing your question or your answer to the question of the week.

Look forward to reading them. Keep it short. Name, location. 6 p.m. Wednesday is the deadline. 6 p.m. Eastern is the deadline. Okay, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in almost 24 hours.