The Munk Debates Podcast - Trump shakes his fist at the court and will AI take everyone's jobs?

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

For 72-hour advanced access to the full-length editions of Munk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $50 annually, or $1.00 per episode. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Rudyard and Andrew react to the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling against Trump's tariffs and the President's angry response. How will Trump being denied this authority affect upcoming CUSMA negotiations? Andrew suggests we should expect to see demands from the Trump administration that go far beyond the traditional trade grievances. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Andrew turn to AI and how this new technology will displace white collar jobs. What kind of policy response should we expect from the government in Ottawa? Andrew is more optimistic that this will not be as upending as some are predicting; the history of technological change suggests it will take longer than people suspect for AI to be adopted. There will be jobs lost, but will there be new jobs created? And finally, given that this is a global action program, and we cannot silo ourselves off from the United States and China, what can the Canadian government do to reduce the risk to our economy?Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We certainly shouldn't see, first of all, that the tariff power has been exhausted. He may find other ways to implement that. He may find other non-tariff ways of harassing us. Welcome to the Monk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne, Goldman Mail journalist here in studio. Andrew, great to be in conversation with you. Nice to be here with you. Our audience always appreciates your analysis of the ongoing kind of trade chaos induced by the

Trump administration, what was your reaction to first the U.S. Supreme Court decision last week and then more importantly, possibly the president's press conference just hours later? Well, to the first, I guess, you know, hallelujah, the separation of powers still exists and maybe even more important the Supreme Court is willing to uphold the separation of powers. I think people were beginning to wonder if there was anything Trump could do that the Supreme Court would not ratify, having earlier, for example, said that the president could commit crimes in office as long as he was doing so well in his capacity as the chief executive of the country. So this was a welcome return to sanity by at least part of the court.

There were three judges who you just knew would never, at least two of them you knew, would never go against Trump. Andrew, let me just stop you there for a second. What do you make of those three judges, Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh, and who is the- Samuel Alito. I mean, isn't the U.S. Constitution pretty clear on this issue that Congress has the powers of taxation? These emergency tariffs, as they were being used, were effectively de facto tax on the American public. How can we have three advanced jurists, arguably steeped in American constitutional law? side with the president in this case?

Well, you know, there's a deep history to this of a certain radicalism on the legal right. There is a doctrine of the unitary executive that is pretty close to saying the president should be able to do whatever he likes. I'm caricaturing, of course, but it acknowledges very few constraints on executive action. It has been working its way through the legal system in the United States in terms of the judicial appointments, et cetera. Thomas and Alito are particularly radical exponents of it, and particularly exponents of it when there's a Republican president.

So it's symptomatic, I think, partly of the degree to which a lot of these debates have gotten polarized the United States, particularly around the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is such a prize now in American politics, that a lot of their politics revolves around it, and a lot of their judicial decisions become, I think, highly politicized as a result. It becomes very important which party appointed which judge, for example. And that's just been taken to the nth degree in the last two years. Particularly people who seem to have climbed on board the Trump train, it's remarkable what they seem prepared to sign off on. They seem to be so invested in the success or the

existence of his presidency that they cannot acknowledge when they're wrong. They cannot to acknowledge any limits on their position on that. So we have the ruling. As you say, it was a victory for the courts to the extent to which the law, which is, again, I think pretty obvious in this question. Victory the Constitution, I think a lot of people would say. Asserted. What did you make of the president's reaction? In some ways, I don't know, it wasn't as bad as it might have been, which would have been an outright attack on the court, a flagrant and stated disregard for the court's instruction to cease in his emergency power. So what did you make of the president trying to walk this line between maintaining his tariff powers?

And, you know, I guess in this case, not unimportant acknowledging the court had ruled. Yeah. while accusing them of being in the pay of foreign interests, among other charges, being disgraces to their families. So he did some more undermining of the separation of powers, the independence of judiciary in the process. He set new norms of what presidents can say about these things. But yeah, in the end of the day, he didn't just say, I'm doing it anyway.

Now, he sort of did I'm doing it anyway in that he did impose a 15% tariff across the board that lasts for 150 days. So the purpose of which seemed mostly to be to shake his fist at the court. Yeah, it's theatrical. We've seen this a lot of times, particularly of late, it sort of reminds me, this will seem like a stretch, but this business where Denmark saves a U.S. semen who had fallen ill on a U.S. submarine, which for some reason was in Danish waters, they take him and treat him in their health care system, to which Trump replies not by saying, thank you, or any other

normal human reaction, but by professing to send a hospital boat to Denmark because their health care system, to Greenland, because their health care system has been ignored by Denmark. He does things for no other reason except to get back at people who he thinks have crossed him or who he thinks have insulted him, or have just embarrassed him in this case by doing the right thing. So, yeah, a lot of the reaction was, apparently the immediate reaction from those who watched him, which was he got the news when he was in a meeting of governors, and people thought he was going to, you know, swallow himself. He was so angry. So, interesting. His, you know, his displays of anger are, I give him credit, are genuine. That's an interesting tell. So he probably

thought that there was a good chance of court would rule in his favor, which again, would just go against some very elementary readings of the U.S. Constitution. He was one of the few people who did. You know, you look at the betting markets I think before, and it was something like a 70% probability that the Supreme Court would rule against his tariffs. But he, again, he's absolutely

genuinely able to persuade himself of crazy things. My personal theory is he thinks he won the 2020 elections. He can pass a lot detector test on that. Yeah, which, you know, may, that's been a lot of the defense that had been offered of him as well, if he had a genuine belief that. But with Trump, you

You can't just say, well, it's a genuine belief, therefore it's fair. There has to be some element of the reasonableness of the belief. He is genuinely incapable, I think, of telling the difference between truth and falsehood, which may be a defense on the grounds of insanity, but if you're going to plead insanity, then it's hard for you to stay in office, you would think. The 15% tariff in some ways was a bit of a nothing burger, because it wasn't on top of existing tariff arrangements with Japan, Europe, and we can go down the list, Canada, Mexico are exempt, at least all the goods that fall under Kuzma. So what was this? And again,

was it, was the president's anger possibly a reflection of a defenestration here? Yeah, well, I mean, it was a lever, you know, the pretence of the emergency, no one actually believe, but it was a lever for him to extract concessions, quote-unquote, from other countries. So all these countries who hasten to strike trade deals with him to alleviate this are now looking like suckers. You know, they're basically played with a power he didn't really have. And so I think it does vindicate the go-slow strategy, if that's what it is, of the Canadian government. And I think they should continue to go slow. You know, I was going to mention, this one thing you can say about the Supreme Court so we're all marveling this is

how debased our standards have become that Trump didn't just ignore the Supreme Court it was notable how long the Supreme Court yes took to render the decision now I'm not saying I'm not gonna say that this was the reason but if the court was concerned that the that the President of the United States was going to just simply ignore their ruling and just rule by Fiat waiting until he was at 36% in the approval pool was probably a good idea because it's harder for him to do that now than when he was riding high. Yeah, that's a great point. And when we're cruising into the midterm elections, assuming those are held. As we wrap up this segment, what do you think this means for the Kizma

negotiations? I guess one concern I might have is if the president has been, has had removed this one particular trade power, which he enjoyed, Andrew, because I think one of the things, that this power did, given his ability to just arbitrarily tariff anyone and anything, is it put him at the center of the U.S. economy, the largest economy in the world. Everyone had to worry about him or come to him and do some kind of deal. With that gone, are you concerned that he'll now return to the playthings that remain within his purview? and Kuzma, while not entirely, there are all kinds of areas where Congress could or would need to get involved if it was completely deratified and rolled back.

There's still a lot that he could do, though, Andrew, using his own powers in the short term, to turn the Kuzman renegotiation into a painful mess. Yeah, I mean, he could just walk away from it. He has that power. There's some debate coming out of the Supreme Court decision about, did this only apply to these particular tariffs in the emergency power, or was it a, did the ruling have a broader reach

of basically ruling out any presidential tariffs that weren't expressly authorized by the Congress? And I don't, you know, I don't know enough of U.S. constitutional law to be able to say. That will be litigated, I present. Exactly. And the problem is that everything will be litigated, including what Trump likes to do, of course. This was what he did when he was stiffing his suppliers,

when he was a developer, was he would say, I'm not paying you, sue me. So he's had a long track record of just basically tying everything up in court, doing things that are illegal, and then you wait for a year to get it or more to get it overturned. Then he does something else illegal. It isn't flagrantly ignoring the court, but it's certainly ignoring the spirit of the court's ruling. So we certainly shouldn't see, first of all, that the tariff power has been exhausted.

He may find other ways to implement that. he may find other non-tariff ways of harassing us. And I think this remains my concern is Kuzma is just one part of one much larger puzzle, which is whether it extends annexationism or not, I think it certainly extends, if you read the national security strategy, for example, of corraling the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, into the service of U.S. interests, narrowly defined. and that would place constraints on our external trade policy,

on our defense alliances, et cetera. Mark Carney and the government are attempting to break out of that vice, if you will, and I think we have to recognize that the United States government under Donald Trump may not simply roll over and accept that. They may try to keep us, and Kuzma would be only one part of it. But I expect to see demands at the Kuzma table that are far beyond traditional American trade grievances. We've talked about this before. I don't care if they bring up supply management.

I hope we concede on that. But if they bring a lot of other extraneous stuff. Exclusive access to our critical minerals. The acquisition of Canadian companies and firms involved in defense-sensitive activities. You know, regulating who else we can sign. I mean, that's all in that national security strategy. I mean, there was a piece of that already in the agreement we signed, whatever it was, six years ago, eight years ago, it was the original thing, saying we couldn't strike a free trade treaty with a non-market economy.

Well, they may go further than that. Not that I'm eager to sign a free trade deal with China, but I also want to maximize Canada's freedom of movement on these files. Yeah. Just as we wrap up this segment, Andrew, what about the president? President's exclusive domain vis-a-vis executive authority, which is the military, the use of military force. Again, there are congressional approvals for a former declaration of war and other things, but we've seen successive presidents now using the military, deploying the military in ways

that, you know, sidestep oversight and participation by Congress. One of the things since the beginning of this second Trump term that has worried Canadians is this idea that the threat like Greenland was subjected to, that the government of Denmark was subjected to, could be more explicitly and overtly impressed upon Canada. For instance, a transit of Northwest Passage, a so-called Freedom of Navigation Patrol through the Northropower. It might be our equivalent, a Canadian equivalent of the Denmark Greenland experience. What do you give as the likelihood of that as we go forward. And what, if anything, are the levers that we have to lessen the chance of that, of a more explicit rupture the Canada-U.S. relationship that goes beyond

economics into the domain of security. That's a very difficult question. I mean, that's that particular question, and again, I'm not necessarily an expert in the law of this thing, but my understanding has always been that if it ever came to a final test of international law, of courts, we wouldn't necessarily win. No, we wouldn't. On the trains of the North Coast Passage. And I'm cool with that, as long as that's the process. You know, obviously from a narrow Canadian self-interest standpoint, you might not be, but our broader interest is in the international rule of law. Well, you know, we may be entering a world where nobody's observing that. And, you know, I don't know what the short answer is, except that, you know, you have to view this as part of a

broader exercising alliance building. So we've been, NORAD and NATO has been the center of our world in terms of defense and security. Well, you know, there's an argument to be made that NATO basically died the week of the Greenland craziness. Because it wasn't just about Greenland. It was Trump basically saying explicitly, I'm not going to observe Article 5, my Article 5 obligations if Russia invades Latvia. So if that's the case, then we're already at work. even as NATO still exists on building a successor to NATO. We're building another plane while we're flying the old one. While we're taking out.

Exactly. And some part of that may be some arrangement in the Arctic. Maybe we have to make room for some of our partners, make concessions to them to induce them, maybe including economic incentives, to give them a stake in defending the North alongside with us. But the old assumption that the Americans would be our guardians in the North, I think, is obsolete. Yeah, I think you're right there, unfortunately.

Let's say goodbye, Andrew, to our non-Munk member audience who have been watching and listening. We'd thank you for being part of the conversation. If you'd like to catch the second half of Andrew and my discussion today, we're going to focus on the big shakeout that's going on with AI right now in terms of global markets and people's perceptions of jobs. amongst white collar workers. Stick around for the back half of the show. Monk members get that back half 72 hours in advance to the general public. You can do that right now by going to our website, Triple W, Monk, DebateswithanS.com. Sign up for the membership level that's right for you,

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