The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Canada’s Role in a Shifting Global Order — with Mark Carney
Episode Date: April 17, 2025Mark Carney, Canada’s 24th Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, joins Scott to discuss the country’s economic outlook, how Canada fits into a shifting global order, and whether the U.S....-Canada relationship can be repaired amid rising trade tensions. Follow Mark Carney, @MarkJCarney. Algebra of Happiness: thoughts on porn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Okay, Martin, let's try one.
Remember, big.
You got it.
The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on.
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Soon enough, high schoolers will be donning those caps and gowns.
But what comes next is less of a sure thing than it was a decade ago.
Students are genuinely questioning if college is worth it and if college is really the right
thing for them, knowing what they know about themselves.
This week on Explain It to Me, a look at the new range of alternatives to college and how
some high schools are setting up their graduates for success. New episodes on Sunday mornings, wherever you get your podcasts.
Episode 344, Route 344 is a highway located in Columbia County, New York. In 1944, Danny
DeVita was born and the US sent a hundred million cans of spam to soldiers overseas.
What did the cannibal say when he ate his first can of spam? Oh my god,
this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I like that. Okay, that's not good. You want to
dick joke. Okay, I am sick of getting spam emails saying I can make my penis eight inches. I know in half.
Welcome to the 344th episode of the Prop G Pop.
What's happening?
The dog is booked in, the dog is a Palm Beach dog.
I'm staying at a place called The Colony, which is sort of, if the Baraleos Hotel had a adjacent property in Florida
that was not as nice, but, you know, sort of like,
Glen Eagles has something called Glen Eagles Townhouse
in Edinburgh.
If this sounds like a total conversation of privilege,
i.e. douchebag, trust your instincts,
but they have a property in Edinburgh
that's not nearly as nice,
this would be the less nice version of the Baraleos Hotel.
I think it's a fantastic, no, no, fantastic.
I think it's, hotels are my hobby.
What's your hobby?
Well, I read a lot of nonfiction or I do a lot of,
no, not me, I go to nice hotels.
It's my hobby.
I won't travel to cities, I'll travel to nice hotels.
By the way, if you're looking for a rec on any hotel
in almost any city, daddy is where you come.
Anyways, this is a small data point and a larger theme
and that is there is an emerging cohort
or services companies and hotels and hospitality
and restaurants that I refer to as 64.
And that is six star prices with four star service.
And what's happened is the following.
The cohort that's grown the fastest in the United States
is not Latinos, it's not seniors, it's the super wealthy
or even just the wealthy.
They have absolutely crushed it.
And these folks like to spend money.
And not only has their income gone up
or their wealth has gone up,
but their mentality has changed since COVID.
It's sort of, you only live once, YOLO,
let's get out there, let's travel.
A lot of them had pent up demand to travel from COVID. It's sort of you only live once, YOLO, let's get out there, let's travel. A lot of them had pent up demand to travel from COVID.
And they realized that, you know, we all meet the same end.
We all come into this world in diapers, we all leave in diapers,
but the reality is we all leave. And so luxury travel has just boom.
And there's a natural gating supply constraint. And that's the following,
to build a luxury hotel probably takes the better part of a decade.
By the time you find the financing find a location get the zoning
the permitting construct the thing train get everyone it takes ten years so there
is a absolute supply demand imbalance right now the Beverly's hotel where I
still want to go to LA which is wonderful which is wonderful it's like
the Disney of hotels you have the Pirates of the Caribbean and then Space
Mountain you have the counter you have the great restaurant next to the pool,
then you have the Polo Lounge, it's Disneyland,
you never need to go anywhere else
and I love it because everyone will come see me there.
Pre-COVID it was about seven, 800 bucks,
COVID it dropped to 400 bucks,
I was one of those guys traveling during COVID
and then now it's $1,800 for a room, six star travel
and no one feels sorry for anyone here,
has seen inflation I, that's probably greater
than any category because massive increase in demand
would choke supply.
The outcropping from that, or one of the manifestations
of that, is that you can now stay at a hotel,
like this one, where they have six-star prices,
I won't tell you what I'm spending on my room,
for four-star service.
And what they do is a cultural phenomena,
and that is they try and throw people at the problem.
And that is they hire a lot of people
who are these nice young people
that my guess is they underpaid,
that are not interested in being the services industry
for very long.
This is a transition job, and that's fine.
I parked cars in college,
and I was a pool boy at the Mondrian Hotel.
Anyways, the 64 hotels, six star prices, four star service.
The problem is when we hit any sort of speed bump,
this shit's gonna get wrecked.
I mean, you're gonna see declines in room rates of 70%.
And that is companies have to figure out
how much they price.
I think pricing is the hardest thing.
Do they price perfectly to demand
and raise prices when they have power saying, do they price perfectly to demand
and raise prices when they have power or do they decide like the Four Seasons and some
other places even when they could raise their prices they don't because it pisses people
off and creates ill will and that's what they're doing here.
They're monetizing the shit out of this place and throwing weddings and bat mitzvahs and
they are instead of catering to their current consumers, they're renting out the pool if they see an opportunity to make another 10 or 20,000 bucks.
And I get it, they probably spent a lot of money to buy this place and fix it up and
they're very ROI focused, but they're trading off goodwill and a reputation.
The Beverly Hills Hotel or the Hotel DeKalb would never ever do anything that gets in
the way of the guests' experience, if you will.
God, I just hearing this, I sound obnoxious.
Anyways, this is, you're gonna see in the travel industry and the hospitality industry,
a massive decline, I believe, in pricing.
Why is that?
The number of people traveling right now into the US is crashing.
Is crashing. Why?
Yeah, I used to go watch football games and Uncle Sam's
every weekend. But guess what? Uncle Sam is a total
asshole and he's gone fucking crazy. So let's just
hold off and let's stick at home. Have you seen
those pictures of Toronto International Airport? I
think it's called Pearson during Christmas break
from last year to this year. Last year packed. Ton
of Canadians trying to get down to Palm
Beach or to LA or to Naples or wherever, or
Miami to get some of that, that thing called
sunshine.
This year, lines are empty.
No one's coming to the U S literally tourism is
crashing.
And guess what?
All this bullshit, all this bullshit around
trying to bring back our great manufacturing
sector.
There are 12 million people who work in manufacturing.
Do you know how many work in tourism in the US?
13 million.
So we have this consensual hallucination
that somehow we're gonna restore manufacturing
by raising prices on everybody.
Yeah, that doesn't work, folks.
But what is working is you're seeing an immediate destruction,
an immediate change in the tourism industry
that affects and employs 13 million Americans.
You are going to see not a collapse,
but you are going to see real pressure
in organizations ranging from Disney
to some of the bigger hotel companies,
to Marriott, when all of a sudden
their rates have to drop because we are going to lose
at the margins a ton of Canadians, a ton of Mexicans,
a ton of Europeans who think, you know what?
There are a lot of nice places to travel.
There are a lot of nice, I know, let's go to Disneyland,
but let's go to Disneyland in Paris,
not the one in Orlando, right?
I know, we wanna gamble, let's go to Macau or Monaco
instead of going to Vegas.
I know, I know, great city.
Let's go to London, let's not go to New York.
They have great theater in London, not in New York.
We could not be more stupid right now.
And you're about to see the helm of the bobsled
that's gonna get hurt, I think first.
Well, I don't know who's gonna get hurt first.
Who's gonna get hurt first?
I don't know.
I think the travel industry is about to start
being in a series of earnings
calls that are just going to get uglier and uglier.
Let's talk about a few people I talked to this weekend.
Let's go back to the tariffs, the big T. That's right.
Talk to the CEO of a catalog company that does a lot of housewares and homewares and
get this, right?
Ten million dollars worth of merchandise on a boat coming in from China This person has to show up with a check for fourteen and a half million dollars the hundred and forty five percent tariff
That was on as of ten minutes ago
I don't know if it's off
But should it stay when the boat actually docks or the boat the ship the tanker, you know
Those big fucking things now when it docks it the Port of Long Beach
This person has to show up or their company has
to show up with a $14.5 million check, otherwise they can't offload the stuff.
By the way, most people don't really understand what a tariff is.
The stuff comes in and then the person bringing it in has to pay a tariff to the US government.
So this person unexpectedly has to find $14.5 million.
That is not easy.
That is not easy.
And just to add insult to injury, this person has to go find people to go down to the dock
and then hire them to relabel and reprice every single item.
Why?
Because now the supply chain is so sophisticated in China that they have the factories sowing
the labeling and the pricing and the tagging to save time and money.
So this person has to figure out a way to get down there
and undo everything on the products.
What does that mean?
This person has stopped all shipments from China.
By the way, unlike many people in the Republicans
or people in the Trump administration,
my anecdotes are actually true.
I'm not lying.
Second person I talked to, oh, what is this person doing?
It stopped all shipments from China, too expensive,
and it's gonna have to reduce their inventory.
Their inventory is gonna go down,
which means not only the products
with this huge tariff gonna be marked up,
but this person is also gonna have to increase their prices
to try and get some of that money back with lower supply.
Maybe she can have a more elastic pricing,
increased prices.
So prices are going up, see above inflation, but then
this person's going to run out of product. Then this person also in their next quarterly
earnings call is going to have to puke all over the earnings call because this person
also has to say, well, there was this 14 and a half million dollar expense we weren't even
planning on that comes right off the bottom line folks. So what do you have? Oh, also
some other conversations I had this weekend.
A German automobile manufacturer called, what would you do?
I'm like, I have no fucking idea.
I can't predict what this guy is gonna do.
A friend of mine from the fraternity at UCLA
has built this really lovely little specialty retail
or specialty products company.
You know when you go to a conference
and there's branded shit everywhere and you get those,
I got like 45 fucking water bottles that say Oracle
or NetSuite or ZipRecruiter and then all the banners
and all the logos and the cups and everything that's
branded, that's a specialty products company.
He's built a really nice business, put three kids
through school, employed I think about 120 people.
I bet it's a 10 or $20 million business, I don't know.
And over the last
30 years, slowly but surely, he's told me everything has moved to China. They just have
a better supply chain and they can do shit at a lower cost, right? He stopped. He stopped
all shipments. There's no way he can turn to his customers and say, oh, there's all
this logo where these logo fleeces and these banners and this signage for the stage It was gonna cost you eight thousand dollars now. It's gonna cost you
21 he just can't do that. So he's gonna have to eat all the contracts
He's always committed to right while paying these tariffs. He has to come up with additional cash flow. He said Scott
This is reminiscent, but worse worse
Than kovat. It's like my business has come to an end.
It's literally my business has come to an end.
My guess is he retires.
I don't think he's got it in him
to try and figure out all the new supply chain relationships
and to come up with the additional capital
that's gonna be required to support this business
moving forward at universities.
What's going on?
Corporations have paused hiring. What's a pause?
It's called non-hiring because if they pause
for three or six months, it's not as if
when they fire up again, they double their pace of hiring.
If you pause your hiring for six months,
you've basically reduced hiring and employment
or new employment at that company by 50% that year
because they don't catch up, they just start again.
And what would you do if you're a large corporation trying
to figure out if and what the tariffs will be
and how to plan your business?
Do you hire new people?
No, you think we're just going to press a pause.
The worst thing about this, and that's not true.
There's a lot of things that are shitty about this.
But we've decided to declare war on everyone all at once.
The piece of the calculus that is missing here is the following.
You need to assess when you go to war or you have a negotiation with someone,
you need to assess your strengths, right, your own weaknesses,
and then their strengths and their weaknesses.
And what they have miscalculated is the following.
They think their weakness is their dependence upon us.
What they miss is the following.
They are not self-aware.
And that is Americans' tolerance they miss is the following. They are not self-aware, and that is Americans'
tolerance for pain is incredibly low.
Women are born with a greater tolerance for pain
because they have to endure childbirth,
which word has it, and I have personal experience,
observational experience here, not actual experience,
that in fact it is the real deal.
Especially if there's a hormone that releases
right after childbirth that gives women amnesia,
otherwise they'd never fucking do it again.
We are the man in this relationship, meaning the US has a much lower tolerance for pain than China.
China starves or has starved tens of millions of people when they felt it was in the best interest of the political party or
the nation as a whole. We fucking freak out when we think that the final episode of The Sopranos was a mistake and start calling our cable company. This is how
stupid these people are. What do we have? Let's review. Less hiring, more expenses,
the economy is slowing, which I'm sure the president got all sorts of data
points on last week, but meanwhile interest rates are going up. If interest
rates and those costs keep going up, it can chase down that consumer sentiment and that certainty.
And what do we have?
The uncertainty index is at a 40-year high.
Consumers in America feel more uncertain right now
than they did when there was a virus
that killed a million people.
Think about that.
Think about that.
Consumer confidence is crashing.
So what do we have?
What do we have?
Less hiring, stagflation or threats of stagflation,
which is Latin for we're headed towards a depression
if we're not careful.
We have retailers who don't know how to plan their business
and we have an administration that has no ability
to actually assess the current situation
and what our strengths are and our weaknesses are.
There is no better opponent than someone
who overestimates
their strengths and is aggressive and gets into the ring
with you and quite frankly, just isn't as strong or as quick
as they think they are, but they have the hubris to believe
that they're awesome so they don't train that hard,
they don't think that hard, they just get in the ring
and start flailing wildly.
Guess what?
In about three months, if not sooner, we're gonna wake up
and all we're gonna see
are bright lights.
We're gonna be flat on our ass staring up
and all we would have heard is the ding.
And what was that ding?
Stupid tariffs.
This is the definition of stupid.
Okay, with respect to tariffs, in today's episode,
arguably one of our most important interviews,
or I don't know, I think this means we're big time.
We're big time.
We speak with Mark Carney, Canada's 24th Prime Minister
and leader of the Liberal Party sworn in this March.
We discussed with the Prime Minister
of the country's economic outlook,
how Canada fits into a shifting global order
and whether the US-Canada relationship can be repaired
amid rising trade tensions.
I really enjoyed this conversation with the Prime Minister.
He's clearly a very intelligent guy, thoughtful,
especially enjoyed the end.
I asked him some questions more personal in nature.
We'll ask Prime Minister Carney his thoughts
on our relationship and where we go from here. Prime Minister, where does this podcast find you?
I'm in Montreal right now, Professor.
The majority of the world spends their news as 10 minutes domestic and 20 minutes international.
In the U.S. we're kind of self-absorbed narcissistic.
We don't talk a lot about other countries.
I think most people have heard of you, have seen you on TV, but don't know much about
you.
Can you give us sort of your backstory, your origin story?
Sure.
So, I was born in the Arctic, the north of Canada, a place called Fort Smith in Northwest
Territories.
I grew up in Edmonton and those who might follow hockey was the days of
Wayne Gretzky when he was playing for the Oilers. That was when I was a kid.
I went away to university in the US and then I worked on Wall Street or versions of Wall Street
or worked for Goldman Sachs in London and Tokyo and New York and ultimately Canada.
And then I went in about 20 years ago to become the deputy governor of the bank of Canada, which
is the equivalent of the federal reserve in the
U S and ended up being the governor during the
financial crisis of 2008.
Um, so worked with, you know, through that process
of the financial crisis, we had a quote, good
financial crisis.
If you can have a good financial crisis in Canada,
we got through it better than anyone else emerged
stronger, a banks stayed together.
And then ultimately, I kind of slightly bizarrely, I was asked to become governor
of the Bank of England.
So I became the first Foreigners governor of the Bank of England.
And I did that through the period of the Brexit referendum, as it turned out, and
in the aftermath of that, and then came back Canada 2020, right in the middle of COVID.
I think you probably had a better experience during COVID
if I listened to your podcasts,
if I read it correctly than I did.
And then I did a lot of work on climate change
for the United Nations, sort of pro bono,
and organizing the financial sector
to help address climate change.
But also at the same time I worked for Brookfield,
which is a big acid manager, and I was chair of Bloomberg. And then as of the start of January,
I first ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party, which is one of the main parties here,
and winning that became prime minister about a month ago. And now I'm running for election.
We have much, last point, much shorter elections than the United States. Our campaign is 37 days and we've got two weeks roughly left to go.
So a big friend of the pod is Ian Brenner, the geopolitical strategist, and
he was on the pod last week and he described you as a open quote
generational mind for Canada on the global stage, close quote. In your view, what role does Canada play
on the global stage?
So we play, I mean, we play several roles.
We're a member of the G7.
In fact, we are chair of the G7 this year.
So I'm chair of the G7.
We're a member of the Commonwealth,
which is the old UK grouping.
We're a member of the Francophone,
which is the obviously the Franc. We're a member of the Francophone, which is obviously the Francophone grouping
of about 60 countries.
So we have our role in several different,
let's call it organizations,
self-appointed organizations or groupings.
I think one of the roles we play potentially in the new
or the emerging global order is partly based on our assets.
We are an emerging energy superpower in all forms of energy.
We're one of the largest critical mineral suppliers in the world.
We're pretty good in AI.
A lot of people claim that, but we're, I think legitimately claiming that.
And so we can play a role as a country that believes in open markets, open systems,
believes in trade, open ideas, diversity.
We can play a role with like-minded countries
to kind of reconstruct that bit of the international order,
which has been, I mean Montreal, they would say,
bouleversée, it's been upended in the course of,
more intensively in the last few months,
but a process that really began
with the financial crisis 15 years ago.
And just for our listeners,
the elephant in the room is terrified,
so I'm gonna get to that,
but I wanna start with, if you were to,
so typically in the US,
and I imagine the same way in Canada,
when a new leader is elected,
assuming you get elected,
they have sort of a honeymoon period
and an opportunity to get more done in their first year, more grace, if you will, than in the next two or three years.
What would you identify as the two or three biggest issues facing Canada? And what's your agenda?
If you could pick two or three things you're really going to go hard at your first year as Prime Minister, what are those things? As you just suggested, I'll set tariffs aside and focus in on three things.
First is having free trade actually within Canada.
We have basically 13 economies here, 10 different provinces and territories all with their own
rules.
It's hard to move credentials and sometimes goods and services across the country, far
harder than it should be.
So a process, a very quick process of free trade.
And by the way, just to put orders of magnitude on this, you know, a
reasonable estimate of the economic benefit of that is bigger than the economic hit
from the worst version of the Trump tariffs.
So we can kind of give ourselves more than others can.
Second thing is, we have a huge housing problem here.
And particularly, obviously for your younger
Canadians first and foremost we need to double the rate of housing and we need to I won't go
into all the details I'm happy to but we need some major reforms in order to do that we can do it in
a way that actually leverages you know the Canadian supply chain technology and all the lumber we
potentially won't be able to send southbound to the US.
And then the third thing, look, the world's fluid, I'm afraid this kind of comes towards
tariffs but I think the trading system is going to get reordered fairly quickly.
And so in the course of the first year, the question is, well, who are we going to deepen
our relationships with other than the United States?
And those relationships, last point, are both
economic insecurity.
The world's a much more dangerous and divided place.
Security concerns are top of the list.
So who in Europe or European Union as a whole, UK,
who in Asia, where are we going to partnership?
If I can say one last thing, Scott, is just being
shaken so hard by what's happening in
the United States, Canadians are very open to all of those priorities.
People are up for big things.
They're coming together and they're willing to do big things because they know they have
to do big things because the world's changed so much.
Well, let's use that as a segue into tariffs.
So I haven't checked my Apple Watch in the last two minutes.
So I don't know the state of things right now.
You're, my understanding, Canada is our largest trading partner, no?
We tend to be obsessed with China, but you're our largest trading partner, no?
We're your most important, yeah.
So give us the state of play.
You're the man representing our largest trading partner economically,
as to the best of your knowledge, describe the state of play between what is happening
between the U.S. and Canada. Where does it sit at this moment?
Pete So, I'll start with the bad news or the, as we would call it, the unjustified news,
which is what tariffs are in place. We have still in place today tariffs that were originally justified because of fentanyl,
fentanyl coming across the border from Canada. Just for the listeners who haven't tracked this,
less than 1% of the fentanyl imported into the United States comes from Canada. In fact,
you've got a sophisticated audience, so I can say 0% over the course of the last three months.
Um, but those tariffs, um, hit a wide range of
goods in Canada, hit a wide range of goods.
And there's a few carve outs for that, but you
know, it's hitting hundreds of billions of good.
And those are 25% tariffs from the United States.
So that's a huge difference.
And so, um, I think that's a big difference.
Um, I think that's a big difference.
Um, I think that's a big difference.
Um, I think that's a big difference.
Um, I think that's a big difference. Um, I think that's a big difference. Um, I think that's a big difference. Um, I think that's a big wide range of goods. And there's a few carve outs for
that, but you know, it's hitting hundreds of billions of good and those are 25% tariffs from
the United States. Then we are also caught, secondly, we're also caught in the steel and
aluminum tariffs, which are this quote, national security tariffs, so called 232 tariffs. We are
the largest supplier of aluminum in the United States. We're one of the most important suppliers of steel to the United States.
And you can roll those up into hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US, depending
on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Um, and then the third thing is we are caught in the auto tariffs.
As people probably know, but I'll just personalize it.
Well, they wouldn't know this fact.
There was something called the auto pack, which was signed the year I was born, you know, 60 years ago.
And we have had an increasingly integrated
auto system with the United States for 60 years.
It got tighter with the Canada US free trade
agreement 40 years ago, and then with NAFTA and
the successor.
So literally, you know, these companies and the
supply chains, the main parts suppliers, uh, they
are virtually fully integrated.
Um, and now into the middle of this is coming 25%
US tariffs, which are, you know, in an industry,
as you know, that has, you know, five, 7% margins.
I mean, this is absolutely damaging.
So we have three sets of tariffs.
We are not subject yet to the so-called
reciprocal tariffs to the US. So the state of the
relationship is strained to say the least because all of these tariffs are in violation of what you
call USMCA. We call CUSMA, the same trade agreement. The good news or the better news is that three
weeks ago or so President Trump and I spoke and we agreed
that following the Canadian election,
there would be the beginning of a negotiation
of a new comprehensive relationship, economic security.
So we are in the queue, so to speak, for those discussions.
It strikes me that these actions are about to inspire
what they envision that is a tremendous amount of deal making, but deal making around us. That it just seems logical and that's a thesis and I want you to validate or nullify it.
But if I'm a G7 nation and I have a trading partner that I used to be able to count on that was mutually very prosperous. And now I just not only can't count on them, but have no idea who I'm waking up next to,
that it's incredible motivation to start establishing dialogue with other nations.
Respond to that thesis, is Canada aggressively and actively trying to re-route around America
right now? Well, I would say, you know, trade is a world of and, um, so, um, you know, it's,
uh, it's a positive sum game, as you know, or both sides, you do it right.
Both sides win.
It's not a zero sum game.
So I might not choose the phrase around America, but obviously, you know, look,
if we're, uh, if we've got excess capacity or we have things we're going to develop,
like for, I'll use the example of critical minerals where we're a big player,
with whom are we going to trade, who can we rely on?
We're sitting here, we supply 70 percent of the potash to the United States,
one of the most important components of fertilizer, 70 percent.
There is a 25 percent tariff being put on potash.
So when you think about it, well, geez, maybe I
might want to take another, I'll call it a
commodity, even though critical metals and
minerals are more than that.
Um, if we're going to develop those, maybe we
want to develop them with a supply chain to
someone who's not going to slap a tariff like that
on, so that I'm validating your thesis.
We, uh, we, yeah, we have begun to
intensify discussions with other, other
countries, other trading blocks.
We have a pretty good set of trading trade deals
in place.
We have a free trade deal with Europe.
We have free trade.
We're part of the trans what was called the
trans-pacific partnership in Asia.
So we have a number of those, but we were
looking to reinforce them.
Um, and look, we're, we are hopeful, maybe hopeful isn't the right word, but we were looking to reinforce them. Um, and look, we're, we are hopeful, maybe hopeful
isn't the right word, but we're open to open is a
better way to put it to, um, a restart of the U S
trading relationship, um, provided there's
willingness on the other side and we can come to
one of those positive, positive, some deals.
So I would imagine you speak to a lot of other
G7 leaders or G20 leaders. What's the general consensus around American leadership right now?
And I realize that you have more restraint and are a bit more, or tangibly nor diplomatic,
but what is the thesis among this group of world leaders around what is going on here?
How do they explain it?
How do you explain it to each other?
Or can you explain it to each other?
Because quite frankly, here in the US,
a lot of this doesn't even make sense to us.
And this is our leadership.
Well, I think the first thing is to recognize,
as I have said, and a number of those other
leaders have said, including G7 leaders, is that the system as we knew it is over.
When the anchor of the system has done a series of measures that the US has done, but also
set out a series of objectives, and I'll come back to that, but set out a series of objectives
that are just inconsistent with the way the system has been operating for decades, right?
Basically since the fall of the Berlin Wall intensified since then. So you recognize that
that system anchored on the US is over, that then leads to how do you react to it? There's
partly the negotiation with the US and which you've been focused on, but then it's also
how do we deal with each other, which we've also touched on. In terms of what the US is trying to accomplish, I think it's,
you know, I take, go back to Peter Thiel of 10 years ago saying take Donald Trump literally and
seriously, but take him literally and seriously and, you know, they're looking to, you know, they looking to, um, to balance, uh, where to the extent possible to balance trade,
which is not the way we think about things, but
is the way the U S thinks about things.
And, you know, you do get into odd situations
like Canada, where we actually run at the,
America has a trade surplus with Canada in goods.
The only reason there's an overall deficit with
Canada is because of basically oil imports.
Well, if you don't want our oil imports, that will be a bit of a problem for a period of time.
Because, you know, the only other option for the refineries that take Canadian oil is Venezuela.
And that's, you know, they've just banned those, those imports as well.
So there, it's not, the logic isn't entirely consistent, let's put it that way, but I think at the core,
recognizing this desire for more balanced trade from the US administration.
Question I think in our mind is there are some industries, autos particularly, aerospace
would have another element of this, and then a number of commodity and a couple
industries that are so integrated that it's hard
to see why for us competitiveness, let alone
North American competitiveness, it makes
sense to pull them apart.
That would be our argument.
And then there's other industries, forest
products, steel, aluminum, as three big examples
where we're, uh, agriculture, potash, I gave that example,
nickel, I could go on, where we're such huge suppliers and such a safe, secure supplier,
again, it doesn't really to us make sense that that would be displaced or tariffed.
So, you know, we've seen that the trade policy is evolving as some of these choke points become
more evident and, you know, I suspect points become more evident. Maybe I'll say
one other thing if I could, which strikes me a bit in the consistencies of US policy is a desire
to have some minimum tariff if possible, which has a revenue raising element to it.
And I think, you know, tied into a U S tax policy.
That is, uh, that is also a possibility here.
My understanding is about 99% of our trade is tariff free.
And that 1% is around things like dairy.
Haven't we largely been kind of a trade free zone between Canada and the U S today?
Yeah, yeah, we have.
And then we have, you know, like any trading partners, you get the odd
trade irritant and, you know, trade dispute, but we have processes to deal with those. And so
we had a, you know, we have a on ongoing things around forest products, sometimes steel and
aluminum and that's handled, but yeah, trade is basically a tar-free. And when it's your biggest trading partner,
pulling that apart is quite costly. It's costly for both. From a Canadian perspective, and I'm
out on the road, I'm running for office, I'm talking to lots of Canadians up and down,
there is a very strong sense of, yeah, this is going to cost us, but we're willing to take
the price to restructure our economy in a
different direction.
Like it's been such a sense of, uh, I mean, the
word that's used is betrayal.
So, you know, we signed a deal, we've had this
partnership, we observe it in good faith.
We set up businesses, we, you know, we know lots
of Americans, we like Americans, but listen to
American podcasts, you know, there's such a
thing and all of a sudden, you know, we like Americans, we listen to American podcasts, you know, there's such a thing. And all of a sudden, you know, we get these, you know, these attacks, which is the way this is viewed,
is okay. So it's going to cost us for a period of time and we'll build out and build with others.
We'll be right back after a quick break.
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We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.
That is not a recipe for economic prosperity.
Vice President J.D. Vance,
defending the Trump administration's tariffs on China,
hit China squarely below the belt,
and China hit back with memes.
Cue music.
["The White House Theme Song"]
Americans on assembly lines at sewing machines in fields,
eating chips, drinking coke, looking ill-prepared
for factory work, to put it politely, which the memes are not.
China's argument since this trade war began is that America cannot win it.
China is tougher, more resilient, and better prepared.
On Today Explained, as this trade war escalates, we ask, what if that's true?
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You were the first non-Brit
to serve to run the Bank of England.
You're sort of the Bo Jackson of global economic leadership.
I've compared this and it might be a crude analogy, but I want you to add some color
and fill in the blanks here.
I've described these tariffs as the biggest own goal since Brexit.
What similarities do you see and how does that inform how you respond to
this and be what you think ultimately the outcome is?
Well I think there's, there are a lot of similarities and it starts with the economics of what's
happening.
Actually briefly describe Brexit because just give us a headline news on Brexit.
So the headline on Brexit is for a variety of reasons,
and many of them not to do with economics,
although it was sold as an economic win,
but a lot of people, because of reasons of identity
and others, voted in 2018, if I'll get my dates right,
2016, I guess, no, for the UK to leave the European Union.
And the UK was even more tightly bound in trade
and economic relationships with the European
Union than Canada is with the United States,
including free movement of labor, easy
movement of capital, huge trade going both ways.
And you never had to get your product, if your
product met the product standard in the UK,
didn't have to worry about it.
You could sell it to any country in Europe.
And so the decision taken, as I say, for a variety
of reasons, narrowly, but taken to leave the
European union.
And I remember when it happened in our view at
the time, and remember this was during a period
where it was interest rates were at rock bottom,
inflation was too low, people were worried about
deflation, blah, blah.
Our view was, okay, what's going to happen is the
economy is going to slow, unemployment is going to go up, inflation is going to go up, and we at the
Bank of England are going to have to raise interest rates when this happens. And by the way, the
currency will also go down. The currency went down by 20, 25%. It's still on the floor relative to
where it was, still on the floor because you had a big negative trade shock, a big loss of wealth, basically,
future wealth and the currency market priced it first. And exactly what we expected to happen
happened. I mean, it happened to happen roughly at the same time as COVID was finishing, but
you had a big, again, I'm relying on your audience, a big negative supply shock to the economy because
you ripped up trading relationships and the productive capacity went down relative to where demand was.
So that was inflationary and combination of that meant UK rates are higher and it's got
a bigger inflation problem.
It has had than other economies.
When you look at what's happened in the US, the friction put into its trading relationships
is going to cause the same thing. It is going to
slow the rate of growth of that economy. It is going to affect the dollar. It has affected
the dollar negatively as we've seen. It's going to push up prices on the margin.
And so slower economy, higher inflation, higher interest rates, all things being equal. Now,
there's a big caveat with what I did or there's a qualifier is a better way to put it.
The UK was a much more open economy, much more dependent on Europe.
The US is more of a closed economy.
It depends on the world, but it is, it's different orders of magnitude.
So it's same direction, different orders of magnitude.
So there's the, I think there are a lot of, a lot of parallels here.
And I guess maybe the other parallel,
if I can add one more, which remains to be seen.
But the UK, I would say, and I'll get hate mail
from UK, some UK listeners,
but I would say based on the polling,
it's pretty well understood that the economic impact
of Brexit has been negative in the UK.
Let's say two thirds of the people now understand that.
But the path back to being closer to Europe is very difficult politically.
It's hard to rebuild that consensus.
They move very slowly.
And you think about the situation in the world right now for the UK,
boy, there's a lot of logic being closer to Europe.
From a trade perspective and even from a security perspective, they built this sort of what's called a coalition
of the willing with respect to Ukraine, because the UK, the U S is pulling back
from support for Ukraine, by the way, Canada has stepped up and is part of that.
Largely European coalition of the willing alongside Australia.
So there's a logic to going back to that, but it's hard to go back once
you've broken up these relationships. And so the next six, 12 months, in my judgment, are going to be
quite important for the United States and for the global trading system because the question is,
okay, we understand that there is a big change, a big break with the old system, but how much of
a break is it going to be? And is there going to be a relatively open trading system for, I'm using
quotations here for those listening, like-minded countries, broadly like-minded
countries?
You know, I think of the G7 as being pretty like-minded countries, not
surprisingly, you know, we value liberty, free speech, open markets in general.
So are we going to have a relatively open system
amongst ourselves or is it only going to be with a
few countries or is it going to be with no
countries?
I mean, that's kind of what to play for here.
Um, and, um, but the system won't, it won't
revert to, to what it was previously.
When we're talking about these tariffs, there's
a general sense that, or at least a talk track
from the Trump administration, that the US has been taken advantage of by its trading
partners, including Canada, that they've just got the better end of the deal and that tariffs
will help restore some sort of parity or equity in the relationship.
Respond to that.
Well, I mean, we don't, obviously we don't see it. sort of parity or equity in the relationship, respond to that?
Well, I mean, we don't, obviously we don't see it. We don't see it in the following respects, because really, again, the way the Trump administration is defined being, quote,
taken advantage of is do you run a trade deficit? And we can argue about that definition. I wouldn't,
if I lead on my economic training and my experience, I would say, well, that
isn't being taken advantage of, it's mutual exchange.
But the US runs the surplus with us.
The US sells more to us.
If anyone's being taken advantage of, we're being taken advantage of, right?
Because I mean, by that definition, and the only place where they run a deficit is, yes,
we do ship oil to the United
States. Now we happen to ship oil to the United States at a big discount to global prices. So
we're being taken advantage of again on that definition on the goods trade side and we're
getting taken advantage because we're selling oil at below good prices. So we, you know, we, we want our money back. No, we don't.
We're, we still see the broader benefits of the relationship.
And, uh, you know, I don't think that, uh, I'll go back to the auto sector.
Um, it's not going to feel taken advantage of, um, as if, if these tariffs stay in
place and, you know, as you say, you got to check your, your, your phone every
once in a while, just to see where things stand. There's a possible exemption on the auto part side
that's coming in, in the United States, which we would have said right, what we did say right from
the start would have to happen because the whole system will grind to a halt without it. So some
of the mutual advantages will become more, are becoming more apparent and hopefully
the US administration can continue to be nimble.
My understanding is that you ship us cheap energy
or cheap oil, you're obviously a very resource
abundant nation, we apply our IP and refining capability
and then we sell it at three times the cost.
It sounds like it's been pretty mutually beneficial.
Yep, no, that's absolutely right.
How do you see this playing out?
If you were tempted to speculate
what the relationship is around global trade and tariffs
on a macro level and then specifically
with Canada and the US,
when you try to plan an economy
similar to the way the CEO tries to plan a business,
what are you expecting?
You have to do scenario planning, nobody knows, but what do you think are the most likely
scenarios for how this plays out?
Because I mean this in seriously, Prime Minister, we're all befuddled by this.
The majority of people who understand economics are having a difficult time seeing how this
is a big win for the US. We're
just, we were having a difficult time understanding how we win here. Maybe more people come to the,
they claim there's 75 nations lining up to cut deals with them. Is that the sense you get that
nations are lining up to cut a deal with us right now? Well, short answer, I don't know.
I don't know is on that second question.
There's a few things that happen here.
One is that there's a risk premium in US assets
that wasn't there before.
And the question is how big is that risk premium gonna sell?
Where is it gonna sell?
And that in part is going to depend on how
coherent the new system is. And does the US credibly commit to a new system or a series of deals?
Remember, we have a trading deal with the US that was signed by the current president,
a trading deal with the US that was signed by the current president, which isn't being observed. So I think that's one thing is there's a risk premium on US assets. And if there's a risk
premium on US assets, then the cost of all other assets around the world is greater, right? Since
we're still priced off of US treasuries, for example. So that's one thing. I think second is,
I do believe that there are a series of like-minded countries.
We very much like the U S to be part of that group,
but like-minded countries who will develop deeper
trading and security relationships as a consequence
of this, uh, it's the world of second best.
It's not what we would all want, but it's the
logical thing to do.
Third thing that's going to happen is that, um,
there is going to be much greater
focus. And I know this for a fact, well, this will be a fact if my party is successful in the elections,
a much greater focus on domestic drivers of demand. So building at home, building big
infrastructure, building millions of houses, building out our own economies, um, more, more pro domestic procurement, right?
In a world where we've got excess steel and
aluminum capacity, which we will, uh, if the
U S doesn't change on trade, well, guess who's
stealing aluminum we're going to buy, um, uh, for
a variety of things.
Uh, guess what defense procurement we're going
to do, uh, right now we spend about 75% of our
defense dollars go to the United States.
That, you know, doesn't make a lot of sense.
If we settle out in a, you know, more arms
length relationship with the U S and that's true.
If it's true for us, it's true for Europe.
It's true for the UK.
Um, and so we'll all move more domestic and more with each other
and the degree to which that happens.
So this is a world just to be clear.
And you, I think you intuitively understand what you get this from the start.
We've got a world where we have higher risk, premium, right?
It's cost of capital is more expensive.
And we've got a world where people are doing second best things.
Countries are doing second best things. So it's a world that's more expensive and it's more,
it's not our target, to use a fancy word,
like it's not totally in and of yourself,
but it's you're putting a much greater emphasis
on taking care of yourself.
We'll do that and we'll do it with like-minded countries
and move forward.
The survey has ever had said that two thirds of
Americans still think of Canada as an ally.
We're sort of like, oh, you know, Trump let boys
will be boys, we still love Canadians, but two
thirds plus of Canadians no longer see the U S as
an ally.
I mean, quite frankly, it feels like Canadians are
just pissed off that they feel the term used was
betrayed and that even if we're, even if we're it feels like Canadians are just pissed off that they feel the term used was betrayed.
And that even if we're, even if we're able to establish, go back to normal,
hasn't the knife, you know, isn't it, the knife gets pulled halfway out of the back, but this injury takes years or decades to fail. I mean, what is the vibe,
if you will, around how Canadians feel about Americans?
And how long do you think it takes us
to repair this relationship?
I certainly recognize those figures.
There is a feeling here that it's the actions of the US.
There's several things.
One is the trade actions.
Secondly was this long period.
And I'm not gonna repeat the phrases that were used, but these threats to our
sovereignty are very sovereignty, which, you know, kind of unique.
There's us in Denmark who've suffered actual threats to sovereignty.
I guess Panama, we rolled ourselves in with that.
And that's, you know, on your hierarchy of betrayals, threatening somebody
else's sovereignty is pretty much the top.
I guess the top is acting on that threat.
So that's all mixed in.
I think secondly, what has been striking has been the relatively muted response in
the broader US to these steps, right?
You know, the CEO class, if I can put it that way,
the other major influencers, stakeholders,
and that's changing a bit, but it was pretty quiet
for a long period of time.
So, you know, and when you look at that
from this side of the board, you think, oh, okay,
well, this is more deeply held
or the friendship is less firmly rooted.
It's like any relationship.
I think if it's a, when you have a, a lost of trust, it, you know, it can be repaired to a degree.
It takes a period of time and it takes action to repair, right.
But you know, it's more than, more than fine words.
I, I think that, uh, that action can start with, uh, in May, the Prime Minister of Canada at that point will meet with
the, with President Trump.
I want to be the Prime Minister of Canada at
that point.
I'm working hard to get there, but, and they'll
sit down and start a process of redefining that
relationship and building trust out from that.
We'll be right back.
It really seems like tariffs are about to make just about everything more expensive.
And so this week on the Vergecast, we're trying to figure out not only which gadgets
do you need to buy right now before they get more expensive?
But also what can tech companies, big and small, do to cope in complicated, uncertain
times when it seems like nothing makes sense and the money changes every day and all they
want to do is ship gadgets?
The future of gadgets in a tariff world all this week on The Vergecast, wherever you get
podcasts.
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We're back with more from Prime Minister Carney.
So just as a means of not,
or taking advantage of the fact that we have
you on this podcast. We have
real problems in the U.S. around income inequality. For the first time in our nation's history,
a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as her parents was at 30. Tremendous polarization politically.
People just don't like each other. I mean, I would argue that comparatively, the nation's actually
done quite well, but what ails us, the call is coming from inside of the House.
We don't like each other within America.
You're asked to be a journeyman and come be Treasury Secretary or head of the Fed.
What policy plans do you think the US should adopt?
And then I want to use that as a jumping off point to what are the biggest economic challenges
the Canada faces and how you plan to address them?
Well, I think the, okay, you go to the heart of, I mean, that's a big, big question.
I guess the way I look at it is, I'm going to come at this from an odd angle, maybe,
but when I look at what's going to drive economic prosperity, productivity growth for the next 25 years?
What are the big drivers of that?
I put down three big drivers AI, no insight.
I put at the top of the list, probably the life
sciences revolution where I'm less, less expert.
Um, and, um, and I would put, uh, carbon, I would
put drive towards lower carbon.
The U S has taken a step back from that for the
moment, but it's going to come back because the underlying issues around are there. And so,
okay, if those are some of the big things that are going to drive economies going forward,
and the US can have mastery in all of those, but the question is how broadly that's going
to be shared within the US across various social strata and how ready people are
going to be to take advantage of it, right? So, you know, is AI going to be, you know,
purely an elite or largely an elite operation or is AI going to be used to train a lot of people
to do a number of things? I mean, I know that sounds very Panglossian or, you know, uh, techno-optimistic, but it is, the question
is whether it's a deliberate policy that's
steered by, by the federal and, and local
governments in a way that are going to ensure that,
you know, in Appalachia, you're learning skills
that are consistent with that and, or, you know,
the energy transition over time, it's not a term
that's used anymore in the U S as far as I can tell.
Uh, but it will come back.
If I can flip it back, Scott, to us, we have the
same set of issues, uh, or set of drivers.
Those are global drivers.
On top of that, we have a series of things such as
I mentioned, critical minerals, we have large
conventional energy.
Um, so how are we balancing all that in a way that
builds the jobs as, as we move out?
One of the things, I'll say two other things, which are related but distinct,
we got to sort out our housing issues in this country. We have a massive economic,
we have an absolute social need, but we have a massive economic opportunity to create a new
industry, new way of building houses and at scale and driving that. And we're going to shoot on that.
And I guess the last thing I'd say, which
candidly worries me a bit about the United States,
uh, and gives me greater comfort or strength in
Canada is a word I'm not sure you'd like to use
anymore, which is around diversity.
We have a huge, huge opportunity here because
we're one of the most diverse countries in the
world.
We value diversity. They give a very strong sense of equal rights in a have a huge, huge opportunity here because we're one of the most diverse countries in the world.
We value diversity. We have a very strong sense of equal rights in a broad sense.
We can be a magnet for talent. And as the US is pushing out brains, if you will, and it's quite a hostile environment in the academic world in the United States now, we can take advantage of that.
And then that cascades down through, you know,
the AI revolution, life sciences, uh, other, uh, other elements.
Podcasters creative class, Scott come up here, whether it's now, uh,
it's now above zero.
Creative has done a lot of work in that sentence prime minister.
So the, look, you have a housing crisis.
We have a housing crisis and it seems like housing crisis. And it seems like leaders have agreed
that it's a crisis for the last 10 years.
Now I read that housing in Vancouver
is a percentage of the average salary
as the third most expensive city in the world.
And that so much of it is in zoning and NIMBYism.
And the previous prime minister,
they wanted to address the housing crisis.
What's the friction point?
Is it capital?
Is it labor?
Is it zoning?
What is different about what you're proposing that is going to register any more progress
than previous administrations?
So it's all of the above, and so you attack it in a comprehensive way.
I'm going to simplify in terms of restrictions, zoning, development charges.
And we work at multiple levels of government.
It's part of the reason why those costs are there.
They come from the municipal side.
And so in effect, we put up a bunch of money,
just put up a bunch of money to commit
to cut the development charges in half.
Okay, so that, and that's subject to a series
of other restrictions being removed, but we will, we at the
federal level will, will pay for that to be cut in
half.
The second thing, uh, I mean, we believe very
strongly that, uh, we, productivity for in the
Canadian housing, uh, sector, construction sector,
basically is flatlined for the last 20 years.
Okay.
We're still building houses like we did before.
And given the scale of what we need to do, you
know, we got to move much more rapidly,
particularly in urban density and other things.
So, you know, modular prefab housing, mass timber,
other innovations that are there, they exist.
And so one of the things we're going to do to
kickstart that industry, and this is Canada's, not
the United States, we have a different attitude
to toward these things. We have a problem with deeply affordable housing, right? Social, certain countries you
might call it social housing. We just have not built that for decades basically in effect.
And so we need to, we need to catch up. And so what we're doing, part of what we're doing is
we're going to build a huge amount at that level and set the specs,
if you will, for that.
We're going to build and we're going to build by,
you know, on our balance sheet as a developer.
And we'll set the specs for that, which drive the
industry upstream in prefab, mass timber, et
cetera, which gets the economies to scale there.
Um, but by and large, we will rely on
private sector build. We'll make a bunch of land available, make cheap capital, 25 billion for
developers in this case, which is bigger money up here, cut those development charges in half,
drive that, and then we will give tax breaks to people buying their first time home. So basically
they're getting 5% off their first
first time home, which, you know, from a down
payment perspective starts, starts to add up.
So attacking it both on the supply demand side.
The way we look at it is this is generational,
like the scale of the problem is generational
such that we're building out a huge pipeline of
apprentices in the skill traits.
And one of the core messages I give virtually
every time I speak, so I'm going to do it now,
is this is going to be a great time for a career
in the skilled trades in Canada.
Cause we're going to build for the next 25,
30 years, like we are going to add, if we get
this right and we intend to, three to four
points of GDP of investment.
That's a huge number, right?
It's possible. We used to invest at that scale relative to GDP in of GDP of investment. That's a huge number, right? It's possible.
We used to invest at that scale relative to GDP in
the early seventies, we can do it again.
You know, we can finance it.
Um, we got all the pension funds, we've got lots
of money to finance it, but we need to, we need to
kickstart it.
And of course it's not, it's housing is we start
with housing.
It's not just housing, it's energy, it's other,
other elements, but that's what we're going to do.
So we want to get young people into the skilled trades at scale.
We're going to pay for all their apprenticeships.
We're going to work with the unions to pull them through.
We're adding a bunch of capacity at post-secondary education so they can get
these trades at a scale.
So we're getting the hundreds of thousands, which again, the US doesn't seem like a
lot, but in Canada, these are big numbers.
Let's talk a little bit about climate and energy. You've evolved from being a climate finance advocate
to scrapping the consumer carbon tax and calling for Canada to be an energy superpower.
How have your views changed on this?
I wouldn't say my views have changed, to be honest. So, I mean, it's very results oriented. So, the consumer carbon
tax in Canada was responsible for about 6% of our emissions reduction. So, 94% of the work was being
done elsewhere. Now, it sent a signal to households, but it just wasn't that important. but it was quite divisive because people, you know, viewed it as a tax and they, they saw
the tax with the tax.
They didn't all give credit to the rebates that
they were getting.
So it politically, it was unhelpful, was
undercutting the overall message.
So we got rid of that, um, uh, a few months ago.
Um, it was first thing I did actually when I
got into office.
Um, but what we, what we are doing is making
sure that the
carbon market for large emitters works well.
So, and that, and we're, large emitters work well.
And as a consequence of that, we're getting them
in effect to pay people for, this is what will
happen if we're elected, to pay people for, you
know, driving EVs, retrofitting their homes, other, you know, climate smart choices.
And then on top of that, there is a big element, big IRA type element to our
climate strategy, investment tax and credits and others.
So we're looking basically, and having reasonable success with this, where we're
putting out, you know, a dollar federally and we're getting $4 to $5 of private investment on top of that.
And what's really relevant to us, aside from caring about the climate, and people up here do care about the climate as a whole, is that we think that this is going to be a fundamental driver of competitiveness. And if you look at who we're going to be trading with more over time, Europeans, the Brits, others, guess what?
They care about this.
In fact, as you know, with carbon border adjustment mechanism is coming into in Europe.
And so we take a view that, okay, we've got to do this medium long term for competitiveness because that's where the world's going.
Secondly, the Europeans and others are going to want got to do this medium long term for competitiveness because that's where the world's going secondly the Europeans and others are gonna want us to do this
Thirdly actually we've got a lot of the technology. So part of being an energy superpowers around small modular reactors
I mean, we're a big hydropower
We're decent on hydrogen. We could get better carbon capture and storage all these things we can do
And I guess the last point which which goes back to the US,
is right now, and I'm gonna grossly generalize,
the US doesn't care about climate.
Six months ago, it cared about climate.
Guess what?
You're gonna care about climate again down the road.
And when you care about climate down the road again,
we wanna be in a position where we're much more competitive
and maybe have leapfrogged a number of US companies.
So I just wanna do a quick lightning round.
Advice to your 25-year-old self.
You had 10, 15 seconds with your 25-year-old self.
What would you say to yourself?
You know, relax and stay focused on what you like.
I mean, I probably spent more time doing things I didn't really love than I should have.
You got a chance to go back and meet with someone
who you've lost or who's no longer around.
Who would that person be and what would you say to them?
Well, I think with, you know, be my father,
I'd say I love him.
You're at the end of your life,
not gonna walk on the beach again,
not gonna get to hang out with your wife, your kids.
What does success look like for you?
When you, when you look back, what is the box you
want to have checked?
I think strongly the answer to that is that you're,
you're proud of the values of, of your children
and people who worked with you.
I mean, I think that is the only real legacy, the
extent to which you have influenced how others treat others in the world
and how they react in the world. I wrote a book and that was the conclusion of that.
Mark Carney is Canada's 24th Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal
Party sworn in this March. As an economist, Prime Minister Carney steered the Bank of Canada through the financial crisis
and later became the first non-Brit to run the Bank of England.
Between those roles, he served as UN Special Envoy to Climate Action and Finance and as
Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.
I trust a lot of Canadians are listening and I feel comfortable speaking for a lot of people
and that is Americans understand the largest undefended border in the world is the U.S.-Canadian border.
That's for a reason.
I love that question that Warren Buffett's friend was a Holocaust survivor said.
The way I judge my friends is I ask one question, who would hide me?
A lot of Americans remember that Canadians hit Americans in the Iran hostage crisis.
And I hope that your listeners and your voters recognize there is a huge swath of Americans
that think of you not as, not even as a friend, but as siblings.
And then we hope and are committed to maintaining what is arguably one of the strongest alliances
in history.
That I don't want to say don't take what's going on seriously, you have to,
but there are a lot of Americans down here
who are brothers and sisters in arms in Canada.
We really do think of you as a sibling.
Thank you, porn.
It's something there's not a lot of research on because no one wants to be known as the
porn professor.
I spoke with Dr. Anna Lemke, I believe on this podcast, and it strikes me I'm meeting more and more people
who are struggling with an addiction to porn.
And what I would suggest is to tell people
not to engage in porn is a little bit unrealistic.
That's like telling someone to go stop drinking,
which my doctor told me when I had high blood pressure
a few months ago, and I'm like, yeah, that's gonna happen.
I'll reduce my drinking, why don't we stop there?
Anyways, it's not about my high blood pressure, which by the way is under control now. That's gonna happen. I'll reduce my drinking, why would we stop there? Anyways, it's not about my high blood pressure,
which by the way is under control now, that's good news.
Hard to imagine me with high blood pressure
at the age of 40, 60.
Anyways, I think sexual desire and that want
and that hunger, if channeled correctly,
can make you a much better man.
And the last thing you wanna do
is reduce that fire and that hunger.
And that is wanting to mate, wanting to be attractive such that you can find
a partner to have a relationship and ultimately possibly have sex with.
I think if channeled correctly, and it usually, in my opinion, usually is
channeled correctly, can make you want to be and become a better man.
And so anything that dampens those fires,
whether it's additional porn consumption or depression,
that's just a bad idea because life is about taking risks.
And because women pay a much greater downside
or have much greater downside risk from sex,
specifically pregnancy than men,
I mean, they're in it for 25 years if they get pregnant,
we're in it for at least seven seconds, right?
And I'm not suggesting anyone engage in male abandonment,
but the downside risks for women are just much greater.
So as a result, they have a much finer filter,
meaning they are choosier than men.
Okay, fine.
But there's an upside to that,
and that is if you want to have a relationship with somebody,
it forces you or inspires you to be a better man.
Maybe you work out a little bit more.
Maybe you have a plan,
you articulate a plan around economic viability. Maybe you have a plan, you articulate a plan
around economic viability.
Maybe you learn how to open, you learn how to take risks.
The most frightening piece of data I've seen recently
is that 51% of men, 18 to 24,
have never asked a woman out in person.
That is so upsetting for me.
I just, I think a lot of the skills you develop
and the characteristics you develop around trying to find a mate make you a better
man across a number of dimensions. You develop a sense of resilience. If you
want to ask a lot of women out get used to rejection and if you want to be
successful in the world of mating, much less professionally, get used to
rejection. That is a skill. Learn how to talk to strangers,
learn how to open,
learn how to smell nice,
learn how to not have bad breath,
learn how to groom yourself,
be able to articulate a plan
for why you might someday be able
to take care of children.
Show that you're disciplined and you work out,
which means you show up.
These things make you a better man.
And anything that reduces the hunger, the desire,
the drive, the fire to make you a better man,
you wanna modulate it.
In sum, I'm not gonna tell you not to consume porn,
but my brothers, you want that fire to stay alive.
I think a big part of the reason I graduated
from college, quite frankly, is I used to go on campus
every day because I wanted to see my friends at North Campus at UCLA.
And also, there was a non-zero probability that I might meet someone that ultimately
I might have a romantic relationship with.
And that was very motivating.
And had I had on-demand porn on my phone and my computer, I don't know if I would have
gone on campus as much.
And with a 2.27 GPA, it wouldn't have taken a lot of less campus presence for me not to
have graduated from college.
So what's the bottom line?
Porn?
Okay.
But modulate.
That fire, that desire can be channeled and should be channeled into making you a better
man.
This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is
our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG pod from the Vox Media Podcast
Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy No Mouse, as read by George Hahn.
And please follow our PropG Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
and Thursday.