The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Trump and Canada, How ‘Resist and Unsubscribe’ Affects Scott’s Investments, and the Power of Focus

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Scott weighs in on Trump’s escalating rhetoric toward Canada, explains why he’s unsubscribing from Uber, Amazon, and other Big Tech platforms, and argues that the biggest competitive advantage most people ignore is ruthless focus. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [e-mail], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Office Hours with PropG. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to Office Hours of PropgMedia.com. Again, that's Office Hours of Proption Media.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode.

Our first question comes from Diane Brooks-1 on Instagram. They say, Why do you think Trump is so focused on belittling Canada? The honest answer is, I don't know because they're close or because it's like that movie on Wall Street where Charlie Sheen asked Michael Douglas, why did you have to break this company? And it goes, because it was breakable.

So Canada is our largest trading partner. So I could see how he might zero in and all right. He asked for a list of our biggest trading partners. It's not China. Mexico and Canada are actually tied. What was interesting is a colleague of mine at Stern, a guy named Pankaj Jemelot,

he's an expert on trade. And his big insight, which I found fascinating, is that if you look all over the world, trade is a function of proximity, and that is 80, 90% of the nations in the world, their biggest trading partner, they share a border with.

And it makes sense. Logistically, it's just easier. You share cultures, oftentimes, just crossover in terms of language. So, and the same is true of us. Our two biggest trading partners are Mexico and Canada. He's also sort of zeroed in, I think incorrectly on the notion that past trade deals have disadvantaged the U.S. And Canada was central to his push to replace NAFTA with the U.S.MCA. He tends to highlight bilateral trade imbalances and sector-by-sector outcomes. And he frequently

points to specific industries, especially things like he likes the kind of tangible stuff, dairy autos, lumber, steel, and aluminum, where he says Canadian policies are experts hurt U.S. producers. And these industries are typically more important with kind of what he perceives as the real America and people he feels are advantageous to him politically and tend to side with them, whether it's farmers or the manufacturing states and the industrial Midwest. So also I wonder if he just sees it as a real estate play. Oh, it's our neighbor. Let's buy their house. The problem is it's around all of this, it's just really fucking stupid. And that is, we, let's look at oil. We, they, they transfer to us, oil and energy and shale in its Ross form,

and we add value to it, and we get a discount on it because of proximity, and we sell at a much higher margin. They have manufacturing plants where they produce cars, parts go back and forth, they send them here, they send in timber, they send in timber, they send in oil, manufactured products, which tend to have operating margins of 10 to 20 points and be produced by companies that traded a PE of, say, 8 to 15. And in exchange, we sell into them iPhones, chips, digital services, banking, things that have exceptionally high margins, sometimes 40 to 50 points of operating margins, are housed within companies that trade at a P.E. of, you know, 20 to 50. So in some, if there's been any asymmetry in trade, it's been towards us. And that is for every dollar of trade we do with Canada, we import in a dollar worth of goods from Canada, right? So dollar

into Canada of our shit, our iPhones, our chips, they put in a dollar of cars, timber oil, into the American market. The dollar we sell into them is literally worth three to ten times more to American shareholders or to the American company than the dollar, than the shareholder value they get from the dollar they sell into the U.S. If there's a trade imbalance or an asymmetry, it benefits us, full stop. But because it was such a mutually beneficial relationship, and because there's been a level of trust that's been built up there by virtue of the fact that Canadians went into World War II before we did, they followed us into our world. Iraq. They followed us into Afghanistan. We have fought shoulder to shoulder. Here's a fun fact,

Canada, the Canadian-U.S. border is the largest undefended border in the world. It's forest in most places. Just walk across it. Why? Because we trust each other. We haven't had to militarize it. So Canada fucked up. It trusted us. And 75% of its exports come into the U.S. And I think that essentially Trump said, oh, we have leverage. Maybe they're our friends, but we're not. We're We have real power, and I can bully them and push them around. And they kind of have to take whatever tariffs we send to them. And Prime Minister Carney has pushed back and said, look, this might be bad for us in the short term, but Canada is not going to be bullied. Anyways, this is – his views on trade are just bad shit crazy.

I think he did get China right. He did highlight in his first administration that there was asymmetry with China, that they basically steal our IP. rip it off and then sell us back the finished good for less gutting our industry. I think there was real validity there. By the way, since COVID, Chinese exports are up 40%, but its imports are at 1%. And some China's basically decide you can buy our ship, but we're not going to buy yours. And that means trade representatives all over the world need to unify to push back on China. But when the biggest consumer economy is sclerotic and declaring war on all these foreign nations, we can't pull together and China's been effectively able to atomize us vis-a-vis Trump's stupid policies.

According to Justin Trudeau, Trump's obsession may be due to Canada's significant supply of critical minerals. And then Paul Krugman's theory is that Trump hates Canada because it's a fundamentally decent place. It's an interesting theory. Trump, who nobody would describe as a decent person, dislikes and maybe even fears people who are, says Krugman. Hmm. That's some armchair psychology there. But it's a... It makes no sense. They will be hurt very badly. We will be hurt badly. The greatest unlock economically in terms of prosperity over the last 30 years. Over the last 80 years, it's been NATO and the Marshall Plan and turning enemies into allies and help build up incredible trading

partners that rest on rule of law and democracy, Japan and Germany, where U.S. laws and trading constructs became the operating system for 70 percent of the world's GDP. And we've decided that we can take on the world with, you know, 27% of the world's GDP, which makes absolutely absolutely fraying the operating system and the world order. That was the kind of the biggest innovation. The next was the middle class and what's fueled the middle class and unlocked unbelievable economic growth, really since kind of the 90s in Clinton. It's been an embrace of global trade.

And that is it is hard on certain losers, certain industries that aren't competitive with global suppliers, But at the end of the day, if you can buy bananas for less money and then reinvest that additional consumer spending in other products that we're better at, what's happened over time is that we have traded or swapped out low-wage, non-competitive industries for higher wage, higher gross margin, higher shareholder value industries. So Dave Chappelle summarized it perfectly. We don't want to make Nikes. We want to wear them. The people assembling iPhones in China, I think it's 2,000 parts, make about $500,000.

a month, $6,000 a year. The average wage of an Apple employee in Cooper Tino was figuring out retail strategy, distribution, marketing, supply chain, lobbying, regulations, communications, investor relations. They average about, I think, 220,000 a year. So again, the notion somehow that manufacturing's going to come back, which I think was one of the primary objectives of this stupid trade wars, it's not happening. Also, folks, in terms of manufacturing, long-winded answer here, Americans have a fetish with it. And 80% of Americans think that we need more manufacturing in America, but get this, only 20% want to work in manufacturing. You can't bring your dog to the factory floor. And it has not, these tariffs have not in any way inspired a renaissance of manufacturing.

What they have done has hurt some of our tourism that employs 12 million people in the tourism sector. So in some, if these tariffs in a war on Canada make no sense economically or morally, trust your instincts. question number two comes from MXML on Instagram. They say, how does your call to action to unsubscribe from big tech impact your investment plans? Yeah, it's a tough one.

So I've already unsubscribe from Uber, Amazon Prime, and last night I spent about two hours trying to unsubscribe from Paramount Plus, and I still can't figure out, I got a smiley or a sad mountain saying I'd unsubscribe, but unsubscribe from Uber and Amazon Prime. The really shocking thing was when I unsubscribed or I canceled my Uber account,

it gives you this graphic that says, this is how many times you've ordered from Uber Eats. I've ordered from Uber Eats, I've ordered from Uber 304 times. And then it said, this is how many rides you've taken. I think I've been a member of Uber for about 10 years. Let me say, I love Uber. I think it's amazing.

I love the little graphic of how my Cadillac escalator. Oh, it's around the corner. I hope he parks in the right spot. Oh, he's going to be here. I just absolutely love it. I think it's an amazing service. I haven't owned a car in four years. and it's something I've really enjoyed not owning a car.

All right. How many Uber rides have I taken the last 10 years? 3,746. Okay, see above, love Uber. I take Uber Lux. I like to think I'm a, you know, a big deal. I have some money, and I always take Uber Lux. I did some analysis.

That's approximately 370 rides a year, if you divide it evenly across the 10 years. Most of my rides are in a midtown to do a meeting, to the West Village, to go drinking, or to an airport to go somewhere else. So my rides are expensive. The average Uber-Lux ride when I joined in 2015 was $40 to $60. And this is the big tech playbook. They underpriced. They consolidate the market with an incredible offering. And then once they've consolidated the market, they raised prices faster than inflation,

which is what Uber has done. It has raised prices 7 to 10 percent a year, despite inflation going up about 3 to 3.5 percent a year. The result is in 2025, the average price of an Uber Lux ride for years truly is somewhere between $80 and $120. So let's call it hundred bucks. So do the math. I have been spending, no joke, $35,000 a year on Uber. And before you say, yeah, privileged, yeah, guilty. And my point is, is that you don't realize how much money you're spending on these things because they raise their prices. You get used to them. And they make it frictionless such that it is so easy to spend money. Back to your question. I own stock in Apple and Amazon. And Amazon is my big tech stock pick of 2026. I have owned these stocks since 2009. So to sell them

would incur an extraordinary capital gain. But at the same time, if I'm going to walk the walk, do I really want to finance these companies? Do I want to send a signal? So I am contemplating selling down or selling my positions in these companies. I've not done it yet because, and this is a good problem. These companies are up 1020x, meaning that basically the entire sale amount is going to be taxable. The last time I sold a lot of my shares was in 2016 when Trump got inaugurated. I had an emotional reaction and said, this guy's a fucking idiot. It's going to crash the economy. I sold most of my stocks and all that did was incur a tax liability. I bought back in six months later because the market's like deficit spending and irresponsible economic policies that rob money from the young

and give it to the rich and corporations. And probably that emotional decision probably cost me 20, 25% of my net worth. So I try to be very careful about having an emotional reaction. At the same time, I need to walk the walk. Today, I think I'm going to unsubscribe from Amazon. I found out when I unsubscribe from Amazon Prime, it made the mistake of showing me all the shit I'm subscribed to there.

I'm a member of Amazon One, its health thing. During COVID, I got COVID, and I needed Paxlovit, and someone suggested joining Amazon 1, the health thing. I haven't used it since to get packs of it. By the way, I thought it was a good service. So I'm going to unsubscribe from that today. And I've been doing commentary. But I'm going to unsubscribe or cancel something every day.

I think it's amazing how many things you have that you didn't know you had. I found out I have three different chat GPT accounts. I'm not even talking about canceling all of them, but, you know, I had a family meeting. Family meeting. I love those. That's my, basically my boys rolling their eyes and me lecturing at them and saying, someday you'll respect me. Anyways, and I said, we're going, we're going to cancel our streaming media. I told him about what I was doing and they're like, yeah, yeah, we're not.

And they're like, no, we're not counseling our streaming media. I'm like, okay, I'll let you keep one. And of course, the argument broke out from going, we have six streaming media platforms. We're going to one. I'm not suggesting you give up everything, but if you're a subscriber to Anthropic or chat GPT, pick one. Could you do without Amazon Prime for a month? Could you take more cabs? Or could you eat local and not use Amazon grocery? Could you? I mean, there's just a ton of different subscription services you could do away with. And one, I think you're going to find you're going to save money.

I think it hits these firms really, really hard. My next thing, it'll be pretty easy to unsubscribe from Apple TV. By the way, these companies have increased. their prices 20 to 40% just over the last two or three years. And the soft tissue of corporate America or the soft tissue of Trump is that he responds to the markets. The only time he has pulled back is not because of protests or the courts, the only time or quote unquote a co-equal branch of government. The only time he has pulled back is when interest rates spikes, when interest rates spike or the S&P goes down. What is our best shot at the S&P going down? Simple. Go after the subscription services of the companies that represent 40% of the SMP, and that is, if you cancel chat GPT at 20 bucks a

month or pro offering, that's $240, right? Okay, it's not a lot of money, but say you decided not to buy groceries, Kroger's trades at 0.3 times revenues. OpenAI trades at 40 times revenues. What does that mean? That means that every dollar that goes to chat GPT results in about $130. in market value, or put another way, put another way, you could buy $30,000 less groceries. The average home spends $6,000 on groceries, meaning five homes, American homes, could take all of their groceries spending down to zero and, I guess, plan gardens and figure out a way to survive, and it would have the same impact on the markets as one person canceling their chat GPT subscription. So I'm suggesting we focus on pulling the string that might have a real impact

on the markets, which is the only thing that Trump listens to. But back to your original question, I am going to do something involving my stocks and my capital to try and send the signal to these companies and these financial institutions that they need to speak up before it is too late. And if you're interested in joining us, please go to resist and unsubscribe.com. Again, that's resist and unsubscribe.com. We've tried to make it really easy with links for you to investigate which big tech subscriptions you can easily cancel without much impact on your day-to-day life. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Quince.

Quince makes everyday wardrobe essentials that are built to last. You'll find organic cotton sweaters, polos for every occasion, light jackets to keep you warm during the changing seasons, and, like everything from Quince, each piece is made with premium materials and ethical trusted factories and price far below what other luxury brands charge. our own Claire Miller has a couple of Quinn's pieces. Tell us what you think, Claire. Their tank tops are a staple in my closet, even in the winter.

I love their sheets. I have a few sweaters from them. I haven't upgraded to the Mongolian cashmere yet, but I think I'll have to after all these ads. So that will be my next purchase. But I love Quinn's high-quality, fair prices. Can't recommend them enough. There you go. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash prop G for free shipping on your order and 365

day returns. Now available in Canada as well. That's QINCE.com slash prop G to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash prop G. Support for the show comes from Indeed. Finding the right tech talent for your company isn't just hard. It's mission critical. And yet, many enterprise employers still rely on outdated methods or platforms that don't deliver. In today's market, hiring tech professionals isn't just about filling roles, it's about outpacing competitors. But with niche skills, hybrid preferences, and high salary expectations, it's never been more challenging to cut through the noise and connect with the right people. That's where Indeed comes in. Indeed isn't just a job board. It's your tech hiring partner, from their enhanced

sponsored jobs to their tech network and smart sourcing tools. Indeed helps you reach candidates with the right skills at the right time backed by data and AI. In fact, employers using Indeed's Tech Network site a 4.2X increase in relevant applications. That means more quality applicants and less time to hire. And it offers targeted tools that align with what tech candidates want, like flexible work options, career growth, and salary transparency. Post your first job and get $75 off at Indeed.com slash tech talent. That's Indeed.com slash tech talent to claim this offer. Indeed. built for what's now and what's next in tech hiring. Support for Prop G comes from AMP.

Amp is a sleek, minimalist home fitness device that you actually want in your house. That means no cables, no clutter, no nonsense. You just walk up, turn one smart dial, and you're working out in under 15 seconds. And full disclosure, I love this piece of exercise equipment. This thing, you just put on your iPhone, I put in my headphones, and it tells me exactly what to do.

and it uses AI to figure out what I need to do more of, less of it, even those when I need to stretch. I love this thing. And for those of you who listen, I very rarely give shoutouts like this. The biggest challenge in fitness is consistency, showing up and making it a part of your routine, and AMP removes that friction. Strength, mobility, yoga, it's all there. If you're trying to build a routine that sticks, AMP makes it easy to stay on track, especially if you've got a pack schedule. Check it out at joinamp.com. That's joinamp, J-O-I-N-A-M-P.com. Welcome back, question number three.

Hi, Scott. I consider myself a super fan of yours. I buy all of your books. I was a member of section for a couple of years, and I listened to your pod every week. My question is about the value of focusing on one project and how elastic one's focus should be. Due to my ambition in FOMO, I spend most of my life managing or building multiple projects at the same time, a full-time career, a couple small businesses, investing, thought leadership, etc. I've had an epiphany that maybe my outcomes have been worse than if I had just focused on doing one of those things really well. I see you as someone who has many pots cooking at the same time, but it seems like they all use the same ingredients. For example, the content you create for ProfituMedia becomes a book,

newsletter, and a section course. What are your thoughts on focus, how liberal one's focus should be, and if finding synergies between projects is essential to making them all work? Or maybe you think people should just have one successful project before expanding into others. I appreciate your thoughts and thank you. Yeah. Thanks very much for the question. So a secret weapon that most people don't take advantage of is focus. And that is, I'll give an example. I hate side hustles. There was a trend around side hustles. Everybody needs all young people need a side hustle to make some extra money. If you're spending a lot of time on side hustles, it means you need to find a different main hustle. And if you look at the people who get promoted, if you get promoted every three years instead of every four years, you'll be making millions of dollars more or have millions of dollars more by the time you're 50 or 55.

That's the difference between being a CEO and being a junior VP by the time you're 55. And the difference between getting promoted every three years versus every four years is in the last 10%. And I love that saying success is in the last 10%. and that's the person who works a little bit harder, is a little bit better, but also a little bit more focused. And I think your job in your 20s is not to find your passion, but to find something you're really good at, and then double down on it and focus on it and try and become one of the top 10% in that profession, with an objective of within 10 years being in the top 1%. And essentially, academia is an example of this.

There are people who make millions of dollars sell tons of books, have huge consulting agreements, have tenure, get to work six hours a day, and have really wonderful lives because they have so narrowly focused on, you know, pharmaceutical companies in Portugal. Like, they're the top guy or gal studying breakthroughs in a rare gap one accounting. They know everything about gap one accounting, or they know everything about trade in Southeast Asia. They're the top person in trade in Southeast Asia. And that focus, you know, the specific crowds out the general. So I think it's okay to workshop stuff if you don't love your main gig. You got to make some money. You want to investigate some other things. You want to dip your toes in water. But as soon as you find something where you think I could be in the top 10% in three years and the top 1% in 10 years, I think you go all in on it. Now, what I've done is I've basically gone all in on one function and leveraged to superpower. Now, what is that function? I've gone all in on storytelling. And that is I create a lot of

content where I try and find data, couch it in an entertaining, humorous, provocative, irreverent way. That is what I do. That's my super power. That's my focus. The majority of my day is around creating content that is entertaining and educational. Now, my superpower is finding really talented people that scale that focus. And that is people constantly say to me, oh, it's amazing how much content you produce. I love your drawings. I'm like, I don't draw anything. We have a graphics team. We have a video team. I was just talking to our, the woman who runs our company, Catherine Dillon, I've been working with for 15 years, and she's saying, we need more people on the video team. I'm like, go ahead and make another full-time hire. We have probably 25 full-time

people and another half a dozen contractors working at Prop G to try and scale my focus. And each of them has their own focus. Catherine's a great manager. She's very good with people, but she also is very good on the creative side. You know, Billy runs a lot. our video group. Drew is our tech guy. These people have very specific foci focuses, focus on what they do. So what I would suggest is find someone close to you who understands business and say, this is all I'm doing. Should I pair a couple of these things? And pairing is really important. So for example, I don't go on boards for longer than four years. And I'm now much more disciplined around, okay, this sounds interesting, but what am I going to get from it? How is it going to advance? I try and set

corporate objectives, financial objectives every year, objectives around my relationships, mostly around my boys. And then I run almost every decision or allocation of time. And I used to say yes to goddamn everything. After I hit four years on a board, I get off. You know, the sexist word in English language is no. So the problem most people have is not what they say yes to, but what they say no to. And what I would suggest is you just do an audit and have some friends help you and say, what am I really good at? What would pay the most dividends if it got into the top 10 or 1%? And quite frankly, try to outsource or clear everything else off those decks. Now, if you haven't figured that out, dancing in different parties might make sense to see which one gets traction. But at some point, you should be

totally focused on one thing. And then success is a series of small acts of discipline every day. If you're doing financial content on TikTok, you need to put out one, two, three pieces of content every day. It's like investing. Small acts of discipline every day, a few bucks every day, adds up to millions by the time you're my age. So what are we going to do? We're going to build a kitchen cabinet of people you're going to describe very honestly and openly all the things you're doing, what's working, what isn't. Ask them where you should be focusing or if you should be focusing. And then you're going to be very disciplined about doubling down and putting all of your human capital into that one thing such that you can be in the top 10 or the top. top 1%, and then you're going to get really good at saying no, set you free up more human capital to provide the artillery and the ammunition to be exceptionally, exceptionally focused.

Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours ofproctummedia.com. Again, that's office hours of propertymedia.com. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode is produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janair. Cammy Rieke is our social producer.

Brad Williams is our video editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGPod from PropG Media.