The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/03/16 at 07:00 EDT

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/03/16 at 07:00 EDT

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Canada with tariffs as I said not just one there's one set of tariffs then another set of tariffs and he's still another set of tariffs and and then he actually says refers to his own trade agreements and he says, who would sign these? All of this, given the fact that we had we as trade lawyers, we had already geared ourselves up for the period of review, which was supposed to be 2025,

in order to have USMCA reviewed and renegotiated in 2026. All of that was coming up and yet none of that stopped President Trump and Mr. Lutnick from launching this massive assault on not just on Canada's economic well-being but our sovereignty itself. So that's part of the challenge. You enter into an agreement, it gets implemented and then what are they going to claim? So that's just of the challenge. You enter into an agreement, it gets implemented, and then what are they going to claim? So that's just a starting point. The issue we have, and I think the government of Canada will have, is the statements made by Secretary Lutnick, both during his confirmation hearing and since then. He stated that tariffs are going to be part of the macroeconomic policy of the United States going forward.

He then later on said that they want to get rid of the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, and instead have tariffs fund the US budget. I mean there is no way that that can be done but those are the stated policies of the person who's turning around and entering into discussions with the premier of one of our provinces was absolutely no responsibility in international trade matters to say, well, you know, we have a basis for an agreement. The official statements contradict the statement that he made with Premier Ford. So all of this to say that, to go back to the first statement I made, which is that the

ask is not very clear. If it was a renewed, renegotiated USMCA, first of all, it was in fact coming up in 2026. If you want to come back and renegotiate it a year earlier, you come and say, look, we want to renegotiate it a year earlier. We don't want to make a big fuss about it. We just want to renegotiate it a year earlier. We don't want to make a big fuss about it. We just want to renegotiate it. Here's a list of issues we have that we want to fix. That didn't happen. A threat happened. Another threat happened. A third threat happened.

And the threat happened on Canadian soil. This is the challenge that we have. One other thing I wanted to highlight to go back to an earlier point that Jim made in response to one of the questions, I think it's important to bear in mind that if you take out oil, we actually have a goods trade deficit with the United States. We have a goods trade deficit, especially in manufactured goods. We continue to have a traditional hewers of wood and drawers of water relationship with the United States. We sell them our resources, we then get back manufactured goods in return. And so on the one hand, that makes the disengagement really difficult. But on the other hand, it also puts the lie to all of the effectively nonsense that we're

hearing about reindustrialization and reshoring in the United States. The challenge in trade with Canada has nothing to do with autos or other manufactured goods. The challenge has to do with the fact that Americans drive big cars and they want cheap oil and we have a lot of it and we sell a lot of it. It's that simple. That's where the trade deficit is. Yeah. It's you've I want to thank both of you right now. This is I think a good note to wrap up our conversation on for your insights and valuable knowledge.

Rambad, Jim, thank you so much. Thank you, Julian. Thank you, Julian, for the invitation. Rambad Bebudi is a trade lawyer and senior counsel at the law firm board in Latner-Gervais in Ottawa.