Your World Tonight - Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs; Witkoff in Gaza, pool shortages in Canada, and more

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

The tariff increase — long threatened by the U.S. — kicked in today. The federal government says there is no reason to sign a deal, unless it is good for Canada. The talks will continue, but it’s not clear how far apart the two sides are. We have more on Canada’s reaction, the effect on businesses, and what President Donald Trump’s drive for tariffs means to the U.S. economy.And: The U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, travelled to Gaza to see an aid distribution site.Also: Pool shortages mean long waiting lists for swimming lessons. Summer McIntosh’s success in the pool is propelling the desire to learn to swim.Plus: How cities prepare for disastrous flooding, one of the Dionne quintuplets dies, and more.

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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. This is a CBC podcast. Mr. Trump's going to have to figure a way out of this as well. And our economy is going to suffer if he doesn't. Clearly the Canadian economy will too. So we're in this together. Remember that. Now what?

It's August 1st. Donald Trump's deadline for a deal with Canada has passed. He's imposed higher tariffs on some Canadian goods. The most remain tariff free. Talks continue. Sort of. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Angie Sepp.

It is Friday, August 1st. Coming up on 6pm Eastern. The business, community, August 1st, coming up on 6 p.m. Eastern. The business, community, unions, workers, many had their calendars circled today, hoping it would signal an end to the uncertainty. But many say no deal is better than a bad deal. This president understands one thing and one thing only and that's strength. And Canada has a lot of strength. We have a lot of leverage. We'll have extensive coverage on what is and isn't happening and we begin in Ottawa. For most of the day, the Prime Minister has been in his Parliament Hill office.

Mark Carney is facing criticism for not landing a timely trade deal with the United States. Carney is pledging to get the right agreement for Canadians, what that could look like and when it might happen is anyone's guess. Rafi Bocoucanian has our top story tonight from the nation's capital. We're going to continue conversations with our American counterparts. Outside the Canadian embassy in DC, Dominic LeBlanc trying to sound optimistic. Mark Carney's Canada-US trade minister spent much of his week in DC, Dominic LeBlanc trying to sound optimistic. Mark Carney's Canada-US trade minister spent much of his week in Washington, meeting at least twice with his US counterpart Howard Lutnick, trying to get a trade agreement he says that would've made more sense for

Canada. For now, Canada will have to make do with a 35% tariff on Canadian imports not covered by the existing Kuzma deal, on top of higher levies for steel and aluminum, some insisting the Prime Minister and Ottawa should hit back, pointing to Carney's tough rhetoric during the recent election campaign. It's extremely important that we be seen to be standing up for ourselves. David Patterson is Ontario's representative in DC. His boss, Premier Doug Ford, repeated in a statement last night that the country needs

to go eye for an eye on steel and aluminum tariffs. Patterson says American politicians notice provincial countermeasures. They are fueling the impacts of a billion dollars of American alcohol being taken off the shelves of the LCBO. Other observers say Ottawa may wish to hold its fire. Brian Clow is a former adviser to Carney's predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He was part of trade negotiations with the US during Trump's first administration. Canada is standing on its own and the rest of the world is not standing with us.

Along with China, Canada is one of only two countries that did put in some counter tariffs when Trump first made good on his threats to increase tariffs around the world. Clow believes that's why this country is being singled out. Donald Trump is in a position where he can pick on Canada, make an example of us, and send a message to every other country. Well, let's take a deep breath here and stay calm. Jean Charret, though, says things could be worse. He's the former Premier of Quebec

and currently on Carnes Canada-U.S. Council. Charret points out most Canadian imports are covered by Kuzma and remain tariff-free. And he says a pro-Canadian message by businesses in the States will soon sink in. So we need to encourage them to speak up in defense of their own interests, which is becoming clearer and clearer as we push ahead. Others, like Alberta Premier Daniel Smith,

say Ottawa should get rid of federal laws that restrict resource development, while continuing to talk to the Americans. That last message echoed by Quebec's Francois Lagault. The federal government says negotiations are continuing, but it's unclear whether Carney has spoken to Trump today. Rafi Boudjikan, YonCBC News, Ottawa. While most goods crossing into the United States will avoid the levies, there are still many sectors and workers feeling the brunt and they are concerned that the longer the two sides go without a deal,

the more they will feel the impact of Trump's tariffs. Anish Hadare has that angle for us tonight. Our clients are all calling to try to understand how it affects them. At PCB Global Trade Management, Greg Timm has been busy. He heads up the customs brokerage in Surrey, BC, and the constant changes to tariffs end up costing his customers more time and money. It is complicated now. I can tell you what used to be a half an hour transaction for us to prepare an entry of a shipment to go to the United States. Sometimes now can take us five or six hours to do the same product. Donald Trump's latest tariff of 35 percent only applies to Canadian goods that don't

match the rules in the free trade agreement, KUSMA. Estimates have pegged that around 95 percent of Canadian exports could dodge these tariffs. But that doesn't mean 95 percent of exports are off the hook. Businesses have to prove what they are exporting isn't just made in Canada, but made from Canadian goods. We have products that get shipped to the United States that are from 12 different countries. Wires, cables, housings, all sorts of things in one product and then shipped to the United States.

Now, the complication of that is exponential. It's never easy to shift a supply chain. Eric Miller is with Rudeau Potomac, a trade consulting group in Washington, D.C. And he points out getting an exemption under a deal like KUSMA can be more than just paperwork. If you are used to sourcing a particular input from China for the last 10 years, it's not so easy to go and say, now I'm going to buy that good somewhere else. This does not change that a significant majority

of Canadian exports won't face a new higher tariff yet. We are able to still ship goods duty-free through the CUSMA agreement. Almost no other country in the world can say that. So that does give us a bit of an edge. It's an edge that is dulled by other tariffs on entire sectors of the Canadian economy. Ellen Arkan is the chief economist with the Trade Association, Canadian manufacturers and exporters. They're all manufacturing sectors, automotive, steel, aluminum and now copper, that are facing very steep tariffs.

These are very important industries for Canada. Those industries, along with softwood lumber, don't have exemptions. As for the exports that are still functionally tariff-free. We have this Kuzma exemption today, but will we have it tomorrow? It's really so much uncertainty. Back in B.C., customs broker Greg Tim is certain about one thing. Less economic activity between two neighbours. I think the very nature of putting a tariff on is to lessen the amount that American person buys out of a foreign country, Canada being now a very foreign country to the United States. So I think shipping will go down over time. Shipping down until or unless tariffs and all their complications also go down. Any state already CBC News, Gallaghery.

Trump did slap more than 60 other nations with a tariff today. He calls it a beautiful word, but an ugly reality about those levies is starting to be felt in the US. New and dismal job data reveals the cracks are forming in the American economy. Peter Armstrong breaks it down for us. The stock market is not the economy, but they're often scared of the same things. And this morning, investors ran for cover, worried that Donald Trump's tariff plan may be causing more damage than they thought. This was a stunner of a report.

Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at the financial services firm Bankrate, says U.S. job creation last month slowed by much more than expected. But he says that's not even the worst part. What really grabs you by the throat here is that we had downward revisions for payrolls making for a total loss of 258,000 jobs in May and June.

Once those revisions were calculated, the US economy added an anemic 19,000 jobs in May and 14,000 jobs in June. For months, the Trump administration was touting economic growth as proof its trade policies were working. Experts had repeatedly warned that upending the global trade order would cause chaos and economic pain around the world and home in the United States as well. But that pain had not emerged, sparking White House spokesperson Caroline Levitt to say this just yesterday. What we are watching is President Trump rebuilding the greatest economy in the history of the world and turn it in and simultaneously proving the so called economic experts wrong at

every turn. But that narrative is getting harder to square with the data. Corporate earnings this week showed just how hard some of the biggest companies in the country are being hit by tariffs. GM says its profits fell by $1.1 billion in April, May and June. Ford reported an $800 million tariff hit and posted its first quarterly loss since February of 2023, and Apple says tariffs cost it $800 million last quarter and expects another $1.1 billion in tariff-related costs next quarter.

This morning, the head of the president's economic advisory council, Stephen Myron, said the administration is making important changes that were bound to shake up the economic data. The president is standing up for American workers and American firms for the first time in decades. And of course that was going to induce some uncertainty. It induced some volatility in financial markets and we can see it induces some volatility in economic data too. But that uncertainty is resolved. The tariff rates are set. The one big beautiful bill is law. It's going to get better from here. And by midday, Trump himself took to social media announcing he was going to fire the person responsible for that jobs report. Trump says numbers like this should be, he says, fair and accurate

and can't be manipulated for political purposes. In closing, he concluded the economy is booming under Trump. Peter Unstrung, CBC News, Washington. I'm Angie Sepp. Coming up on the podcast, Cecile Dion has died, one of the famed quintuplets will look back on her life under the public's gaze.

And Summer McIntosh is shining in the pool at the World Aquatics Championships, inspiring others to take on the sport. And summer Macintoshes shining in the pool at the World Aquatics Championships, inspiring others to take on the sport. But a shortage of pools across Canada could leave them high and dry. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff made a high-profile visit to Gaza today to inspect a controversial aid distribution site backed by the United States and Israel. His trip comes as people are dying of starvation in Gaza and pressure

builds on Israel over the humanitarian crisis. Susan Ormiston is in Jerusalem and has this report. A relative wraps himself over the body of 13-year-old Royan Al-Faqwe, killed on Friday trying to get food. He told his mommy he wanted breakfast, and there was no breakfast. He went out to get aid, to get flour. His uncle Saman Al-Faqwe told us the boy got caught up in a shooting at the Shakush aid distribution

center west of Rafa. Two people with one shot he says. The bullet went through one guy's head and ended in the other's chest, in Royan's chest. Another casualty in the growing crisis of starvation in Gaza, the number of malnutrition deaths continues to grow, with controversy especially around aid distribution sites. Shakush is one of them, backed by the U.S. and Israel and the site of a well-advertised tour today by the U.S.'s Middle East envoy, in part to signal that Donald Trump is doing something to alleviate hunger in Gaza. Steve Witkoff and America's ambassador Mike Huckabee spent about five hours at the Gaza

Humanitarian Foundation site reporting it's doing an incredible feat, making no mention of the chaos and deaths near the sites. As soon as Witkoff came to the area, there was random shooting from tanks, says 28-year-old Abdullah Asfour, who was injured at the site this morning. We're dying of hunger, he says. Bring us food. This is not working for us. Part of Witkoff's job here is to try to find a way forward on ceasefire negotiations. Hamas has said it won't talk until aid moves freely. It released a stark new video of hostage Evitar David, showing his exceptionally thin frame,

with him marking off the days he eats and the days he doesn't on a wall. Hamas says, they eat what we eat, highlighting the lack of food in Gaza. Israel denies it is starving Palestinians or deliberately shooting them at aid sites. But clearly hunger has become a volatile pressure point in this conflict. Susan Ormiston, CBC News, Jerusalem. Donald Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines repositioned. This in response to social media posts from Russia's former president. Dmitry Medvedev has posted some taunting messages

aimed at Trump. One included a reference to a Russian defense system that would trigger a full-scale nuclear response if the country was struck first. Trump responded with a message of his own saying he ordered subs to be positioned in appropriate regions. He didn't say where those regions are. The United Nations meantime has issued a new report that says it has too many meetings and too many reports and hardly anyone is reading them. Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the reports have gotten longer and there are hundreds more of them. He says the topics are important but they need to change the way those messages are delivered if they're going to have an impact.

The sheer number of meetings and reports is pushing the system and all of us to the breaking point. Last year, the UN system supported 27,000 meetings involving 240 bodies. We are proposing a series of suggestions to put us on a better course. Fewer meetings, fewer reports, but ones that are able to fully meet the requirements of all mandates. The title of today's report is Report of the Mandate Implementation Review. It also found the UN is having cash flow problems because member nations aren't paying their dues on time. Cleanup is underway in several US states after flooding from torrential rain. As storms like these become increasingly common, some Canadian cities are playing catch-up,

bracing for what could come next. Katie Nicholson reports. Deep in New York City's subway, water cascades over a subway car window. Like the inside of a car wash. Not far away, walls spurt multiple streams of flood water like a showerhead. And run onto the tracks. New York Mayor Eric Adams. This is the new weather patterns that we have to face and we're going to have to address. Above ground, Thursday's storm left cars submerged and bloated rivers and creeks across multiple

states even sweeping a 13-year-old boy to his death in a Maryland storm sewer. These urban flash flooding is a sign of the time. And also increasingly common across Canada as the planet warms, says climatologist David Phillips. We're getting rain. It's going to rain in a heavier dose, maybe a shorter period of time, but you're going to get more rain at once. It's just, you know, making a mockery of the one in a century storm. And those storms are taxing infrastructure and often pouring

massive amounts of rain in areas with lots of concrete and little soil or green space. You know, every extreme weather event is really a pop quiz for our cities now. The question is, have we studied enough to pass? Joyce Coffee is a climate resilience consultant working with cities to prepare for the changing climate. It's an expensive proposition for cities built more than a hundred years ago and for a very different climate. The challenges are really enormous, especially for communities that have less political will, less political power, less money, and maybe even less people. In denser environments, solutions tend to arrive because there's a bigger tax base.

So I've seen flood debris in the trees around here as high as our heads, maybe even higher. Ryan Ness, the director of adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute, points to a sewer that spills into a ravine in Toronto's High Park. He says Toronto has a long-term plan to combat flash flooding, but like most Canadian cities it's going to take years and millions of dollars to implement. Really, they're playing catch-up. It's already been a challenge because the infrastructure we're talking about is really old. It's buried often.

Storm sewers are underground. They're really expensive to dig up and replace. And as cities in the U.S. clean up from Thursday's mess, other cities brace. The next costly storm system could hit them. Katie Nicholson, CBC News, Toronto. Cecile Dionne, one of the famous Dionne quintuplets, has died. She was 91. Dionne and her four sisters were the world's first known surviving quintuplets and became

global celebrities adored by fans who flocked to see them exploded by those who were meant to protect them. Alison Northcott has more. The wonderful little girls who have taken the heart of the world by storm, the Dionne quintuplets. From the moment they were born in a small log house near calendar Ontario in 1934. No convenience in this Northern Ontario home. No water, no electricity. The Dionne quintuplets captured the public's imagination.

Annette. Cecil. Cecil Dionne and her four sisters were a wonder to many as the first known quints to survive past infancy. The Ontario government removed them from their parents, made them wards of the crown, and they lived in a place called Quintland, where millions of tourists came to watch them live and play.

It's the home of those five amazing children. For years, Cecile and her sisters were on display for curious people around the world. In the midst of the Great Depression, a lucrative tourism industry built up around them. A lot of people were out of work. The sawmills had shut down, it was just a very, very hard time. Natasha Wyatter is curator of the Calendar Bay Heritage Museum. And then when the birth of these girls came along, not only did it bring a huge influx of

tourism into the area and revitalize it, they also became this symbol of hope. But she says that came at a cost. In an interview with CBC News in 2017, Cecile Dion said it was impossible to be normal while constantly under watch. She said what she and her sisters lived through was exploitation. It was not human thing that happened to us. And we don't want it happen again with more other children. The quints were returned to their parents when they were nine, but Cecile said it was a family she no longer knew.

It was very hard. We were not a family. The Ontario government apologized to the Quinteplates in 1998 and gave the surviving sisters a $4 million settlement. Cecile, she was a real, she was a true survivor and also a leader of the surviving Dion sisters. Carlo Torini is a spokesperson for the Dion family. She spoke out about the suffering that they had to endure when they were young,

when they were pulled away from their families for nine years. And she managed to achieve a measure of justice. Torini says Cecile died Monday at the age of 91 after struggling with a range of health issues. He says she still spoke every day with her sister Annette, now the last surviving quintuplet. Allison Northcott, CBC News, Montreal. Swimming and summer. They just seem to go together. In towns and cities across the country, a dip in the pool is a great way to beat the summer heat.

And, of course, at the competitive level, Canada's Summer Macintosh is dominating the competition at the World Aquatics Championships. Her success is inspiring a wave of young swimmers to pick up the sport, but as CBC's Paula Duhatschek explains, a shortage of pools across Canada could leave them high and dry. McIntosh, McIntosh takes it out in a championship record. Another goal to her. Toronto's Summer McIntosh picking up a gold medal in the 200-metre butterfly event at the World Aquatics Championships. The swimming phenom is trying to tie a record set by Michael Phelps to win five individual

gold medals in five events. People are saying that they watch the Olympics, they want to be like Summer McIntosh. Calgary swim coach Tammy Anderson says kids who see McIntosh on TV are turning up to the pool in big numbers. Registration is up. The only problem is finding enough swim lanes for them to practice. Because we've had that increase in interest, I'm now trying to fit 60 swimmers into six lanes of the pool.

The same problem underway in BC. Jeannie Lowe is president of the Canadian Dolphin Swim Club in Vancouver. And it's likened to trying to swim in a sardine can. Swimming Canada says the country has about 5,000 publicly owned aquatics facilities, many of them built in the 1970s. Jocelyn Jay is an associate director with Swimming Canada. Typically a pool in Canada has a 30 to 40 year lifespan. And so with the majority of pools having been built prior to 2000,

we're now seeing many pools closing because it's too expensive to try and renovate them and update them. In Calgary, all of the city's aquatics facilities were built at least 35 years ago, some of them as many as 60 years ago. Heather Johnson, the city's director of recreation and social programs, says all of them have now surpassed their lifespan. In the last decade, five pools owned by the city and others have had to shut down altogether. They're hot, they're humid, they're really corrosive environments. They're quite hard on mechanical systems and electrical systems and that sort of thing. So they just need a different level of maintenance

and life cycles in other facilities. Jay with Swimming Canada says it's not just a problem for Olympic hopefuls. She says drowning is one of the leading causes of accidental death in children. Swimming lessons, she says, are one way to reduce the risk. It is the life skill and it should be a human right. Swim coach Tammy Anderson agrees.

It's the only sport that you will learn how to do it when you're young and it might save your life later when you're on the beach in Cabo. Swimming Canada is encouraging people to advocate for more funding at a local level so there's enough pools for swimmers whether they want to compete or just cool off on a summer day. Paula Duhaczek, CBC News, Calgary. And finally for us, luck favors the prepared. St. John's Steve Brown got to experience that firsthand this week at a concert by the Killers.

This is Steve from St. John's, everybody. Brown was in the front row and got called on the stage to play drums, but he was ready. So I was lucky enough to see the Killers in 2018 and a fan got brought up on stage to play the song for reasons unknown. So after the show I looked into it and apparently that's something that they semi-regularly do. So I just kind of remembered that and oh, that's a cool moment, moved on. And then when we got the tickets for Here in St. John's, it started percolating in my brain that maybe I should try to do that.

This is where the preparation comes in. I wasn't quite a drummer then. Yeah, mostly just a hobbyist in my basement. So the past couple weeks, I've just been practicing along the live versions of the song to try to understand when they would take breaks and pauses and the transitions from phrases and stuff. As soon as the song ended, go back, go back to beginning, go back to the beginning, go back to the beginning.

Brown's partner made him a pick me sign and they took their places at the front of the audience, but the concert got going and the killers didn't play the song. Made me think not gonna play it no big deal still an amazing show amazing experience but once the first couple notes started during the second encore song I knew that it was go time. Yep the killers had seen the sign and now plucked him onto the stage. Brown took his place behind the drum set and paused. Not only have I never played on an acoustic hit before, I have an electric hit at home.

I've never really played with a band and I've never played in front of people. So it was a whole confluence of just, well, go big or go home. Steve Brown went big. Steve and Shakey Olliver! He raised his sticks in the air and then ran back to his spot in the audience. Too overwhelmed, he says, to even shake hands with the band. And then he went home, a local celebrity. Steve, Steve, Steve! Thanks for being with us. This has been Your World Tonight for Friday, August 1st. I'm Angie Seth. Thanks for sharing your time with me. Chat soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.