Your World Tonight - Ten percent tariffs take effect, B.C.'s election battleground, the effect of Canada-U.S. tensions on a small Minnesota community, and more

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump's most sweeping tariffs to date are now in effect. Ten percent across the board tariffs kicked in at midnight, targeting almost all U.S. imports except for those from Canada or Mexico. It's a measure that could trigger retaliation from all corners of the world.Also: British Columbia is proving to be a volatile battleground for the parties in this federal election. It all could amount to many seats changing colours on election night, including two held by party leaders.And: Northwest Angle is a small community in Minnesota - part of the U.S., but surrounded by Canada on three sides. We'll take you there to hear what its residents have to say about the new tension between the two countries.Plus: Worldwide protests against U.S. tariffs, how U.S. aid cuts could affect the spread of HIV in Africa, one B.C. city buys a medical clinic, and more.

How do you know when an idea is worth your time? I'm Nala Ayed, host of Ideas. Join me as we deep dive into the stories and ideas that shape us. No topic is off limits, from the allure of authoritarianism to what we can learn from the average cat. Find and follow Ideas wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi there, I'm Julianne Hazelwood.

This is Your World Tonight. It's an economic Armageddon that was unleashed by Trump and the tariff war has begun. Unprovoked, unjustified, unfair. Leaders in business and politics from around the world are criticizing the U.S. president's new tariffs. Kindling that ignited a trade war spanning a wide reach. It sent global markets plummeting and now the world is reacting, with tens of thousands turning up at protests against the U.S. president right across the U.S., Europe, and in Canada.

Also on the podcast, tariffs are a big part of the federal election campaign, but the leaders of Canada's main political parties have other promises up their sleeves. We have the latest from the campaign trail. A new liberal government will cover the cost of apprenticeship training for Canada's skilled workers. I'm announcing that a Conservative government will cut red tape by 25% over the next two years. New Democrats want to strengthen health care so that everyone has a family doctor when they need it. And battleground British Columbia, riding by riding drama in a province with big swings in public support. U.S. President Donald Trump's most sweeping tariffs to date are now in effect. 10 percent across the board tariffs kicked in at midnight, targeting almost all U.S. imports except for those from Canada or Mexico. And some countries have been tariffed

much more. It's a measure that could trigger retaliation from all corners of the world. Chris Reyes reports. We've been building a rules-based trade system for 70 years and it's all being torn down for no good reason. Gene Grossman is a professor of international economics at Princeton University. As U.S. Customs and Border Protection begin collecting President Donald Trump's new 10% tariffs on imports from close to 100 countries, he's struck by the historic significance of the moment.

The tariffs are about the size of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that we saw in the 1930s that devastated the world economy. But even compared to that, there was much less trade at that time. So this is completely without precedent. Some of the first countries to be hit imports from Australia, Britain, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia. The bigger tariffs on China and the EU will take effect next week. China has already retaliated with its own 34% tariff on US goods.

In a post on social media accompanied by a graphic of world markets in the red, China's foreign minister said, the market has spoken. The trade and tariff war started by the US against the world is unprovoked and unjustified. Dan Ives is an analyst with Wedbush Securities, a financial services firm in Los Angeles. It's an economic Armageddon that was unleashed by Trump and the tariff war has begun and we believe this could set tech stocks and the tech industry in the US back potentially a decade.

From Europe, a rally cry to unite and retaliate with their own tariffs. Former Finnish Prime Minister Santa Marin. We're entering this world where long alliances have been broken or shattered or shaken in many ways between the U.S. and Europe. In a post on social media, Trump called on Americans to hang tough, promising that the end result will bring back jobs and businesses to the U.S. Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, defended Trump's policies and dismissed market reaction. The S&P 500 is going to have a very broad based recovery and wages are going to go up, profits are going to go up and life's going to be beautiful here in America.

Trust in Trump. Grossman questions Trump's claim that tariffs will benefit the U.S. economy. They want to raise a lot of tariff revenue revenue which is only possible if we have a lot of imports and they want to shift all production back to the US of manufactured goods which is only possible if we don't have a lot of imports. So there's an obvious inconsistency there. Trump says he's open to negotiating with countries hit by tariffs but he's also made it clear that they're here to stay for the rest of his term.

Chris Reyes, CBC News, New York. As the tariffs come into effect, over a thousand demonstrations took place in the US alone. Others took place around the world protesting the Trump administration's policies. The so-called hands-off rallies were held across Europe, the US, and right here in Canada. Phil Bleszanak has the story tonight. Across from the US consulate in Toronto, Julie Buchanan of Democrats Abroad Canada says like many here she worries about her family back home.

I don't want them to lose their rights. So despite the fact that I don't live there, it's always home and I'm going to do everything I can. She's concerned about legislation that could make it more difficult for Americans to vote from overseas. But from tariffs to devastating cuts to USAID, demonstrators here oppose many of Trump's initiatives. There are millions of not just Americans but of citizens all across the world who are protesting today. Alexa Fleishman, a third-generation Canadian, joined these expat Americans in protest.

You have to say something. You have to stick up. You have to fight. You say nothing, nothing changes. But George Ann Burke of Republicans Overseas Canada, a former New York Democrat who now lives in Toronto, says she approves of Trump's tough love. I understand that the only thing

that the Democrats have is protest. They don't have anything to offer. They're about Americans protesting American government policies which are designed to favor Americans at a rally in Berlin. Timothy Cots of Democrats abroad. Germany says they want the world to know that many Americans oppose Trump. Everybody thinks what's the matter with Americans? Why aren't they standing up to this? I think we were in shock and awe for a while but we're starting to come to our senses and seeing there's nobody coming to save us.

We got to do it ourselves. For the first while they were on their back feet. Drew Fagan teaches at the Monk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He says while it took a few months opposition to Trump is becoming more vocal. In some ways it's surprising that it took as long as it did given the radicalism of the Trump agenda. But I think there was a little bit of a you know one a reaction of almost depression after the election.

There are more than a thousand protests across all 50 U.S. states, attracting huge numbers in cities large and small. At one of the largest rallies at Washington's National Mall, Dave Madden, a 75-year-old Army veteran from Dayton, Ohio, wore a Vets Against Trump shirt. Everything he's doing to make NATO weaker makes the United States weaker, and we will regret

this for a very long time. And he says now that they found their voice expect anti-Trump protests to become more frequent and louder. Philip LeShannock, CBC News, Toronto. Still ahead, we'll visit a geographical anomaly. Northwest Angle is part of Minnesota and the only part of the U.S., outside Alaska, that's north of the 49th parallel. The only way to get there by road is through Manitoba. Karen Pauls has the story of what its residents have to say about the new tension between the two countries. federal party leaders are spread across the country as the election campaign reaches the two-week mark

conservative leader pierre poliev talked business regulations in alberta well Jagmeet Singh has been on the east coast trying to appeal to voters in seats once held by the NDP we begin with rafi budjikani and who was covering the liberal campaign in Oakville, Ontario. He's reshaping, disrupting, really, the international trading system that we've known all our lives. Liberal leader Mark Carney is tying the U.S. tariffs

and Donald Trump to his latest campaign promise. The skilled trades build our homes, offices, factories, roads, bridges, and rails. campaign promise. Carney is promising $8,000 grants for apprentices looking to join the trades, $20 million for college training programs, and increased labor mobility tax deductions for workers. This, as Statistics Canada notes, Canada's economy shed more than 30,000 jobs last month, the highest monthly loss in the last three years. And other political parties, like the Conservatives, have rolled out similar promises in the fight to win over union endorsements. My colleague Marina von Stackelberg is covering the Conservatives in British Columbia. We'll impose a two for one rule.

In a concrete business in Osoyous in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, Conservative leader Pierre Pauliev introducing his plan to cut government red tape 25% over the next two years. For every new regulation created, he says two would have to be eliminated. For every dollar added in administration, two dollars will have to be saved somewhere else. And he says he'd require Canada's auditor general to enforce those rules. This will force the senior bureaucracy

to constantly comb through the rules, get rid of unnecessary and useless regulations, and find the most efficient way to protect public safety and the environment. Poliev is also accusing Liberal leader Mark Carney of copying his platform ideas, including his plan to encourage more skilled trades. He's trying to plagiarize me yet again. Poliev is the first federal leader to come to this part of the country in this election. And it's because he's trying to win seats here. Unlike Vancouver Island or the lower mainland,

the interior of BC is mostly conservative territory. But Poliev is campaigning today in one of the few writings held by the NDP. While Poliev is trying to take seats from the New Democrats on the western side of this country, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is trying to win back seats on the East Coast. That's where my colleague David Thurton is with that campaign. The NEP is on an East Coast push this weekend targeting writings it used to hold, like at this Halifax rally. If you want someone that's going to defend health care, vote NDP! Earlier, Jagmeet Singh was in St. John's, promising every Canadian will get access to a family doctor, not a nurse practitioner or another for primary care, but to a physician.

It's a challenging goal when millions of Canadians don't have a GP and more are losing access. Singh says his government will eliminate the problem by the end of this decade. How we can get those physicians taking care of patients, how we can fix our health care in the face of all this uncertainty we want to give people hope. Singh promised to open up more residency positions for foreign-trained doctors so they can practice here to train more local doctors from rural and underserved areas and the NDP is offering a 1% top-up to the Canada Health Transfer to provinces and territories that sign up. David Thurton, CBC News, Halifax. In this election British Columbia is proving to be a volatile battleground for the parties.

The Liberals popularity has come at the expense of the NDPs. The conservatives are also targeting orange seats. It all could amount to many seats changing color on election night, including two held by party leaders. Lindsay Duncombe reports. Just talking to people anywhere. Everybody's talking about their fear of what's going on in the states.

Politics dominates the conversation as Judy Angel and a friend walk under the cherry blossoms on Vancouver's seawall. Sometimes, though, voters in the Pacific time zone can feel a bit left out. Sadly, I think in the end, usually the election's decided before they get to us. Even so, you know, we still have to have our say. That may well be the case this time too, but British Columbia is home to riding by riding drama, enough so that it just might be worth it for Canadians in other parts of the country to stay up later

to see what happens. That's according to Simon Fraser University political scientist Sanjay Jaram. We've seen a real reversal in the numbers in BC which puts almost all Metro Vancouver seats and seats on the island in play. All we have is one thing to do. Reversal, he says, because just a few months ago, Conservative leader Pierre Pauliev appeared likely to make big gains in the province.

I love being back in this place. Beautiful British Columbia. I love being back in this place. Beautiful British Columbia. I love you too. His messages about affordability, crime, and drug policy resonating in much of the province. And the assumption was that B.C. was going to join Alberta and Saskatchewan in this election, you know, just a few months ago,

and you know, have a very conservative wave this time around. But now Justin Trudeau's gone, Carney's in, and Trump has changed the game. It's not so much that conservatives are losing support, it's all about voters abandoning the new Democrats in favour of the Liberals, says Alan Daw, a vice president with pollster Leger. They just haven't had a message that's really stood out. Is Jagmeet Singh's seat in jeopardy?

Looking at the numbers, it definitely could be possible, which is very surprising, yeah. Hi! Yay! The shift in B.C. means Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May is also facing a test in her Vancouver Island riding. Of course, I don't take anything for granted, that would be very foolish.

But I don't put a lot of confidence in polls. When I was elected here in 2011, there wasn't a single poll that thought I had a chance. Thank you! She has a point. Tight ridings are tough to pull accurately. And Daw says in a race this volatile, BC could shift. It is exciting to see just how dynamic can be.

And the exciting part is that we have so much more to come. By the time Canadians vote, those cherry blossoms will be gone. And BC voters may have changed their minds again. Lindsay Dankom, CBC News, Vancouver. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses are still without power in parts of Ontario after last weekend's severe ice storm. Hydro One, the province's largest electricity provider, says more than 4,000 crew members are working to restore power.

But those efforts could be slowed down with more rain and localized flooding in the forecast. Power outages are expected to continue into next week and could last even longer for those in remote areas. Many across sub-Saharan Africa worry a cut in U.S. foreign aid could spark a resurgence of HIV infections. U.S. money is credited with helping reduce deaths related to the virus. But if the money stops, what will it mean for the region? Freelance reporter Ish Mafundiqua with that story. We will see the cases rising and we will see more deaths. Zimbabwe's Health Minister, Dr Douglas Mwombesura, says he fears what will happen if USAID funding

is permanently cut off. USAID-funded health centers were forced to close nationwide when aid money was posed. However, a U.S. State Department waiver has allowed most to reopen for now, creating anxiety and confusion among workers in Zimbabwe's struggling health care sector. Nurses, doctors, and some in administration and some in our laboratories who were being paid through different organizations by the fund coming from the U.S. government. The freeze has also stopped community health workers who monitored HIV-positive patients, among other services.

Michelle Kwoordza is the program coordinator for the NGO Hands of Hope. That was for the prevention, treatment and care, focusing on men who have sex with men and female sex workers. The supervisors that are in the districts also offered psychosocial support to the LGBTIQ members in the community. People imagined it would be bad, but not as bad as this. 60-year-old HIV AIDS activist Martha Tolana is leaving proof of the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs. She was diagnosed with HIV 22 years ago.

Tolana was also part of a U.S.-funded African consortium working on HIV vaccines until its $45 million USAID grant was cut off. They seem to be anti-vaccines. U.S. money paid for about one-third of Zimbabwe's anti-retroviral drugs through its aid agencies. The health minister says the country has enough anti-retrovirals to last until September. Zimbabwe is now working fast to find alternative funding sources. In a statement the US Embassy says every dollar spent at USID is under review to

quote make America safer, stronger and more prosperous. But Quads are intolerant and fear that if the funding gap is not plugged, Zimbabwe could go back to the days of burying some 3,000 people every week. We are going to see very soon a spike in new HIV infections. We are going to start seeing more deaths. The UN AIDS Agency echoes those fears. It warned in early March that without US funding, the number of HIV-related deaths will rise dramatically around the world.

Ishma Fundiqua for CBC News in Harare. Accessing medical care across much of Canada can often mean long, expensive trips to larger cities. A group of doctors in one British Columbian community is taking matters into its own hands. They convinced their city to buy a medical clinic, and they have big plans for it. Hannah Peterson reports. We have a lot of unattached patients here that don't have family physicians. Darcy Dober is the mayor of Dawson Creek. His city of about 12,000 people in northeastern BC shares the same healthcare difficulties

as many rural jurisdictions across the country. Too many people, not enough family doctors. Emergency room closures have also become more common and the situation could only be getting worse. When one of the city's medical clinics went up for sale last year, Dober says it sparked concern from local doctors who asked the city to step in and buy the clinic. There was some concern from the physicians that if it got put up for sale that it would get sold as something other than medical and then we would lose those medical spots

in our community. Fearing those losses, he says the city looked at its options, with the help of some infrastructure grant money decided to buy the clinic. It was a win for the doctors, which in turn is a win for our residents. Charlie Rudy is the chair of the South Peace Division of Family Practice. That's the group of family doctors who put forward the idea. She says the doctors also wanted to use the building as a base for a primary care network, a one-stop shop where a team of doctors, nurses, social workers and dietitians work together to deliver health care.

The purpose of this clinic has truly provided us a way to be able to start getting this programming off the ground. Rudy says it could take up to four years to get the primary care network up and running as they will need to hire 21 new health care professionals in a region that struggles with recruitment and retention. The transformation is going to take time but at the end of the day it's really about providing access to the patients that we serve. So for now patients will still have to wait some time for the network to clear all of the administrative hurdles.

But in the meantime, the building has a new tenant already providing medical services. A team-based maternity clinic called the Chickadee moved in last fall. A midwife, nurses and doctors are working together to share their caseloads, providing maternity care to expecting families, averaging about 30 births a month. Midwife Haley Haener says the chickadee is setting an example of successful team-based care in the region, and was the only reason she decided to stay in Dawson Creek. If this collaborative was not an option for me, I would have moved away,

and I would have worked somewhere different, and then Dawson Creek would have zero midwives. She says the long-term goal for the chickadee is to work alongside the primary care network to provide even more services to patients. If you have multiple concerns and you need to see maybe multiple practitioners, we're really going to do our best to make sure that that's all achieved in one visit. Dober says the Chickadee shows how well this model is working and he's happy the City

could play its part by stepping into by the clinic and get this programming off the ground. Hannah Peterson, CBC News, Prince George. The community of Northwest Angle, Minnesota is a geographical oddity. It's part of the U.S. but is surrounded by Canada on three sides and a lake on the fourth. It exists because of a surveying error from a flawed 18th century map. The hundred or so year-round residents are closely watching the trade war and US President Donald Trump's repeated comments about making Canada the 51st state. Karen Pauls visited the community to find out what

locals think about the tariffs and threats of annexation. and threats of annexation. It's time for brunch and Kelly Knight is making eggs. At nearly $1 US per egg, she's also making a statement. You know, grocery prices have not gone down since January 20th, as was promised. You can't eat breakfast without thinking about politics. Knight is worried things will get even worse once the full effect of tariffs hits. But she supports Canada's attempt to fight back. Americans need to feel the pain.

Like make it hurt a little bit so that we understand that this is not how you play nice. This is not how you cultivate good relationships. you cultivate good relationships. People in this northernmost Minnesota community know all about the importance of good relationships. The Angle is the only part of the United States outside of Alaska, north of the 49th parallel. Surrounded on three sides by Canada, cut off from the U.S. mainland by Lake of the Woods, the only way to get here by road is through Manitoba. It makes life complicated. Hey, I'm headed into town.

Do you need anything? Paul and Karen Colson are preparing their resort for what they hope will be a busy summer fishing season. Like most folks here, they make their living on tourism. He's American, she's Canadian. They know things are a bit tense right now. And in many cases the friend is worse than the foe in terms of trade. When you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler.

What I'd like to see, Canada become our 51st state. A recent Leger poll found one in five Americans would like their states to join Canada more than double the proportion of Canadians who want to become the 51st state. So do you think Canada should become the 51st state? Oh boy. I don't think they need to. So how do we get to a win-win situation? Well I think there's always going to be compromise.

They're not holding the cards. Well there's cards on both sides. Canada is 10% GDP of the US. Yeah. There is no winning this for Canada. Joe Lauren is hoping for a win-win for both countries. He recently retired from the local Polaris dealership. Now he grooms snowmobile trails, takes tourists on boat trips around the lake, and he runs the local online radio station. Well, we want a tourist to be able to know what's going on for the week.

What are the specials at the resort? We have fishing reports. We have no politics. The Leger poll found only one in three Americans support Trump's tariffs. Loren says people in his circles have traditionally been against them. You don't want to kind of be penalized or taxed on stuff that you want to buy. But then they heard Canada has had tariffs on agricultural products like meat and dairy even before this trade war.

Why is that? I don't think it's real transparent to the average person who has never really used the word tariff until this last month. The Leger poll also found two-thirds of U.S. respondents, like Kelly Knight, are worried border levies will increase the price of groceries like meat, dairy and eggs. We might have a really rude awakening, you know, ahead of us. On both sides of the border.

Karen Pauls, CBC News, Northwest Angle, Minnesota. And finally... Oh you got to try, try, try. A classic Blue Rodeo track going back to the band's early days. Nearly 40 years later, Blue Rodeo is getting its own commemorative stamp. Canada Post unveiled the design this week, a collage of black and white portraits of the bandmates. In this time of tariffs and threats to Canada's sovereignty, we've been hearing a lot lately

from frontman Jim Cuddy. He wrote a song inspired by the trade war with the U.S. and has been reflecting on what it means to be Canadian. Thinking about what defines us as Canadians, how we accept looking after each other, I mean the things that we have that are different. And I think for me one of the reckonings is, and I learned this long ago from touring a lot in the States, we are not the same country and we do not hold the same values. And we are very similar. We are akin to each other, but we're not the same.

We'll end on Cuddy's latest track, We Used To Be The Best Of Friends. Oh no, what went wrong? We used to be the singers in a two-part song. Guess how good things come to an end, but You used to be the singers in a two-part song. Guess all good things come to an end, but we used to be the best of friends. This has been Your World Tonight for Saturday, April 5th, 2025. I'm Julianne Hazelwood.

Thanks for listening. Listen to the boss sing turnpike blues. Sent you an anchor for your nightly news. Happy on the highway that never ends. You used to be the best of friends. Oh, no, what went wrong? We used to be the singers in a two-part song. Guess all good things come to an end,

but we used to be the best of friends. Yeah, we used to be the best of friends.