DSR Daily September 8: Trade Wars: The Canadians Strike Back

The DSR Network

The DSR Daily discusses escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada, President Trump's controversial remarks on renaming New Mexic

Key takeaways

• Canada has imposed dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, targeting steel, electronics, and agriculture, escalating an ongoing trade dispute.
• Trump's threat to ban Bombardier from selling planes in the U.S. ignores complex global supply chains and could harm American jobs tied to Canadian-made aircraft components.

Main topics

• U.S.-Canada trade war
• Trump's foreign policy rhetoric

Notable quotes

"In a world of integrated supply chains, the name on the company or where the headquarters is does not necessarily mean where the economic benefits accrue."

Conclusion

The episode warns that Trump's divisive rhetoric, trade aggression, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:11) Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily. I am David Rothkopf. I'm joined by Riley Fessler and Minna Stein. We're back. It's the day after Labor Day. It's September. It's back to school. It's 50-odd days till the election. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. And they put up the bat signal and they say, well, if the world's going to hell in a handbasket, who do we want to talk to us about it? They want Minna. They want Riley. And I've come along for the ride. So where do we start, Speaker 2 (0:43) guys? Well, our president has been busy in our absence. That's Speaker 3 (0:50) never a good thing. Never a good thing. Speaker 2 (0:53) Canada has also been busy, and they've implemented dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on the $20 billion worth of U.S. goods after trade negotiations collapsed, escalating an 18-month dispute. The mutual tariffs target major sectors including steel, electronics, and agricultural products, while bypassing standard U.S. MCA protections and threatening the broader free trade agreement. In response, President Trump has floated the idea of banning Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier from selling planes in the U.S., drawing immediate pushback from Republican Jerry Moran and others. Speaker 3 (1:33) Yeah, it's Bombardier, by the way. How do I know that? Because I was a U.S. trade official. And you know what I learned when I was a U.S. trade official? All about U.S. aerospace trade. And it's very interesting because Bombardier's biggest competitor is a company called Gulfstream. Gulfstream's in South Carolina. Bombardier is in Canada. And you would say, well, then, you know, what the president said, which is, well, one's Canadian, one's American, buy the American one. Except, and by the way, some folks at Gulfstream said that, but guess what? The American content in the Bombardier jets was actually, in many cases, higher than the American content in the Gulfstream jets, because sometimes the Gulfstream jets use Rolls-Royce engines, which were made in England, and sometimes the Bombardier jets use GE engines, which were manufactured in the United States. And see, this is something about trade that the president doesn't understand. that in a world of integrated supply chains, the name on the company or where the headquarters of the company is does not necessarily mean where the economic benefits of that company's activities primarily accrue. Many, many thousands of jobs exist in the United States because of Bombardier. And so shutting them out would have a very negative consequence on those people. Now, of course, Trump doesn't typically care about jobs, and he's done a lousy job of creating jobs. And he likes to do things that make him feel presidential and powerful, and that includes lashing out foolishly like this. The Canadians have been very methodical in their response. The tariffs that they are introducing will be painful for many Americans. Trump is likely to continue. He really has a burr under his saddle about Canada. Over the weekend, in this kind of torrent of AI slop that is now his primary output as president of the United States, one of the things that he promoted was a map of North America in which it was all the United States. Imagine, imagine for a second. that Russia promoted a map of Europe in which all of Europe was Russia or Poland was Russia or the Baltics were Russia. That would be seen as an act of aggression, particularly if the leader of Russia had at the same time said, yeah, they should be our 51st state or we're going to take over Greenland, et cetera, et cetera. So we are in an area of madness that no one could have imagined. Speaker 3 (4:21) I don't think at any point in my life where we're attacking our best friends because the president's twisted on this issue. It doesn't seem like it's going to be resolved anytime soon, so we'll be back to talking about it again, undoubtedly in the near future. And by the way, it's going to have an effect on the elections. And the president doesn't seem really clued into that. Some Republicans are starting to wake up that these policies are bad news. There's a story in The Independent today, by the way, on the Iran war, which says that the cost of the Iran war in terms of higher energy prices to the United States, just the energy prices alone, $100 billion. So, you know, all of this stuff adds up and it's coming at the worst possible time for the president. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is your first silver lining of the new school year. Speaker 1 (5:25) Well, speaking of the election, Republicans are gathering in Dallas for an unprecedented two-day midterm convention spearheaded by President Trump to rally supporters and highlight his administration's agenda. Trump envisions the event as a presidential-style showcase to booster voter turnout and bolster congressional candidates, urging voters to treat the midterms again as if he himself was on the ballot. While the public event features an extensive lineup of speakers, including administration officials, party leaders, and some candidates, much of the focus centers on showcasing Trump's policy record and making a sharp partisan case against Democrats. Speaker 3 (6:08) Yeah, and, you know. Couldn't be more ill-conceived. And lots of Republicans are like, hey, I got to be washing my hair. I'm not going to this thing. Because there are a lot of Republicans who realize that being closely associated with Trump is so bad that associating them with Trump is the primary Democratic