Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Appearances
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Absolutely. It is a little complicated, but Canada has a sort of parliamentary system where the leader of the party in power is the prime minister. And so Mr. O'Connor Carney has been elected as leader of the Liberal Party, and so he will be sworn in as prime minister. But by Canadian political rules, the country needs to hold an election by October.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And so our expectation, and Mr. Carney's campaign has indicated this, is that he will call for a federal election really early on after he's sworn in and seek to capitalize on his momentum and to get a mandate at a national level from Canadians.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
I agree. I think it's a really difficult balancing act.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Bonsoir tout le monde. Wow. In his acceptance speech of the leadership, Mark Carney was barely celebratory, frankly.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
He made like a wartime speech, and he was clear that he was going to be very aggressive against the United States.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
But at the same time, he's going to have to deal with President Trump. And that kind of rhetoric doesn't play very well with President Trump.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
That's right. I think that Pierre Poliev is not Trump, but his detractors here in Canada call him Maple MAGA. That's kind of the slur they use against him. And even though many of his policies are pretty sort of mainstream, vanilla, moderate, conservative policies, he does borrow from the MAGA playbook.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And so that is not a great situation to be in when your country suddenly turns against President Trump and everything he stands for in such a huge and visceral way.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Well, the conservatives are really trying to stage a pivot. They still have a solid chance at winning the federal election when it happens. According to polls, they're sort of neck and neck with Carney and the liberals. But their leader has to just do a whole new thing now. So what they're doing is they are really distancing themselves from President Trump.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
saying that the rhetoric and the threats coming out of the White House are not what they believe in. They're going to stand up to President Trump. And recently, President Trump gave an interview to a British magazine and he said, oh, I'm not so sure what I think about this Poliev guy in Canada. He's not a MAGA guy. And boy, did Pierre Poliev grab that opportunity.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
He says, you're right, Mr. President. I'm not a MAGA guy. I'm a Canada first guy.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
So the opposition party, the conservatives, need to sort of reinvent themselves, frankly, more close to the center to have a fighting chance in the elections. So it's a kind of odd moment of political consensus in a country that was five minutes ago going through this incredibly polarizing political situation.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Absolutely, Kim. And I think that's just been something really interesting to observe. There's clearly an existential crisis happening with the Canadian economy, and this huge breakdown in the relationship with the United States is driving it home.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
So both candidates and both parties are talking a lot about what a future of a successful Canada would look like, diversifying away from the United States' dependence. And part of the reason they want to be doing this urgently is that the situation with the tariffs from the United States is like shifting sands. The one day it's going to be 25 percent on everything.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
The next day that's canceled, but it's going to be 50 percent on steel. And so this is a very destabilizing situation for the Canadian economy. And Canada doesn't have a lot of other customers. They sell most of their stuff to Americans. And that's why they're looking much more toward Europe. I mean, half of Canadians, according to a recent poll, want to even join the European Union.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
That's amazing. I know that's how far this is going. But they're also looking to improve other relationships. Right now, they're in a really tough spot with China, which is another top trading partner. The Chinese have imposed tariffs on Canada, sort of trying to squeeze them not to cut a deal with the United States on tariffs and trade.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And so they're finding themselves in a really difficult position when they need to strategically rethink their global economic and trade links. And both the liberals and the conservatives are casting a wider net around the world for new best friends.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
I mean, I think obviously the breach of trust and the uncertainty has already caused a lot of damage, even economically. You know, there's been market volatility, investment has been frozen, and so folks are already hurting financially here in Canada. And of course, it goes deeper than that. There's a break in trust that feels really meaningful. Right now, it does feel kind of permanent, but
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
It is conceivable that in the future there could be perhaps different leaders on both sides and those fences could be mended, but it will be on new terms. What I'm seeing here in Canada is a really energized willingness to redefine what it is to be Canadian, both at home and on the world stage, through new economic relationships and more defined cultural references, too.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
I think even if this episode were to just sort of end tomorrow... it would still have a lasting legacy of seeing a more clear, a more assertive, and a prouder, a more Canadian Canada.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Oh, totally. I mean, I took up my posting as Canada Bureau Chief in August, and I thought this was going to be a good posting for my work-life balance. Little did I know. I mean, it's been a really extraordinary stretch since the election, for sure.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Sure. I mean, I think the first signs that something was going to go wrong emerged in early December when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to sit down for dinner with President-elect at the time, Trump. And the dinner, you know, was feeded as a success for Trudeau to be able to get FaceTime with Trump. And it seemed cordial enough.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
There were like photos of everyone smiling and jokes.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
But it does sound like that's when Trump sort of started raising complaints about the U.S. relationship with Canada.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And made the supposed joke of Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
The Canadian delegation brushed that off at the time, but it would come back to haunt them.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And I think that at first that was generally seen as like a troll. A lot of people thought it was quite personal to Trudeau because we knew Trump doesn't like Trudeau much from his first presidency. But I think that we started realizing it is probably something more ominous when Trump gave a press conference on January 7th.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And our own colleague David Sanger of the New York Times asked him about his claims on Greenland, which is an autonomous area of Denmark, and the Panama Canal, and Canada.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And he specifically asked, are you going to use force to annex these places? And Trump said... Economic force. Economic force.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
So by late January, it becomes clear President Trump is being serious about imposing tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods being imported into the United States. I mean, you have to remember Canada and the United States are each other's closest trading partners.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
The United States is the destination for about 80 percent of goods that Canada exports, including, for example, its oil and gas exports. And so this is a core existential economic relationship. And those tariffs that President Trump is threatening to slap on Canadian goods, they have the potential to derail the Canadian economy.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And I think where we really came to see this, and it took some time for the reporting to come together, is over the course of two phone calls that President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau held on February 3rd.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
So what happens on those calls is that President Trump lays down for Prime Minister Trudeau a number of grievances that he has with the economic and trade relationship between the two countries. These were generally well-known problems or concerns on the American side. The U.S. wanted better access to the Canadian dairy market and the banking sector.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
But then President Trump raised something much more fundamental. He tells Trudeau, and apparently he's reading off a memo, according to our sources, he tells Trudeau, And I don't like the border treaty between our two countries. This is a 1908 treaty that demarcates the boundary between the two nations.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And President Trump just tells Prime Minister Trudeau he thinks it's not valid and should be revisited. He also tells him he doesn't like the way the two countries share water. We know President Trump is really interested in Canada's water. He thinks Canada has too much of it. And he also raises to Trudeau that he wants to revisit water agreements between the two countries.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And so suddenly we go from, I don't like the way we trade and how our economies are integrated to, nice country you got there, shame if something happened to it.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
It was shock and anger and panic stations after that phone call. And Trudeau makes it quite clear that we're going to hit back on U.S. products with our own tariffs if this threat materializes and becomes reality. And I think this is a good point to remind people. Trudeau is going through his last weeks in office.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
He has said he's going to resign, and we're expecting him to be out of government by the end of March. And so he takes this quite aggressive stance, even though he's almost out of government.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Sort of quite emotionally, he says, we didn't ask for this fight, but we will stand up for our country.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And it works. These speeches do galvanize Canadians.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
They say elbows up, borrowing a term from hockey and showing that they want to defend their country.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
The public is really reacting very organically.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
We're seeing buy Canadian signs. Grocers are putting up flags to tell consumers which products are made in Canada so that they can prefer them over American products.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
I mean, it was remarkable to watch this anger become a visible thing, seeing anti-Americanist feelings foment. And we start hearing something, I mean, truly remarkable. Canadians booing the American national anthem in hockey games. And while we're on the topic of hockey, folks are even angry with Gretzky, who's like a national hero here. He's like a symbol.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Wayne Gretzky, the big Canadian hockey hero, right? Absolutely. Well, also a close friend of Donald Trump. And so he suddenly has this fall from grace and Canadians are treating him like a traitor. So these feelings are just really brewing, are very powerful. They're finding expression in various ways across Canadian society. This is not like a minority situation.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
I mean, I think it's all of the above. It's anger, it's betrayal. Betrayal by a friend hurts so much more. And from the political elite of the country all the way down to the street and ordinary Canadians, the nation is going through a range of emotions. Anger, fear, insecurity. And I think it goes beyond being just a moment. It has the potential to alter the course of Canadian history.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
And we're already seeing the first sign of that.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
Well, Kim, back in January, when this problem was gathering pace, Justin Trudeau was resigning. His party, the Liberal Party, who have been in power for nearly 10 years, were facing dismal polls. They were 20-plus percentage points behind the opposition, the Conservatives, led by Pierre Polievre. And
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
In the federal elections looming, it was sort of a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives were going to win. Poliev was going to be the new prime minister. He had these ideological and stylistic affiliations to the MAGA movement and the sort of more right-wing populist movement. And that was kind of what was going to happen in Canadian politics.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
But things started to rapidly change just as Trump escalated his menacing rhetoric about Canadian sovereignty and went ahead with his tariff threats. Something, I mean, truly remarkable happens. And I spoke to pollsters. One of them, a really seasoned pollster, told me that he's never seen this in his entire career before.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
We go from, you know, the liberal party's dead and they're going to be going into political exile for a long, long time to this liberal revival. The anti-U.S., anti-Trump sentiment is basically doing huge favors to the liberal party, even rehabilitating the image of Justin Trudeau to a certain extent, who was loathed to the extent that he had to resign in early January, right? And so...
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
It sets the scene for a stunning and pretty rapid reversal of fortunes for the Liberal Party as it goes into a leadership race to elect its new leader, the person who's going to replace Justin Trudeau as party chief and as prime minister. So what happens? Well, the party rallies in a dramatic way around one candidate. His name is Mark Carney. Mark Carney is not a politician.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
He's a political novice who hasn't held elected office but has been in the public eye for many, many years, really his entire career. He was the governor of the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis of 2008. And then he went on to become the governor of the Bank of England during Brexit.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
But people point out that Carney is not a natural-born politician. He's not oozing charisma. I think when he started his campaign in January, polling showed one in three Canadians only could recognize his photo, could name who he was. And nonetheless, the moment he's in and the anti-Trump sentiment, the fear and concern Canadians are feeling and the anger just turbocharges his campaign.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
So people are looking to Carney as someone who can, you know, potentially make a deal with Trump, but also Trump. steer the country through what will be a challenging economic period. You know, people think he knows what he's doing. But Carney has a huge challenge in his hands, and that's that he has to be campaigning for his job as prime minister while being prime minister.
The Daily
Elbows Up: Canada’s Response to Trump’s Trade War
He's expected to get sworn in any day now.