What Trump wants in waging a trade war against us

Guest: Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau Chief Tonda MacCharles

Canadians have been bracing themselves for a potential trade war for over a month, and on Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump actually launched it, imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports. And that appears just to be the beginning. 

The Star’s Tonda MaCharles talks us through the immediate aftermath, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “remarkable” speech, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs and the logic behind them, responses from others including Pierre Poilievre and Doug Ford, and Trump’s own speech to the U.S. Congress on the day the trade war was launched.

We look at the ways this is likely to impact the Canadian and American economies, and why Trump may be testing the pain threshold of his own citizens and the investors whose opinion he typically so values. And given that the stated reason for imposing the tariffs — illegal drug trafficking — is obviously not true, host Edward Keenan and MacCharles consider what Trudeau said is the larger logic of Trump’s aggression: a takeover of Canada.

PLUS: Who exactly signed this “terrible” North American trade deal Trump is always complaining about?

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Ed Keenan and Paulo Marques.