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COMMENTARY DAVID FRUM ... MAY 1ST 2025 The Hub Canada: Trump’s main character syndrome & how the U.S. lost the Canadian election PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N53dx2dpc8c Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
David Frum: Trump’s main character syndrome & how the U.S. lost the Canadian election The Hub Canada 56.3K subscribers 114,616 views May 1, 2025 In Conversation with David Frum Leading author, journalist and thinker David Frum and The Hub's editor-at-large Sean Speer assess the Trump’s administration's first 100 days in office, including the chaos caused by its ill-conceived tariffs and likelihood of a self-caused recession. They also cover this week’s Canadian federal election results, including the lessons for the Conservative Party, and how the new Carney government should handle forthcoming trade negotiations with the Trump administration. The Hub is Canada’s fastest growing independent digital news outlet. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get our latest videos: / @thehubcanada Subscribe to The Hub’s podcast feed to get our best content when you are on the go: https://tinyurl.com/3a7zpd7e (Apple) https://tinyurl.com/y8akmfn7 (Spotify) Want more Hub? Get a FREE 3-month trial membership on us: https://thehub.ca/free-trial/ Follow The Hub on X: https://x.com/thehubcanada?lang=en CREDITS: Elia Gross - Producer & Editor Amal Attar-Guzman - Video Editor David Matta & Alex Gluch - Sound Editors Alisha Rao – Production Assistant Sean Speer - Host To contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts email support@thehub.ca Transcript 0:00 welcome to in conversation with David from I'm your host Sean Spear editor at large at the hub I'm glad to be back in conversation with David for a bi-weekly video and podcast series on the on the big issues concerning Canadian policy and politics And today's conversation will get David's reflections on the first 100 days of the Trump administration as as well as this week's Canadian election David thanks as always for joining me Thank you It's good to be back together Uh David we're speaking on May 1st Uh earlier today we had the an announcement that Mike Walls the national security adviser is leaving the Trump administration Walls was widely seen as one of the so-called normies uh amongst the the president's senior adviserss What do we make of it and and and what does it mean uh for the center of gravity of the administration at this point uh it's a it's a very worrying um dismissal because it wasn't just Waltz alone it's also his deputy Alex Wong Um Alex Wong was one of the people named by famed weirdo Laura Loomer who went um who has this as a just a strange 1:04 influencer but has a lot of influence over President Trump of some kind or another And she went to see President Trump and then denounced uh people for all kinds of reasons She denounced Alex Wong for being ethnically Chinese married to a woman who is also Americanborn but also ethnically Chinese Um it just couldn't be uglier And as you say I mean Waltz got in trouble because of the signalgate uh story Needs to be stressed that Waltz's part of that was certainly careless Um but he was the one who added Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat but Waltz himself did not share things that were horribly indiscreet because the meeting that Walt set up was a messaging meeting Uh what are we to say about these imminent strikes on the Houthies it was the secretary of defense who beyond carelessly but amazingly recklessly posted the entire military operation uh into the chat as he did in other into other chats too that he was conducting on this same uh publicly available channel signal Um and the idea that 2:01 Waltz is the one who's going to be the uh depart the designated departe and Hexet is staying is is incredible Waltz is um not contaminated by Russian influence not contaminated by Chinese influence That's not something you can say about everybody else in the Trump orbit And I very much worry about who Walls's successor might be In the the first Trump administration especially early on um the the ratio between normies and weirdos tilted in favor of the normies people like uh John Kelly and Gary Conn and others As the administration went on that ratio flipped Uh where do we stand right now in in the second Trump administration david the weirdos dominate I mean there's a measles outbreak and uh the upper echelons of the Department of Health and Human Services are staffed by people who don't believe in the germ theory of disease um and who don't believe in vaccines and attack vaccines and are determined to minimize them uh we have um you know in in the economics field I mean just uh uh the 3:08 Scott Bent counts as the norm but he's a very weak-willed person and Howard Lucknik who by biography he's kind of a loudmouth but a normie by background but he's defected to the weirdos so you have people selling this crazy idea that you can tear off your way into prosperity and in national security um you have uh I I think Walt signals a tilt between those who are very sympathetic to Russia very sympathetic to um America's enemies You know it needs to be said that while Trump wages this trade war on China Tik Tok which is supposed to be suppressed by law by a vote of Congress upheld by the Supreme Court Congress has the power to pass this law Congress has passed this law And while Trump is um putting all kinds of other trade into hiatus he's nonetheless continuing to protect Tik Tok which is a very strange and that's driven by again special influence and special favors Yeah you mentioned tariffs I I I want to take up that subject in the context of 4:06 this uh the the 100 day mark of the second administration Although the the president championed tariffs in in in the first his first goound um they they obviously loomed less significant over his economic policy agenda than they've had so far in the second administration Help us understand the difference Why are tariffs winning out this time around i want to say something first about the concept of the 100 days So to to Americans and those who follow American politics the 100 days is most famous as a way of describing the burst of activity at the beginning of the Franklin Del Roosevelt administration in 1933 But that's not how the phrase enters history Uh because when Roosevelt's admirers described the hundred days they were referencing something that was already old The phrase was originally coined to describe the career of Napoleon Bonapart from the time he got off the boat from Elba to the battle of Waterloo So whereas in 5:00 Roosevelt's case the 100 days is a is a description of activism culminating in success it entered history as a description of a mark to total disaster And and in that sense it's really appropriate because Donald Trump he landed off he got off the boat from Melbourne he marched and he's at Waterlue right now and he's losing the battle So it's really the 100 days as it was originally coined Um we are uh we've just marked the end of a fis of a fiscal quarter or of a of a calendar quarter that has seen the shrinking of the US economy Two of quarters of those means a recession Pretty obviously the second quarter of 2025 will be even worse than the first quarter was We're in a recession We're in the Trump recession caused by the Trump tariffs And you have to say that um I I would say uh without dead dudging back to the pre-Ivil War presidents this is the worst 100 days in American history because even presidents who had um bad starts or even presidents who had other problems like uh Herbert Hoover becomes president in March of 20 29 1929 The 6:08 Wall Street crash hits them in October of 1929 and we're into a pretty profound recession by 1931 turning into a depression by 1933 And even Herbert Hoover's economic management was better than Donald Trump's Um because in Hoover's case uh um yes the he he did sign Smoot Holly and he was pushed into recession by the tariffs of the 1920s which in my opinion I won't go into the details but were more important to the story than uh than even Smoot Holly But the crucial decisions that Hoover made in 31 and that that turned the recession of 31 into the catastrophe of 32 33 were he was he was a little constrained because his concern was if he the obvious thing to do in 31 is spend freely Um you know and Hoover was not averse to this Borrow as much money as you can at super low interest rates Put people to work Get the economy Keep it reviving At least keep the vessels from um clogging But Hoover and everyone 7:04 around him believed if you the if you did that the United States would be forced off the gold standard That kind of debt would mean the United States would have to close the gold window which is what Great Britain did also 1931 And they believed wrongly but in reasonably given the knowledge of the time that that would be a big disaster and and uh in fact almost unthinkable So uh they didn't want to do that And it was the the fear of being forced off gold that forced Hoover into many of the worst decisions he made in 1931 So it wasn't pure malice It wasn't pure stupidity It was being trapped within a set of orthodoxies that you had to be very different from your time to think your way out of In Trump's case he inherited a super healthy economy with too much price inflation But the price inflation was coming down By the end of 2024 the US uh US prices were rising at a rate of less than 3% a year Jerome Powell had achieved or was on the verge of achieving a soft landing The economy 8:00 was growing strongly Inflation had been brought down without a recession All Trump had to do was golf and steal and and he would have had a quite successful first year And instead he unleashed these more and this time he didn't have the benefit of ignorance the way people did in 1931 Everyone told him 'This is an incredibly stupid thing to do.' And every time he reached for the switch the markets would panic The markets would tell him 'This is a stupid thing to do Don't All you have to do is not do this thing Don't pick up the shark stick Don't jab it in your eye.' Uh and he picked up the he insisted on picking up the shark stick and jabbing it into his eye And this is entirely the only I think the only parallel in US economic history I can think of is Andrew Jackson shutting down the bank of the United States uh and causing the depression of 1837 which happened after he left office at the beginning of 1837 and he left the disaster to his successor Martin Van Burren That's probably the only one that is as selfishly and individually caused as this But in 19 in 1837 um the federal government was not that important to the 9:04 American economy and you could be in a lot of places in the United States and not know there was a depression in 1837 Whereas today if the federal government screws up in the way that Donald Trump has screwed up everybody feels it not only in the United States but around the world I'm afraid I don't know Jackson's motivation It's part of American history that I've not I've not spent much time understanding But what's peculiar about what we've seen over the past 100 days on the tariff file is we still don't have a clear understanding of what was motivating the president What what would cause him to uh to make such a a self- enforced heir a self-forced heir rather um that that has created so much damage the US economy and and as you've you've written um so eloquently in different places so much damage uh to America's reputation As we look back over the past 100 days how do you understand um the tariff policy choices that the administration has made as I think it's a combination of ignorance and malice So 10:05 the ignorance is Trump really doesn't understand anything about how a modern economy works Um you know he inherited a big real estate company from his father He turned it into a small real estate company He turned it from a fairly reputable company under his father to the least bankable name in New York real estate And then he turned to a life of really fraudulent activity Um and uh now he then went into politics and he obviously he is twice president of the United States That's pretty successful And he's now got this whole new company that is based on selling meme coins to foreigners seeking um seeking whatever they're seeking by putting large amounts of money in the hands of the president of the United States Um but he doesn't he's never understood how an economy works And so he really like the basics of tariffs that they're paid by the consumer Uh that they cause the terms of trade to shift that they make the currency of the tariff imposing country go up and uh and the currency of the tariff victimized country go down thus offsetting the impact of the tariff That they don't actually change the trade 11:04 balance Uh they they change the composition of trade That the driver of the trade deficit is your fiscal policy The fiscal deficit drives the trade deficit not the other way around Those are the basics that are taught to everyone who studies international economics He doesn't understand any of that So ignorance one but second he really likes feeling important by inflicting pain on others And so there's a malice part which is he just the part of this I think that is most exciting to him That thing he says people are calling me from all around the world that the you know India and Vietnam and the Canadians the grling and beseeching me He loves that Um look one of the things I this is a point I I've been thinking about today and I want to make if Don if Donald Trump's theory of trade were true which is not of course but if it were true that you could finance that the way you could what you could do is you could if you were a big enough and important enough country you could impose tariffs on the world and 12:02 that genuinely raise revenue really did instead of which it doesn't But if it did you could impose these tariffs and that way you could remit the tariffs on your own people by taxing the rest of the world if you're just a big enough and powerful enough country to force it on them Even if that were true which is not It's still an really unattractive idea Like it's like it's like you said basically you're then going to a trip you're being Jenghaskhan You say we're the empire we will finance ourselves by imposing tri or Napoleon Napoleon's economics have been described uh by other historians as his organized robbery That was his approach to operating Europe You tax the Germans and the Italians and use it to build public works in France Um it's not a it's it is a predatory way to think and now it happens It carries its own punishment because it in fact does not work But the very fact that Trump that Trump wants it wants to believe that it works wants to believe that it works tells you a lot about his approach He he thinks of economics as a as a system of 13:01 spoilation and predation and robbery not of mutual benefit and gains from trade That's why because he thinks like a well said If I could just say in parenthesis I think your insight about one of the virtues in Trump's mind of tariffs is that it puts him at the center of things uh is a really good one um you know the in Trump's mind one of the downsides of markets is that they're decentralized Um and the upside of tariffs is it he it fulfills his his tendency towards main character syndrome He in effect gets to decide who's disadvantage or whose advantage and in in so doing he gets to distribute those spoils uh one way or the other and I think that's an underestimated um motivation um behind the tariffs I'm I'm glad that you set it out here This case is going to carry with it its own um nemesis because what because it's very clear he started this recession Yes 14:01 Yes If Harris had won the presidency there would have been no recession in 2025 I have no guarantees for the future but there would have been no recession This is his recession These are his tariffs Uh his collapse in trade his recession his global recession And not only that but whereas he thought he'd be the lord of the world telling everybody what to do starting about now you can see the flop sweat beginning to gather And he's now beseeching in his turn having wanted him to be beseeched He's now make a deal Anybody and I don't even need it to be a good deal I just need a something that I can say we have a deal with the Camoro Islands I've signed a piece of paper with my the Camoro Islands on it We've got a deal I'm making all of these deals because um he is the one he needs exit and I don't I think he's just in the past few days understood that but he doesn't realize how desperately he's locked and how how high the water is rising the James Bond trap he's made for himself with sharks and laser beams Um he's trapped there's going to be and by this time midsummer we're gonna be in a real recession We're gonna have shortages of many things and 15:04 and he's going to be the main character because he did it all by his own dumb self Yeah Well said I was going to ask about um this week's deal between the US and Ukraine on mining and and and what you think of it Um but that is just such a good transition uh into your much your must-read essay about uh the the Canadian election Maybe I'll leave the Ukraine issue till till next week Um your essay is entitled How the US Lost the Canadian Election And I think you could have just as easily replaced US with Trump Um you make the case in fact um that uh one of the principal reasons the conservative party lost the election is because of Trump himself Uh what do you mean why don't you just expand on on on that insight right Well um the conservatives were of course in the ascendant through 2024 or Canadians were tired of the Trudeau government The 16:04 Trudeau government had a record of economic failure they had not delivered growth Um and they done a very dangerous thing which is I'm going to be a little technical here because they couldn't deliver growth in intensive growth That is using the resources of a country more efficiently to um raise productivity and do more with less which is the whole purpose of you know a free market economy constantly finding ways to do more with less Um once Trudeau saw his policies were not leading to productivity growth his answer was well what if we just do more with more what if we invited more people that extensive as opposed to intensive growth The problem is that when you bring people in they're not just producers they're also consumers And above all they're consumers of housing Um everyone needs a place to live Um and so all these new people you're bringing in um a strategy that Canada has used with to good effect in the past with smaller numbers to create a situation which the econ not they were get the econ Canadian economy was getting bigger but Canadians were 17:02 not getting richer because it was just it was the same amount of output per person there were just more people and those people all needed housing and those people they weren't moving to Frederickton New Brunswick and you know Prince Albert Saskatchewan they're moving to where the centers of economic activity was which are ether in Canada surrounded by mountains an ocean or choking on traffic um or in some other way limited in their ability to grow as cities much more And so the prices went up and that's that's what felled the Trudeau government very deservedly And the Conservatives had a strategy for dealing with that They also as you know we've talked about this a lot unwisely in my opinion chased a lot of boutique issues Bitcoin and the trucker boycott but they were not ready and nimble enough for this completely new factor of Donald Trump saying I I'll tell you the issue is not housing anymore The issue is the continued existence of Canada as a country which I as president of the United States am now threatening And the conservatives couldn't couldn't adapt to that partly because although most Canadians reject Trump there is a minority who like him and they are doiciled inside the Conservative party 18:03 and the Conservatives couldn't figure out how to both resist Trump but also not alienate that faction that minority of the Conservative party that like Trump Yes Yes Um uh and in that sense David I think you can rightly take a victory lap here Uh we've talked a lot about Canadian politics on on um these on on these in these conversations for some time and one of the things you were warning against was the opposition party essentially locking itself into a particular conception of the ballot question um and a and a particular understanding of the issues and policies that would be responsive to that ballot question I can I can remember you saying at various points you think this is about inflation today You don't know it's going to be about inflation come election day Uh and you ought to maximize your flexibility And in fact that is precisely how this election campaign played out The conservatives 19:01 fell in love with a line of argumentation uh about the failures of the Trudeau government And as those issues um came to be diminished in the minds of Canadians they couldn't quite get themselves to pivot as many pundits talked about uh to the issue of Trump and and and and and his threat to Canada Uh why why don't you I I'll I'll turn it over to you to take a a victory lap and and to talk a bit about what you think the lesson is uh uh from uh the past several weeks in Canadian politics I'll pat myself on the back for that one Look this is an insight that only applies to parliamentary systems But in a parliamentary system you know who the candidates are going to be Um so in well in advance of the election Uh so the candidates don't have to unlike American candidates are present they don't have to compete within their party The party's already decided who its leadership will be well in advance of the election At that point in a parliamentary system you especially a Westminster style system you need to and it's painful to admit this we're not going to win the government's going to lose or not but the government will 20:05 either defeat itself or not And what happens that that's the ref the election is a referendum on the incumbents and our job is to be ready And uh it's tempting because people are active They want to force the issue to to try to assert something and say 'Here's why you should reject the government.' Um and look some of that is the normal cut and thrust of parliament The job of the opposition has told the government to account uh there are scandals there are mistakes Of course you need to fight those but you need to retain the kind of inner psychic flexibility that the election is going to be about the ultimate mistake an ultimate verdict on the government and that can't be delivered till the we're near the end of the government's tenure Um and uh I think the conservatives signed on to a as you say a series of very specific critiques They they became very ideological Um and they got they got swept up in a bunch of like the Bitcoin mania the trucker protest I don't think 21:01 those things hurt I don't think people remember exactly but the gradual accumulation of the impression of of the conservatives as a party for angry young men disaffected young men Um that was formed then even if people forget the reasons why they have that impression And young men have a lot to be angry about They want to work They want to form families They want to buy houses and they they've been priced out of those markets Um but women also vote and older people also vote And uh when Donald Trump came along and and um threw everything into uncertainty uh Canadians went looking for someone who who seemed calm who seemed to know what he was doing Now whether that's actually a description of Mark Carney we will see I actually have some private doubts about whether he's the man he's presented as being Um but the liberals had they they met they did the thing that the opposition is supposed to be able to do which is Yes not commit till the last minute by getting rid of Trudeau and replacing there is you know what it's a it's a new game Yes And so in a way the 22:00 conservatives had the problem of incumbency that they were defined and the liberals could reinvent themselves Yeah Brilliant insight Um another brilliant insight of yours over the course of these conversations um is that uh center-right parties conservative parties across the Anglo-American world have have become disproportionately representative David of um people in places uh who can succumb to nostalgia Um and in particular um they remain closed out too often of our most dynamic and inventive uh cities uh in in one episode for instance you talked about how the Republicans during the Calvin Kulage era uh were able to to uh were able to find a way within a a conservative worldview to be responsive and reflective of the ambition and energy and dynamism of 23:00 cities Uh why don't you just reflect on on on that point here and and and the importance of not just electorally but even more fundamentally for center-right parties to imbue some of that dynamism and energy that that is marked by the continent's most most um major cities Well look the case for free trade is in some a case for optimism and self-confidence And the case against free trade is is an argument for defeat And um if you're telling people look everything is worse than it used to be and things are more difficult for everybody than they used to be well what is the case for plunging forward into a world where things seem to be why why not hunker back and why not try to postpone change by putting up tariffs um and and then how do you complain when the Americans do the same thing um and I mean we we are seeing this this strange thing where the parties of the center right are severing their connection to business at its most creative and uh this is very true in the 24:03 United States for uh for Trump and the Republicans that when you know Trump's whole message is um and his vice presidents even more you know the the modern economy has failed people We need to go back to the days when um Howard Lutnik the secretary of commerce said this JD Vance is giving that big speech in South Carolina which is a nostalgic for the economy of the past forgetting how poor people used to be forgetting how people used to be mangled in industrial accidents all the time You know that job was not as steady when the shredding machine picked you up and threw you into the shredder Um pe uh and uh but and people who weren't there form their impressions of the past from movies and television which of course emit the shredding machine Uh and I think it's this is a real problem for the party the parties of the right It's also a problem for the economy as a whole because parties of the left have their own reason for not celebrating businessism And so in the United States you have two parties with statist economics And I worry in Canada that you might have two parties with statist 25:03 economics There needs to be someone to speak for freedom I and I would just say in parenthesis that um Canadian conservatives can tell themselves a lot of good stories about this election David they pushed the party's share of the popular vote up to 42% the highest it's been since the 1988 election Um but looking forward uh on future sources of growth one can't help but be drawn to Canada's major cities Montreal Toronto and Vancouver represent something like a third of the population Um but you if you look at those electoral maps it's a lot of red and maybe a bit of orange but not a lot of blue Um a natural answer would be for Canadian conservatives to look in the mirror and ask themselves how can we configure a message and a messenger and a set of ideas that are responsive um to Canadians and cities um the question is if they're prepared to to to to do that Um and I think as you've said it um before not only would that be good at the ballot box but 26:00 there's something healthy about having those voices and those ideas and that energy within your political coalition People who follow these returns more closely than I do point out there are a lot of places where there's a vote flip from NDP to conservative Um and that seemed to be one of the motors of of seat change in this election And look a vote is a vote you always want to have more rather than fewer and converts are always welcome But uh someone who comes to the NDP to the conservatives from the NDP why are they doing that um and the answer is probably because the NDP used to be a party of economic grievance and they're now identifying the part the conservatives as a party of economic grievance But in an election that was about rediscovering why Canadians believed in Canada found Canada of value that they found they had something to defend Um that if you're if you're getting the agrieved you know at some how do you get the proud and the contented as well because there are some of those and in a way that like it's a multi-arty system Not every party represents everybody If the conservatives are not attracting the support of those who say you know I 27:04 didn't start with much Now I've got something I want to protect it I want to pass it on to my kids If that person is not at home in a Conservative party the Conservative party is drifted away from its roots uh you mentioned um the the risk of uh Canadian politics moving in a status direction in response to um the the Trump administration's own um departure from free market thinking that was indeed was something reflected in your postelection uh essay What are you going to be looking for from the Carne government early on as signs um that that that your your worries may indeed be the case um will uh will the Carne government be pulled toward signing up for some kind of Fortress North America approach uh like the the less malicious and less ignorant people in the Trump administration may say 'Okay we're going to now try to having plunged into this 28:02 mess without a strategy We're going to try to retro retrofit a strategy.' And our strategy is let's use the tariffs to bully Mexico and Canada into forming a common customs barrier with us um that against the rest of the world uh and will carne the Mexicans have made clear they would sign up for that or they haven't made clear but there have been indications from Mexico they they're prepared to sign up for that but from a Canadian point of view um a common customs frontier with the United States is a very attractive idea for Canada if that frontier is low um free trade with the United States close to free trade with everybody else that would be a Canadian ideal um but if the prices of access to the American market is that Canada cuts itself off from all the rest of the planet Um that's a very dangerous idea for Canada because it is it's both it's not only economically risky because it means that the Americans decide what the shape of the American of the Canadian economy is It's also politically risky because as Trump's made clear because of the lack of 29:00 respect for Canadian sovereignty Canada now becomes a wholly dependent province of the American economy and under a president who wants to extinguish Canadian political independence You want to think twice and then you are back to where Canadians were in the 60s and 70s thinking even if it doesn't make sense to have more economic diversification economically you still have to do it because otherwise the Americans will annihilate your national independence which Canadians want to protect Yes Final question Let's connect the dots between the first half of our conversation about uh US politics and the second half about uh the election campaign and its its implications As you no doubt know um in the past 24 hours or so uh Prime Minister Carney has spoken to President Trump We have reason to believe he intends to go to Washington soon which may kick off in earnest um negotiations of a of a trade and security agreement as it's being characterized Uh what should we what should we expect from those negotiations and what should be top of mind for Canadian policy makers with Canadian 30:03 policy makers One piece of advice go slow Uh go slow Yes Canada as a country has more to lose from Trump tariffs than the United States Canada is more vulnerable That's true And there will be hardship for Canadians But Canada didn't start this fight Canadians understand why that the the stakes are very high for Canada continued national existence The stakes for the United States are very low And they did start the fight So while Canada as a country will suffer more the Canadian government actually has more elbow room than the American government does Uh by July Trump is going to be in a lot of pain Um by August the situation will be dire for him Um so Canada will be much better off negotiating in August and September than in May and early June So if he has to make a visit yeah I mean I wouldn't hurry to make that visit either I go to Mexico City first and talk to the Mexican government and try to arrive at some common positions But if he feels he 31:01 must he must avoid commitments Make this a slow process Lose because Canada will lose But by losing slowly it it ratchets up the uh coming collapse of the Trump negotiating position His his political position will unravel faster than Carney's will A great way to wrap up our conversation David I want to thank you for joining me and I I look up I look forward to catching up

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