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COMMENTARY DAVID FRUM The Hub Canada: David Frum: The Trump-Carney face-off PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_DkAYyVxjo Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
David Frum: The Trump-Carney face-off The Hub Canada May 7, 2025 60.5K subscribers ... 288,204 views ... 7.4K likes In Conversation with David Frum Leading author, journalist, and thinker David Frum and The Hub's editor-at-large Sean Speer discuss Prime Minister Mark Carney's first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, including what it may tell us about impending bilateral negotiations of a new trade and security agreement. They also cover Trump's uncharacteristic comments about American consumerism and middle-class consumption in defence of his inflationary tariffs. 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: Amal Attar-Guzman - Producer & Video Editor David Matta & Alex Gluch - Sound Editors Elia Gross & Alisha Rao – Production Assistants Sean Speer - Host Transcript 0:00 welcome to In Conversation with David from I'm your host Sean Spear editor at large at the hub I'm grateful to be back in conversation with David for another installment of our bi-weekly video and podcast series on the big issues shaping Canadian policy and politics In today's conversation we'll discuss Mark Prime Minister Mark Carney's visit to the Oval Office what to make of uh his interactions with President Trump and what it might all tell us about on a future negotiations between Canada and the US on a trade and security agreement As well if time permits I'll ask David about President Trump's uh sudden and unpredictable attack on middle class consumption and what if anything to to make of it David thanks as always for joining me Oh Sean it's so good to talk to you Uh David since we last spoke we've had a Canadian election of course Uh and in his first act virtually as prime minister Mark Carney traveled to DC where he met President Trump in the Oval Office Uh before we get into some 1:01 of the specific details why don't you just reflect on the atmospherics what did you take away uh from Prime Minister Carney's first uh in-person interaction with President Trump well he Prime Minister Carney passed the very first test of finding the right tone which is to say um not hostile but not too friendly either Uh dignified um patriotic and unillusioned I think he hit all of those messages I think he also flushed out um Trump's plan for how to bring this trade mania to something more like a resolution which is Trump is is going to have private definitions of what counts as a trade deal um and is going to announce success because he gets some signature on a piece of paper Um there's during the Obamacare debate the Saturday Night Live had a sketch about Joe Biden sitting in for Obama when he was on a foreign trip and said 'Look you send me a stack of blank pages with the word healthcare printed on the first page and I'll sign it.' And I think that's that's where Trump seems to be heading is um just just g get me some 2:00 face saving way out of this Um but it's not a very workable plan um it it may meet his ego needs but it will not actually get world trade back on track and it won't help the American economy very much I I do want to get into the specifics of a possible deal including um the fact that the conversation seems to be heading in a in a bilateral direction but before we get there just at the level of atmospherics it seems to me that Prime Minister Carney was having to uh essentially move in in two separate directions The the first is uh to be consiliatory in a way uh to try to build a personal rapport with President Trump but also to be responsive uh to the Canadian public's mood uh which of course is not inclined towards consiliation or or compromise How how do you think he did on that score well he's got a a new problem post-election during the election when he was running against Pierre Palefra um who was regarded by 3:00 Canadians as potentially sympathetic to Trump Whether that was a fair regard or not that's the way it was seen Carney never had to work Is there space to my anti-Trump side can anybody get to the more anti-Trump side of me he didn't have to worry about that during the election He does have to worry about that now Doug Ford has been more anti-Trump than Carney There are other provincial premers who have sounded notes that are quite anti-Trump And if the Conservative party does rethink its leadership that Carney may uh can face charges of 'Well you sold out You gave away too much.' Um and I think a lot of conservatives will say because Carney waged that f that method unfairly against them they're not disposed to give him a lot of fairness in their turn Yes Yeah I would just say in parenthesis you saw a lot of that commentary immediately uh out of yesterday's meeting from conservatives Criticisms that Prime Minister Carney had played to the so-called I was up crowd during the campaign but yesterday um described Prime Minister Trump as a quote unquote transformational figure And and as you 4:00 say I think over the coming weeks that tension will be something that no doubt will be top of mind for Prime Minister Carney Uh by the way can I just point to that to that word that's that's such a well-chosen word because um is it wrong uh Trump's transformed NATO into non-NATO He's trans free trade into non-free trade He's transformed the Biden boom into the Trump depression Um Trump hears that word and thinks 'Of course you mean transformed for the better And I was 'Yeah no he's uh it's like that word consequential You know the person who drives his car into a brick wall is a consequential driver of that rental car.' Then uh now David over the past several months we've talked a lot about whether it's in Canada's interest to pursue some type of bilateral versus trilateral arrangement Should we read too much into the fact that both President Trump and Prime Minister Carney have been talking about a quote unquote trade and security 5:00 agreement between Canada and the United States is that a signal in your mind that we're moving in a bilateral direction and and if so what what are the consequences in your mind well the Canadian governments have historically regarded Mexico as the unfortunate and unwelcome stepchild of the USC Canada relationship Um and Canada has a lot of reasons to be annoyed with Mexico right now Mexico certainly played uh the trilateral game to its national advantage which nations do Um and it's also done something that I think is quite annoying to Canadian leaders which is uh it struck some anti more anti-American rhetorical notes while actually giving away much more to the United States than Canada has ever done which Mexico is able to do because they have an un a controlled press and a not very free political system Um so uh Canadians may think why should the Mexicans don't care about us why should we care about them but it looks like not Trump himself but the more um economically literate people around them the the way that that the fusion of Trumpism with rationality that they're 6:01 heading toward is what if we create a fortress North America in which the United States writes tariff laws for the whole continent and Mexico and Canada submit to whatever rules the United States wants against China against the against India against the whole rest of the world and they get access to the American market in exchange for giving up their any kind of sovereignty over tariffs and trade Um and that the bilateral relationship has that as its end point Look this was I remember this this back during the 80s when we were arguing what the US Canada free trade agreement The the counter that was the smartest counter that was made to people like me who favored the agreement was you're just signing up for a customs union with the United States where they will always write the rules And the answer that people like me gave and it was true in 1988 and true for a long time afterwards is America's idea of a customs regime is more free trade oriented than the Canadian governments will ever would be So even if it's true that Canada becomes a customs taker from the United States that's still a move toward global free trade We are not sacrificing global free trade for 7:00 bilateral free trade But the thing that those that smart critique warned about in 19 in the 1980s is coming true now which is too much bilateralism and you find yourself signing up to protectionism against China and against India and against the rest of the world David there's a lot of policy makers who listen to this podcast every week or every couple of weeks because they they've come to depend on your insight and wisdom so much And yours too let's let me just put it to you directly If you were advising the Canadian prime minister and a deal like that was on the table that is that in exchange for maintaining mostly tariff-free access to the US market a market that looms large over Canada's economy um that we would have to accept in effect uh adopting the UF tariff tariff regime visav China and possibly other other countries Is that a deal that that you would recommend Canada does i I don't think it's a um a one way or the other question I would say if you must then you must But what I my strongest recommendation is everybody 8:01 take the summer off starting as soon as possible Uh if if you must take that deal take it in 2026 Don't take it in 2025 because to get to the point you the flop set sweat you can see it beginning to bead on Donald Trump's forehead Um uh that the plan's not working He's going to have to make a lot of concessions And the right approach the thing I would recommend for a Canadian government is enter into negotiations and just tell everybody if I catch anyone here working more than four hours a day you're out Um wine with lunch people whine with lunch Uh if we can stay on the subject of the deal or the a possible agreement uh for a bit longer it has been a unspoken uh uh principle of Canadian trade policy for some time David um that we ought to separate trade negotiations from a broader array of issues including defense and security Prime Minister Carney has used the language of a trade 9:00 and security agreement effectively reversing that long-standing assumption of Canadian trade policy And yet there hasn't been really much discussion in Canada about the the trade-offs or the consequences of essentially linking trade uh with defense and security What what do you what do you think about that and and what do you think the the consequences may be i think that's a really shrewd move and a timely move So the reason historically Canada did not want to do it uh was that Canada depended on the United States for its national defense against a common threat Um Canada the United States did subsidize Canadian defense Trump is right to make that complaint And Canadians said we we don't uh that we don't want to put at risk our security in our trade negotiations Um that's that presumption is no longer true Um the the United States is not looking to is not offering security to Canada against a common threat It is demanding security from Canada against America specific threats that it is largely generated Um ca Canada has no 10:02 interest in being party to an attack on Denmark to to grab Greenland Um and uh look the destruction of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine means that there's no conventional Russian military threat to Canada Um and uh the threats that do come from Russia which are infiltration and espionage Canada is more than capable of h cyber warfare Canada can handle those on its own And a lot of the Trump adventurism is very anathema can Canada does not want to be drawn into a a gorilla anti-cartel war in Mexico Canada does not want to get involved in any of other Trump's stupid crazy adventures Um so Trump's asking on the sec that Canada is granting concessions use of Canadian airspace uh use of Canadian territory Um and exactly the thing that Canada was afraid of doing back in the 80s and 90s I you know from a national security national interest point of view can say you know what NORAD is not for free anymore You have to pay for NORAD Yeah Yeah Yeah just in parenthesis one can see a world 11:01 possibly uh David where we make some frankly um much needed steps in the direction of defense and security and are able to put those on on the table in a in a trade negotiation that uh you know may enable us to get better trade access um um than we would have otherwise gotten for things we frankly should have been doing a long time ago Anyway Trump's idea is that the United States is going to retreat from the world into a fortress North America to which he wants to enex Greenland And the Greenland piece I I think we I mean it sounds so dumb and so stupid and so brutal and did I say stupid let me say stupid again But understand that what Donald Trump is he is not taking military threats off the table against a NATO ally a NATO ally and he's threatening military action against them Canada that would be a violation of Canada's treaty to take any part of that and and uh an American operation in Greenland might well involve use of Canadian airspace and waters Um so why 12:00 would you want to be party to that um and Trump is also converting what ought to be peaceful competition with China Um peaceful competition aimed at helping to steer the Chinese nation into a more positive future and he is accelerating that into a true great power n competition that may not be peaceful cannot stay peaceful because he's he's playing the game too hard against the Chinese He's he's threatening that their national existence There's this strange thing about Trump is that Trump because Trump thinks that words are meaningless He threatens people and in his mind he never intends to make good It's like all the checks he wrote that that there wasn't money in the bank to cover Um but most people when they write a check have the means to cover the check and the Chinese have to assume that the United States when it writes a check has the means to cover a check and that Trump's words of threat mean something Does Canada want to be dragged into that as we wrap up um this part of the conversation I I don't want to move from the substantive you know the the contours of a final deal to the superficial the nature of the personal 13:00 relationship of the two But in Trump's world these things matter of course What what what did you make of the rapport between the two yesterday and if you were advising Prime Minister Carney and his team how should they think about the bilateral relationship between the two principles yeah Uh the rapport always means something In the Trump case it means more Um and uh look I think there's a special kind of rapport that Carney has because the only the thing that in the world that Trump is most frightened of is the bond market And that is something that Carney understands and Trump does not So one of the questions this is not my original observation I heard this from a much more expert person but it's left me thinking is the Chinese central bank holds 55% of its foreign currency holdings in US dollars Yes Um and those are there both to prevent the Chinese currency from appreciating more than the Chinese want but also to facilitate trade with the United States If Trump says we're there's going to be no more trade between China and and by the way 14:01 no more movies going back and forth either We're just we're having to total protectionism It's actually not a trade war against China It's actually a trade embargo which is an act of real war not just trade war We're doing a trade embargo with China for as long as my presidency lasts One of the questions that the Chinese central bank would have is what do we need all these dollars for what do we need them for we can't trade with the Americans Why do we need their currency sell these are not these these are useless but they're not valueless Sell them Um and uh that is something that Carney would be able to articulate in a way that Trump would find very compelling uh much more than most of the people Um and one of the one of the tools and one of the ways that America that Trump is destroying America's role in the world is because he's waged trade war against everybody He has made in the trade domain he has made all of America's former allies and partners effectively temporary trade allies of the Chinese state because from the point of UK Japan EU Canada there's less to fear from Chinese trade actions not China in general but from Chinese 15:00 trade action there's less to fear than from the United States So you're not going to coordinate your military policy with the Chinese but your central bank policy Maybe on the same day Japan China Canada Britain you dump US bonds altogether in a coordinated action That might be a kind of those are the kind of you know it's it's like when what what we're watching here is is like the war of the roses when you have a stable peaceful prosperous marriage that has gone on for years The two partners know better than anybody else in the world how to make each other happy but they also know better than anybody else in the world how to make each other miserable And when one partner decides 'My goal here is to make the other one miserable,' everyone says 'Well I don't I wish we weren't doing this but I I I know how to reciprocate.' Uh fi final question before we we move on to Trump's attack on girl dolls uh what's your sense of Prime Minister Carney's overall performance in his first full week after the election Not only did we have uh this major bilateral meeting in the Oval Office you may have 16:01 seen David we had a pretty impressive u media veil or press conference Yeah Late last week Uh he clearly in substance and in style uh is implicitly contrasting himself with former Prime Minister Trudeau Uh what do you think that tells us about a prospective Carney government well we've gone we had this dramatic swing from Harper to Trudeau to Carney um bookended two highly knowledgeable highly cerebral highly emotionally disciplined people very goal oriented and then Trudeau in the middle who was who was very different So um I think a lot of people who remember the Harper style will recognize the Harper style in Carne He just that and I I don't even know how hard Harper's had to study for the brief because he'd been studying his whole life So when he got the brief he could study it You would know better than me how how hard he had to study for any individual event You got the feeling the same way Carney doesn't need to put in two hours before the presser because he knows it already He just needs to refresh his memory on a couple of the statistical matters Um but look his big 17:01 problem is going to be there are two major files US Canada federal provincial and they move in discordant ways and the um that the the things that make the US Canada file manageable make the US the federal provincial file more difficult and that may turn out to be his point of vulnerability Yeah Well said Uh talking about points of vulnerability uh one thing that has struck me over the past week or so starting with President Trump himself and now uh articulated by other members of the administration is in a world of of American tariffs uh across the the world uh they are talking about the need for uh middle class Americans to essentially sacrifice um their expectations around consumption Th I don't want to sound um this will sound a bit peculiar to some of our American listeners particularly those who have strong aversion to President Trump but this strikes me David is like 18:01 one of his biggest political missteps to this point precisely because his superpower has always been that he instinctively understands the place of middle class materialism in American popular culture uh what what do you make of his anti-consumerist defense of the tariffs and and what do you think the consequences may be i I've been thinking about this a lot and it's not a small detail So um key to Trump's success is that he's just a flamboyant and shameless liar Um and key to Trump's success is uh he's been able whenever the lies are exposed they're about things that voters not enough voters care about or else he's got some excuse But in this case he promised his tariff war would be cheap easy and would yield immediate economic benefit In fact just two days ago the secretary of the treasury descent was in the Wall Street Journal saying by the second half of 2025 you will see more jobs uh uh stronger manufacturing Uh they've made a series of very specific promises and 19:00 those are obviously if they persist in the tariff policy those are obviously the exact opposite and the extreme opposite of what's likely to happen And you can see that they they've begun to notice um look life is going to get harder and more expensive for lots and lots of people Tariffs are also if they do collect revenue a tax on the middle class and working class with uh while at the same time as Trump is planning this massive tax cut for the very richest people in society A tax cut by the way that will balloon the deficit and therefore attract more imports because of the nature of the relationship between the fiscal and the trade deficit So people are about to see that their lives are about to get hard So what is Trump up to he's sending a message that if you complain about the tariffs you're girly Because why do they choose dolls and pencils let me give you an example that I was thinking about today Um American outboard motors are assembled in the United States but they're made out of Chinese components American outboard motor borders are about to get a lot more expensive if that has not already begun already Did Donald Trump would he ever say 'Why do Americans need their own personal boat?' That's that's 20:00 kind of self-indulgent I understand why you know uh Soros and I and you know my fellow why and Bezos why we need our big yachts but you the you know ordinary yoga what do you need a boat for um you should be proud to sacrifice your outboard motor uh to the the cause of American trade self-sufficiency Well wait a moment I need my boat U so he's prophylactically saying this is not about boats It's not about things that Trump voters are going to use It's about things that are effeminite It's about frieries If you what you know how how would you compare our great and glorious people's steel mills to dolls and colored pencils That's not no real man would ever worry about any of those things That's interesting David I I must admit I hadn't thought about the gender dynamics about the choice of products that they've used over the re over the past few days But it it does strike me in keeping with something that we've talked about in the past and that is an argument that JD Vance made on the campaign trail uh that in effect 21:00 Americans should be prepared to trade off higher prices for toasters in exchange for protecting American jobs Up until now that's not been an argument that Donald Trump himself had made as you say his argument was that there were no trade-offs associated with the the choices his administration is making How do you think Americans are going to respond to in effect a policy argument saying that um yes of course um the regime of the past several years involving globalization and free trade and all the rest has to be given up um uh in the name of protecting US employment even if it comes at the expense of less choice and higher prices for middle class consumers um if the tariff policies persisted in and remember they are looking for the exits They are looking for face- saving deals that allow them to proclaim victory and go home What Americans are about to discover is um it is not this this trade 22:00 war is not just about finished products It's not just about the thing that with the made in China stamp Every manufactured product in the world is including and especially the most high-tech products is at the end of a supply chain that only the mind of God can understand So my my prediction is if Trump the JD vans say we have to sacrifice consumer welfare to preserve our manufacturing My prediction is they are destroying manufacturing that at the end of the Trump period if Trump persists there will be less manufacturing in the United States and maybe a lot less at the end of this process than at the beginning because the people who are making because what America has done is gone up the value chain uh made high highly advanced but you know the rotors and the screws and the the basic materials are made in China because that's where the least value is Um I I wrote an article for The Atlantic about the tiny screws that go into the iPhones Yeah So uh the tiny screws that go into an iPhone and they're only two that hold the phone together at the base are indeed made in China and they're very cheap items and 23:00 they're they're worth I think if they're coated in nickel which is the more expensive version They're worth less than a dime a piece and if they're coated in anything else they're worth pennies or fractions of pennies U but the machines that make those screws are made in America and they are very sophisticated machines Um but the machines are also made of steel and have include all kinds of components that come from other places So it is much more likely that not only when you say we're going to try the effect of saying we want to pull the tiny screw industry into the United States is you actually push the screw making machine industry out of the United States Um so this is not about frieries It's not about pencils It's not it is about American manufacturing power Uh America's the second largest manufacturing country in the world after China but it's up the up at the value chain and it depends on inputs that are down the value chain and Trump is waging war on all of manufacturing not just the dolls the pencils and by the way the upward motors Yeah tremendous insight Do you want to take up my observation David uh that that this line of argument from Trump in 24:01 defense of his tariffs seems in in tension with what otherwise has been part of his I think political success that is that he's had a unique insight into the interests and preferences of middle class consumers think for instance during the campaign his his stop at McDonald's whatever one thought of it but it it it seemed to demonstrate that he had a kind of intuition about middle class materialism uh and one can't help but think that he is now in effect arguing against uh middle class consumption I'm absorbing that and that's a very good point This um I I think you're right Another way that I would think about it is Trump's intuition was he always understood that his base cares about words and his marginal vote cares about actions So he could so because he uniquely among political leaders sees no relationship between words and actions that he was free to say all kinds of inflammatory 25:00 things to excite the MAGA base but because he didn't follow up on them um or because he talked his way out of them he could appease the n the marginal voters with tariffs he's that's what he that's what he and his core group are trying to do that they're trying to talk their way out of consumer shortages Yes Exactly But you know what there's some things you can't talk your way out of Um and what I think what they're about to discover is he can say whatever he wants If in fact come Halloween there are no Halloween costumes in the stores If come Christmas you can't buy Christmas ornaments Um if uh Ford and uh uh GM begin laying off people because they can't get components Um if the American economy goes into recession he can yap his gums as much as he wants The thing that elected him was the fact that um a lot of people don't pay that much attention to politics And you know what those people who don't pay that much they're not going to hear the excuses either They're just going to notice there are no Christmas ornaments in the stores Yeah those would be regrettable outcomes for those affected of course Uh but for those of us who've argued that the administration and people around it 26:00 have overstated the case against free trade and globalization in a way it would be a powerful demonstration uh of its benefits As we wrap up why don't we just connect the dots between our two subjects today the impending negotiation between Canada and the US and the growing defensiveness um from the Trump administration on on on on the case for tariffs How should that David inform um the Canadian government's plans over over the coming weeks and and possibly months well let me put that answer that in a slightly different way You and I are recording this at the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe and there's a lot of triumphalism about that ending But I want to direct people's attention to not what ended this week in 1945 but what started this week in 1945 the work of reconstruction and reconciliation after 1945 in which Canadians played a very disproportionate role The goal for Canada is to get that world back um the world not just a easy bilateral access 27:00 to the US market but a world that trades in peace and security and in ever growing ways that brought in central Europe and the Pacific Rim and now where everything turns on whether India and China joined that world to the utmost extent collective security the spread of democracy those those things that um when the weapons were laid down in Europe in May of 1945 and then in Asia in August that was the beginning now we're watching we seem to be at the crisis point of that story and possibly at the end of the story But that what the that's what was started all those decades ago and now that's the work that has to resume again in the decades ahead What a brilliant way to to wrap up our conversation Um but before I thank you and turn to the next time we speak David let me just uh say on behalf of our listeners and viewers how much we've benefited from your insight over the course of a rather tumultuous period in Canadian politics and of course the first 100 days of the Trump administration You were kind enough to join us on a weekly basis for the past 28:00 uh several weeks I'm pleased to report that uh in conversation with David from is going to continue indefinitely u but we are going to revert back to our our twice monthly exchanges I can't wait to to speak with you No doubt uh a lot will happen in in the next couple of weeks But thank you for sharing your insight with us over over what has been a pretty extraordinary period in in the world of Canadian policy and politics and and thanks for continuing to to share insights and wisd wisdom with us um moving forward and thank you for welcoming me onto this platform you have built and expanded into I think at this point maybe the most important platform for the exchange of information and ideas in all of Canada So that's it's a tremendous achievement It's yours It's Roger's and I'm honored to be a part of it Uh thanks Deon and I'll talk to I look forward to talking to you soon Bye bye

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