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CANADA ENGAGING WITH JAPAN ... The Frum Forum Trump Ignored: How Canada and Japan Just Formed a Massive Alliance Without the USA \| David Frum PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q0QGeVJwWY
Trump Ignored: How Canada and Japan Just Formed a Massive Alliance Without the USA \| David Frum The Frum Forum 11.6K subscribers Dec 28, 2025 While Washington doubles down on isolationism, a new power axis has quietly emerged in the Pacific—and the United States wasn't invited. In this episode of The Frum Forum, we breakdown the massive, under-the-radar strategic alliance just formed between Canada and Japan. With the Canada-US relationship 'frozen over' by President Trump’s 35% tariffs and the collapse of traditional diplomacy in 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney has executed a pivot that few saw coming: a comprehensive energy, defense, and critical minerals pact with Tokyo that bypasses American influence entirely. Disclaimer: This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. The views expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of this channel. The Frum Forum is an independent channel and is not affiliated with David Frum, The Atlantic, the Republican Party, or any major media network. This video features original commentary, reaction, and analytical narrative intended for educational and critical review purposes. All content is protected under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. §107). AI-assisted narration or visuals may be used to enhance production quality and clarity. These tools are used strictly for creative presentation and storytelling, never to impersonate real individuals or deceive viewers. Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 Um, something happened in Washington that most people never really saw, even if they skimmed the headlines. And I want to start there because this is one of those moments where the surface story hides the real shift underneath. In June of 2025, the White House quietly pushed through an executive order that doubled import tariffs on steel and aluminum. It was sold in the familiar language you've heard for years now, protecting American jobs, defending domestic industry, standing up to unfair trade. On paper, it sounded like another routine move in a longunning trade drama. But when you look closely at who actually absorbed the shock, the story changes in ways that should make you pause. Because the hardest hit weren't geopolitical rivals or distant competitors. The damage landed squarely on America's closest allies. Canada, the largest supplier of steel to the United States, suddenly found itself facing effective tariffs that pushed export costs into territory that made entire supply chains wobble. Plants in Ontario began cutting shifts. 1:00 Facilities in Alberta ran below capacity. Goods sat at the border while companies tried to calculate whether shipping them even made economic sense anymore. And this is where the deeper question begins to form. If the policy goal was stability and protection, why did it destabilize the very partners that North American industry has depended on for decades? At the same time, across the Pacific, policymakers and business leaders in Japan were using a phrase that should have rung alarm bells in Washington. They called it a crisis of trust within the G7. That phrase matters because for a long time, the United States wasn't just another country in the global trade system. It was the anchor. Allies built long-term plans, assuming Washington would be predictable, rules-based, and at least minimally consultative. When tariffs start hitting friends harder than competitors, that assumption cracks. And this is where I want you to slow down with me because the usual media framing stops right here. It treats this as 2:00 another round in a personalitydriven trade fight, another instance of tough talk and retaliation. But that framing misses the real move that followed. Canada and Japan didn't respond the way the script says they should. They didn't just escalate tariffs and trade threats. They did something far more consequential. They began stepping away from the entire game. Within weeks of the tariff shock, delegations from Ottawa and Tokyo met to sign a memorandum of cooperation focused on electric vehicle battery supply chains. On the surface, it looked technical and polite. The kind of agreement that rarely excites cable news. But underneath it was a blueprint for something much bigger. A supply chain built on mutual trust, stretching from mineral extraction to battery production, deliberately designed to function without needing American approval at every step. Japan brought advanced technology and capital. Canada brought critical minerals, industrial stability, and the kind of regulatory predictability global investors quietly crave. This wasn't framed as a protest, 3:00 and that's important. It was framed as planning for a world where alliances could no longer be taken for granted. And that's the part most people missed. When allies stop reacting and start redesigning their economic relationships, it signals a deeper loss of confidence. Not anger, not drama, just a calm decision to reduce exposure to risk. Behind the scenes, Canada was already preparing for this moment. In the electric vehicle era, whoever controls the minerals controls the future. Ottawa moved to accelerate domestic production and processing of nickel, lithium, cobalt, and other critical inputs that modern batteries depend on. These projects weren't scattered randomly across the map. They were concentrated in regions with existing industrial infrastructure close enough to traditional manufacturing centers to quietly shift the center of gravity northward without blowing up existing supply chains. What you're watching here isn't a sudden rupture. It's a slow rebalancing. Japan's major industrial players began expanding their presence in Canada, not because of ideology, but because predictability 4:03 matters more than patriotism. When billions of dollars are on the line, public financing followed, incentives followed, jobs followed, and none of it required Washington to sign off. This is how economic power actually moves in the modern world, not through speeches or threats, but through capital deciding where it feels safest to stay. And that's the uncomfortable truth at the heart of this story. Policies meant to project strength can end up signaling unreliability. When that happens, allies don't always fight back. Sometimes they quietly walk around you. If this feels unsettling, it should because this isn't just about steel or batteries. It's about what happens when trust erodess inside systems that were built on it. As we keep going, I want you to watch how this shift affects ordinary people, not just trade statistics or corporate press releases because the consequences don't stay abstract for long. They show up in jobs, prices, and the stability of entire communities. And once that process starts, it's very hard to 5:01 reverse. uh when capital starts moving this way, it tells you something fundamental about how the system actually works beneath the rhetoric. We like to imagine trade policy as a chess match between governments, but in reality, it's more like a weather system. Um firms don't wait for ideological clarity. They respond to pressure, uncertainty, and incentives. And when the weather turns volatile, they look for shelter. Canada in this moment positioned itself as that shelter, not by shouting, but by offering something increasingly rare in the global economy, boring reliability. This is where the story becomes less about diplomacy and more about structure. For decades, the North American economy revolved around a single gravitational center. If you were a manufacturer, a supplier, or a government planner, you built your models around access to the US market. That assumption shaped everything from factory locations to training programs to regional development. What the tariff shock did was force allies to confront a question they had quietly avoided. What 6:00 happens if that center becomes unpredictable? For Canada, this wasn't an abstract thought experiment. When export costs spike overnight, the burden doesn't fall on abstract entities. It lands on workers being told their shifts are cut. It lands on towns built around a single plant now running at partial capacity. It lands on small suppliers who suddenly discover that a contract they relied on no longer pencils out. These are not dramatic collapses. They are slow erosions and those are often more politically dangerous because they happen quietly. Japan understood this dynamic well. Its industrial policy has always been shaped by vulnerability to external shocks from energy dependence to supply chain concentration. What changed here was the direction of perceived risk. For years, Japanese firms treated the US as the safest possible destination for long-term investment. That calculation began to shift. Not because America ceased to be large or innovative, but because policy began to feel improvisational. And for 7:02 firms planning decades ahead, improvisation is poison. So when Japanese capital began flowing north instead of south, it wasn't a rebuke. It was risk management. Governments followed that logic with coordinated financing and incentives. Not to undermine anyone, but to lock in a different kind of stability. What emerged was a pattern you're going to see more of in the coming years. Midsized economies aligning around trust, transparency, and complimentarity rather than raw dominance. And this is where the media framing really fails you. Most coverage treats these developments as isolated deals, a memorandum here, an investment announcement there. But that misses the connective tissue. Together, these moves form an alternative architecture. One where critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy are linked across borders without a single hegemonic gatekeeper. That's not anti-American. It's post assumption. 8:01 It's what happens when countries stop assuming that the old rules will always hold. The effects ripple outward. As Canada signals that it can anchor parts of the clean energy transition, other countries start paying attention. European governments quietly explore similar partnerships. Asian firms reassess where to place their next facilities. Multinational companies burned by tariff whiplash and policy reversals begin valuing boring governance over maximal short-term returns. This is how power diffuses, not with a bang, but with spreadsheets. And for ordinary people, this shift cuts both ways. New investment can bring jobs and infrastructure. It can stabilize regions that spent years watching industry hollow out. But it also reveals a harder truth. The system responds faster to capital than to workers. When trust breaks at the top, adaptation happens quickly. When livelihoods break at the bottom, adjustment is slower and more painful. That's the lesson we need to sit with. Trade policy framed as 9:00 toughness often ignores where flexibility actually exists. Corporations can move. Capital can reroute. Workers and communities cannot. When governments gamble with predictability, they rarely bear the cost directly. The cost is dispersed, delayed, and absorbed by people who had no say in the decision. As we move forward, keep your eye on what doesn't make headlines. Watch where factories are built. Watch where supply chains quietly reconnect. Watch which countries stop waiting for permission and start designing around risk. Because the future of the global economy is being shaped less by confrontations than by quiet exits. And once those exits become habitual, the old center doesn't disappear overnight. It simply stops being the default. And this is where the story turns from trade into power. Because what we are really watching is a shift in who gets to set the terms of cooperation. For a long time, the United States didn't need to threaten or coers. Its position at the center of the system did that work automatically. If you wanted access, you aligned yourself. If 10:01 you wanted stability, you stayed close. That kind of power is subtle and it only works as long as people believe the center will remain steady. Once that belief weakens, the logic of the system changes. Countries start asking different questions. Not how do we win this negotiation, but how do we reduce exposure to decisions we cannot control and that's a very different mindset and it leads to very different outcomes. Instead of retaliation, you get redesign. Instead of confrontation, you get redundancy. Canada's pivot toward critical minerals is a perfect example of this. Minerals used to be treated as commodities. Dig them up, ship them out, let someone else capture the value. In the new industrial landscape, they're strategic assets. Control over processing, refining, and integration matters as much as extraction itself. By investing in domestic capacity, Canada isn't just selling inputs. It's embedding itself deeper into future supply chains in a way that's harder to dislodge. Uh, Japan's role completes the 11:00 picture. Its firms bring decades of expertise in precision manufacturing, battery chemistry, and systems integration. When those capabilities pair with stable access to resources, you get something powerful. Not dominance, but resilience. And resilience is the currency of the next phase of globalization. What's striking is how quietly all of this is happening. There are no victory speeches, no declarations of a new block. That silence is intentional. Loud moves invite backlash. Quiet ones invite imitation. And already other countries are watching closely. Germany, France, South Korea, all facing their own vulnerabilities, are studying similar frameworks. Not alliances against anyone but networks that dilute dependence. This is also where the class dimension becomes impossible to ignore. The people who design these shifts tend to be insulated from their immediate effects. Executives, policy makers, investors can pivot, diversify, hedge. For workers, change arrives as uncertainty. A plant 12:00 expansion here, a delayed project there, a sense that the ground is always moving under their feet. The language of resilience sounds very different depending on where you stand. And yet, there's an important distinction to make. This isn't inevitability. It's incentive. The system rewards actors who minimize risk and maximize control. When tariffs and abrupt policy shifts increase volatility, they don't force loyalty. They encourage exit. That's not a moral judgment. It's how the structure works. Capital follows predictability the way water follows gravity. The tragedy is that public debate rarely focuses on this structural reality. Instead, we get arguments about strength versus weakness, winners versus losers. Those frames are emotionally satisfying, but they obscure the real mechanism. Power in the global economy isn't about who can shout the loudest. It's about who others trust to be there tomorrow and the day after that and 10 years from now. If you want to understand why alliances change, don't just listen to 13:01 speeches. Look at investment flows. Look at where long-term projects are breaking ground. Look at where governments are putting public money behind private plans. Those choices reveal expectations about the future more honestly than any press conference ever could. Um, and this brings us back to the uncomfortable question Washington now faces, whether it acknowledges it or not. What happens when allies stop assuming your leadership and start designing around your unpredictability? That's not a collapse. It's something quieter and harder to fix. It's a gradual loss of centrality. Once that process begins, restoring trust is far more difficult than breaking it. Trust accumulates slowly and dissipates quickly. And in a world racing toward a clean energy transition where timelines stretch across decades, countries will choose the partners they believe can commit to stability over those who promise dominance. So as you watch this unfold, I want you to keep asking a simple question. Not who won this round, but who others are planning with for the long term. Because that's where real 14:00 power is migrating and it rarely announces its departure. Uh by the time you see that migration clearly, the moment to intervene has usually passed. That's another uncomfortable truth about how economic systems evolve. They don't wait for consensus. They don't pause for reflection. They respond to incentives in real time and then they lock those responses into infrastructure contracts and relationships that last for years. Once a battery plant is built, once a processing facility is financed, once a supply chain is rewired, it doesn't simply snap back because a policy changes its tone. Uh this is why the human impact matters so much even if it's often treated as secondary. Uh when we talk about tariffs and trade disputes, the language sounds abstract, but the consequences are painfully concrete. A worker doesn't experience a tariff. They experience fewer hours, delayed raises, or a sudden sense that their job has become temporary. A community doesn't experience a supply chain realignment. It experiences stalled investment or a quiet revival depending on where the capital flows. In 15:02 Canada's case, the inflow of Japanese investment has created optimism in places that spent years watching opportunity drift away. New projects mean apprenticeships, training programs, and long-term employment. But even this positive outcome exposes a deeper tension. It shows that security comes not from proximity to power, but from being useful within a trusted system. That's a lesson many countries are now internalizing. Contrast that with the American framing of protection. The promise was that tariffs would force production home and strengthen domestic industry. But production doesn't respond to slogans. It responds to clarity. When policies change abruptly and unpredictably, firms hesitate. They delay. They look elsewhere. And when they do invest, they build in redundancy that reduces reliance on any single market. That's rational behavior. But it undermines the very leverage tariffs are supposed to create. What's missing from 16:00 most discussions is the question of time. Economic systems reward patience and punish volatility. A country that can offer stable rules over decades becomes attractive even if its costs are slightly higher. A country that swings policy dramatically may offer short-term advantage, but it erodess long-term confidence. Over time, those small decisions compound. Uh this is where the media's obsession with personalities becomes a distraction. It encourages you to focus on who said what, who appeared tough, who blinked. Meanwhile, the structural shifts happen quietly in boardrooms and ministries. The real question isn't whether a tariff made someone angry. It's whether it changed where money feels safe enough to stay. And when you look at it through that lens, the Canada Japan alignment stops looking like an anomaly and starts looking like a prototype. It shows how countries can cooperate without trying to dominate each other. how they can share risk instead of exporting it. How they can plan for transitions rather than react to shocks. This matters 17:00 because we are entering a period defined by massive transformation. Energy systems are changing. Transportation is changing. Industrial processes are changing. These transitions require enormous upfront investment and long horizons. No one is going to commit that kind of capital in an environment defined by uncertainty and threat. They will commit it where rules are legible and relationships are credible. For ordinary people, this means the future of work is increasingly tied to the politics of trust. Not trust in a sentimental sense, but trust as an economic condition. Where do governments keep their commitments? Where do regulations stay consistent? Where does planning feel possible? Those questions shape where jobs appear and disappear. And this brings us to a sobering realization. The costs of unpredictability are rarely paid by the decision-makers who create it. They are distributed across workers, communities, and future generations. The benefits of predictability, meanwhile, acrue slowly and are easy to take for granted. That imbalance encourages risky behavior at 18:00 the top and caution everywhere else. So, when you hear talk of toughness or leverage, I want you to ask yourself something else. Is this creating conditions for long-term cooperation, or is it pushing others to quietly build alternatives? Because the latter doesn't look dramatic in the moment. It looks like planning. And by the time it becomes visible, the system has already moved on. Once the system has moved on, the language we use to describe it often lags behind reality. We keep talking as if the old center still organizes everything, even as the flows tell a different story. Canada's trade strategy now reflects this gap between assumption and adaptation. For years, the overwhelming share of its exports moved south. That wasn't ideology. It was gravity. But gravity can change when mass redistributes. The new goal coming out of Ottawa is to double non- US exports over the next decade, not as a rejection of the American market, but as insurance against overdependence. Uh Japan is making a similar calculation. 19:00 Its corporations are redirecting capital not because the United States suddenly became irrelevant, but because it became less predictable. When policy risk rises, diversification becomes survival. What we're seeing is not a collapse of globalization, but a reconfiguration. Supply chains are becoming more regional, more redundant, and more political in the sense that trust and governance now matter as much as cost. Some economists warn that unchecked protectionism can quietly shave growth off the global economy year after year. a slow tax on everyone that never shows up as a single dramatic crisis. That's why these alternative frameworks matter. They offer a way to keep cooperation alive without relying on a single guarantor. And that's also why they are attractive to other countries watching from the sidelines.

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