加拿大强硬回应美国贸易施压，谈判陷入僵局

We're gonna bring in Jeff Mason. He's our White House correspondent in Washington. But, Jeff, the first thing I wanna ask you about is this lovely giant billboard they got going on in Canada. Is this a direct salvo to president Trump, and how's he responded? I I think so. Yeah. This is certainly Canada's way of saying nobody's renaming this lake, without our consent, and we do not consent to a change of the the name here from Lake Ontario to Lake, America.

So, yeah, this is, one more sign from the Canadians that they're willing and ready, to stand up to president Trump on on multiple things, but certainly on the renaming of a lake that has had that name for hundreds and hundreds of years. But this all goes to just such a bigger issue. And these these leaders are talking at each other over billboards or potentially social media, but it doesn't seem like they are talking to each other at this point unless something has changed from when we spoke to you yesterday.

What is next in this process? Are there negotiations even, you know, in the What are we going to do about this? Well, as I said, on BTV at one point last week, it's not Iran. So there are connections that are open certainly between Canada and The United States. But, without meaning to be flippant there, it is also true that talks have broken down. So despite the fact that The US and Canada are close allies, close friends, certainly big trading partners in spite of these tariffs, you need to have people at a table in order to come up with a deal, and those people are not at a table right now.

So, there's a little bit of speculation involved as to whether or not they will come back to this table before the midterm elections. Certainly, Canadians, are very well aware of the importance of those elections coming up for president Trump and the Republican party. There are also a couple deadlines coming up that raise questions as to whether or not the two sides may come back before them. The the Canadian tariffs, for example, don't go into place until I I think it's September 8, but correct me if I'm wrong about that.

So another week or so in in terms of implementation. But no signs since we talked yesterday that the two sides are getting back together, and the tension again between both sides is still very high. And with that in mind, we've seen a number of provincial leaders pushing for Kearny to take an even greater stand, tightening the screws, taxing The US, cutting off energy and material exports. How have we seen car how have we seen Kearny kind of evolve in his way to address president Trump and, again, with Doug Ford with the sign kind of being more vocal?

Well, let's start from the very beginning. Carney came in and and replaced then outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau, came to the White House and had what seemed like a pretty positive meeting with with president Trump. The president had been kicking off his second term, by really trolling Canada. Does that sound familiar? And calling it the fifty first state and in in in pretty much every way he could, get under Canadian skin.

He held off on that then a little bit after that first meeting with Carney and said that he respected Carney. It certainly showed that this was someone that he felt he could deal with in a more professional way than he did with Trudeau. And then all of it changed because of this the back and forth on trade. And Carney has shown, unlike many other world world leaders, that he is not going to back down to the president when the president becomes more belligerent, shall we say, or or more aggressive with tariffs, and that has been very popular for him politically at home.

So to get around to your initial question, that seems like that's gonna be his trend. That doesn't mean that both he and Doug Ford don't want to have some kind of a deal in the same way that I think, US negotiators are also keen to have a deal. It's not good for either side, economically for for these barriers to be set up. But politically, it has been pretty good for the prime minister. And so I think that's probably a sign of where he and and his team are going to go, unless there's a breakthrough.

Jeff, we do wanna talk to you about some of your new reporting about what's happening inside the White House, and there's a bit of a a mini internal exodus, among his staff. You quote Mark Short, who was in the first Trump administration, saying, if your vetting process the first go round mandates that you have to claim the twenty twenty election was stolen, then the pool of candidates was probably already small and now getting smaller.

Talk to us about who is around the president and how significant this is. So that's a reference to finding additional staff as what I think is very fair to say and that we do say in our reporting there essentially is that there's been a trend, in the last, few weeks, at the White House of an exit. And high profile exits, certainly including Caroline Levitt, who was the press secretary whose last day was Thursday. Press secretaries may not be come to the top of people's list as really, really important figures in a White House is his inner circle?

Certainly, it is in terms of the communication side. But Caroline Levitt rose above not only being someone who worked with reporters, but someone who really was a senior adviser to president Trump, and she's not the only one who's left. And we we detail that, in the story. To to Mark's question or or Mark's quote rather, the challenge for this president is to bring in new blood, essentially, bring in new people to fill some of these holes at a time when, the conventional wisdom in Washington seems to be he's going into a pretty tough period.

He started off on a high at the end of his election in 2024. He that doesn't mean he had I mean, to Mark's point again, it doesn't mean he had the the pick of the litter in terms of staff because there were some challenges about who would want to work for this president after the the January 6 events. But he filled it with loyalists, and that has been a good good reason to explain why the second term has been so different from the first.

But to bring all of that together, it is a challenging time for him to be losing a lot of people going into the midterms, and what is expected after the midterms to be at least a time when Democrats probably have control of the house and therefore are going to start a bunch of investigations, will change the tenor of this presidency, really dramatically from, the first half of the second term.