In 1999, the creators of South Park were nominated for an Academy Award for their song, Blame Canada, whose theme was captured in this line. It seems that everything's gone wrong since Canada came along. South Park, of course, is caustic and anarchic satire. But today, somehow, it's become real. What started as a fight over trade has gone dangerously, ridiculously sideways. Canada is becoming stronger and less dependent on America. And we are just getting started. So Lake Ontario, that's gone. Lake America. Tonight, we'll try to understand why President Trump loathes Canada and respects North Korea. Next. This is Washington Week with The Atlantic. Corporate funding provided by... In 1995, two friends set out to make wireless coverage accessible to all. With no long-term contracts, nationwide coverage, and 100% U.S.-based customer support. Consumer Cellular. Freedom Calls. Additional funding has been provided by friends of Washington Week with the Atlantic, including William C. Paley Foundation, George D. Hanby III in memory of Mary Jane Bunny Glick and of his brother, Jay Hanby, The Ewan Foundation Sandra and Carl DeLay Magnuson Rose Herschel and Andy Shreves Robert and Susan Rosenbaum Jay and Sharon Rockefeller Charles Hamawee through the Charles Hemawee Fund Steve and Marilyn Kerman Leonard and Norma Klorfein Don and Janine Blom And the following individuals and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, D.C., Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic and Moderator, Jeffrey Goldberg. Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. Yesterday on Truth Social, President Trump posted a ranking of American presidents. In the category of the greatest, there is only one entry, him. The next category, great, includes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Bill Clinton and James Madison, among others, are labeled average. Failures, not surprisingly, include Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. My question is, why does this behavior not shock or surprise? On the one hand, Trump is just trolling, and we live in the age of trolling. On the other hand, it is truly remarkable to see the leader of the most powerful nation on earth behave like this. I can understand why many people choose to ignore these behaviors. After all, insulting George Washington and Abraham Lincoln isn't the same thing as, say, starting wars in the Middle East with no plan to win. But it's all of a piece. The way Donald Trump talks about American allies is the way he talks about so many Americans. Joining me tonight to analyze this most unusual situation, Stephen Hayes. the editor and CEO of The Dispatch. Idris Kalloun is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Josh Wingrove is a White House reporter with Bloomberg News. And Ashley Parker is a staff writer. Thank you all for joining me. I want to get to the specifics of the trade war with Canada in a minute. But Steve, maybe you can give us a larger framework here. Why does Donald Trump see Canada as an enemy? And by the way, if you had said that 15 years ago, why does President Donald Trump see Canada's an enemy, you'd be committed. I mean, I think there are substantive reasons and there are political reasons. If you think on the substantive side, we've seen a long series of aggressive provocations by our neighbors to the north. And no, I'm just kidding. There's no, there are no substantive reasons. Look, I see. I think it's personal price of maple syrup. is what you're getting at the price of maple syrup hockey sticks yeah um no i think it's it's personal peak he hasn't liked their leaders i think he uh sees them as a punching bag he doesn't like it when they stand up and defy him he expects them to just capitulate and when they don't that makes him angrier and angrier but it is strange when you know when you think about the way that he talks about canada and the things that he's done the policies he's sought to implement with regard to Canada. It is strange because they would make sense if there was this vast population in the United States, political constituents in the Unites States, that hated Canada, right, that would really benefit him if he were doing all of these things. And there just isn't, you know, to the extent that either people don't care or they love Canada and think of Canada as a friendly, nice neighbor. Or they just go to Canada because it's a place that you go to visit. You go to Visit, And we have generally good trade relations with Canada and have for years. So it's a bit of a head-scratcher to me, honestly. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to come back to that question about the psychoanthropological motivations. But, Josh, you're Canadian. Yeah. And I don't say that as an accusation. I just say that because it's true. Explain the situation that the prime minister, Mark Carney, finds himself in right now. There's a saying in Canada dating back to Pierre Trudeau that living next to the states is like sleeping with an elephant where every twitch kind of comes at you and this is really the biggest case we've seen of that. Canadian public opinion is very clear right now. Canadians are outraged at the way the president is treating them. They're outraged not only by the tariff threats but more broadly by the threats of 51st statehood or you know vassalization to some extent and so that is the landscape on it. Arguably Donald Trump gets a lot of credit for Mark Carney being Prime Minister. I mean, the threats that Trump was making really shifted the political landscape in the most recent election, where Carney sort of pulled the Liberal Party from the ashes and won his mandate. And so Carney is on strong political footing. And there's a lot of appetite in Canada for him not to cave. That brings us to last, you know, the collapse of this deal last week. On Tuesday, terms of it sort of came out. And it was mixed, I would say. In Canada, there is a belief that they should have the best deal out there. And to some extent, they do. And you wouldn't necessarily know that with the way they're reacting. For instance, Canada has the lowest effective tariff rate of US tariffs in the G7. But the deal as it was coming out drew criticism from provincial premiers in particular, who Carney not only needed political support from, but needed them to do things, including rescind bans on US alcohol sales or stocking on shelves there. And so the landscape became a little mixed. And then there were some last minute flashpoints, which we can discuss but carney had a lot of uh backing let's say to walk away if it was a bad deal and i think we're in a war of words phase right now we still don't really know does he want an off-ramp or is he he's in it to to win it i think he wants a deal sources have always described carney as someone who's not particularly you know uh guided by a political incentive but certainly A fight with Donald Trump, you know, helps him to some extent. And for now, we've seen, you Know, every time Trump attacks Canada, Carney's poll numbers tick up a little bit. Now, how quickly they'll go back to the table, I think, is unclear. We're right now in the spiraling case, right? Trump has imposed new tariffs, 50 percent tariffs on about 20 billion in goods. Canada has threatened to respond in a smaller way to the same 20 billion, but with a smaller tariff rate. And so Carney is de-escalating a little bit, trying to, you know, bring the temperature down a little bit, as are some of the premiers that made larger statements, including one who invited the president to kiss him on the backside, shall we say. So I think the Canadians are doing what Canadians probably normally do, which is, you now, try to dial it down a bit and keep it between the lines. But the Canadian population, unlike the American population, which either doesn't care doesn't really know the Canadian people there are two it goes deeper than trade now the insulting quality provinces that have not banned alcohol have seen precipitous drops in US alcohol sales Canadian travel to the u.s. is dropping at sharp rates Canada is a small country compared to the US small economy compared to us it's also the biggest buyer of US goods Canada buys about twice as much from the US as China does for example and so when Canada imposes counter tariffs they do have an effect because they buy so much from the u.s it's the number one customer of u.S. well Idris that's what I want to ask you the the the trade war that Trump has gotten you know U.S into um could it wind up hurting the United States a bit you know 14 percent of American exports go to Canada that's that's not nothing but it'll hurt the Canadians more if this escalates because 70 percent of Canadian exports goto America Carney's aware of that. I think that's why Carney does want, you know, the tariffs are going to come in next week. You know, there's this deadline of enhanced tariffs that would come in in January. But I think that everyone is going to work towards a deal. I don't think they've stopped talking, and I don'T think that they're really going to let this kind of escalate even further, because Carney's very aware of what the risks are. And even now, you've seen hits on GDP unemployment in a way that trumps trade war on everyone, has really not slowed down the American economy. What are the chances that it does spiral out of control? I mean, maybe Josh. I think they're a little higher than you might, you know, argue. We'll see. It's too early to say. Look, we're having a fight over Canadian trade policy. No, no, no. That's what constitutes a fight. It's early to see. The January 1st tariffs the president has announced, he's also threatened to retaliate if Carney proceeds with those tariffs. And again, he's de-escalated them, like I said. He also tweaked them a day after announcing them to pull back on fisheries tariffs that you might have accused him of using to put pressure on Trump by way of the main Senate race. So Carney is bending over backwards to avoid the impression that he's targeting swing districts. However, he's targetting things like steel, stuff that the U.S. has tariffed. And the map of where Canada buys steel stuff from hits a lot of important swing states, by the way. Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, of course, is ground zero of it, but also Maine, Alaska, you know, states that are pretty important in the map this cycle. Right. Ashley, help us put this into an even larger context. um there is no particular reason any american president previous to this president has ever sought to go out of his way to alienate canada um i mean here's here let's let's listen to this for a minute here's president trump talking about a u.s ally and a u-s adversary canada's been ripping us off for a long time on trade very sadly even the military you know we defend canada for nothing. Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They're nasty people. Kim Jong-un has always treated me with great respect. I understand him. He understands me. I get along with him. Sometimes in the day-to-day of our jobs, we forget how phantasmagorically bizarre this is. What explains Donald Trump's not affection, maybe that's overdoing, it but his tolerance and respect for the world's worst dictators and this contempt that he shows not just for Canada I mean it's Denmark and the Greenland issue he just threatened to bomb Oman which is a friendly country and so on right well is the late Lindsey Graham said Trump likes people who like him and he sort of doesn't care who you are or what sort of human rights abuses trail you Although the irony there is some of these strongmen who Trump is very deferential towards, you know, he just mentioned Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, they don't actually behave as if they like him. If you look at their actions, you now, they're not doing what the U.S. really wants them to do. So there is that bit of cognitive dissonance. But Donald Trump values power. He is a bully on the world stage, and it's sort of a game respects game. He likes these strongmen. He likes the control that a dictator has over his or her country. And, you know, Donald Trump, when he came into office, I mean, I remember he sort of thought being president in the first term was sort of like being the monarch, being the king. And he was very flummoxed that he had to go to Congress to get his laws passed. And so he sortof respects those leaders who are able to bypass that. And those are a lot of the worst actors on the world stage. But again, as you point out, those worst actors don't necessarily respond to his respect with respect that translates into, let me do something agreeable to the United States. That's the odd thing. Yeah, that's the rub. I think some of them know how to play him. You know, Kim Jong-un knows that Trump loves those, as he calls them, love letters. But in terms of tangible asks by the U.S. for North Korea or Russia, we haven't seen them give much. Right. Steve, we know that we're not going to have an actual shooting war with Canada, although one should never say never. It's dangerous to make straight line projections right now. It is dangerous to makes straight line projection. Everybody write that down. That's a very important thing that Steve just said. And we know, obviously, that Denmark moved troops to Greenland, a NATO ally moved troops to Greeneland to protect Greenland from a NATO Ally. So people are planning this. Nevertheless, this can escalate, this Canada dispute can escalade in all kinds of ugly ways, but it's not going to escalate in the way that a conflict with an authoritarian state or an imperialistic state is going to. Talk about, over the next two years of the Trump term, talk about the possible dangers of his overall approach to allies and adversaries. Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think Ashley's exactly right. It is just personal. It's whether they say nice things about him, whether they treat him well, whether their nice to him, deferential to him in personal phone calls. And that guides his policymaking sort of across the board. We've seen this also, by the way, just in recent weeks with respect to Iran. Remember, I don't know, a few months ago, when it looked like the Iranian negotiations were going to head in a better direction, he was praising the leaders of Iran only four days later to say that they were nasty and sort of some of the things that he's now saying about the Canadians. Look, I think you have to be concerned about where this goes, right? I mean, as with all of these things, you don't want to... you want to resist the temptation to go immediately to a worst-case scenario. But some of the things that we would have or other people would have sort of shrugged off before as worst-cases scenarios have been realized. I mean, think about the kinds of things that he was saying in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and the kinds things that was suggesting he might do. There were prominent newspaper columnists who wrote articles saying, oh, he's not going to do any of this. You're an alarmist if you believe this. And then he did all the things that we watched him do, including trying to use the military on domestic soil. So I think you have to be worried about what this could mean. And it could well go beyond rhetoric. And I think that's particularly true as he loses support. We're watching him bleed support among Republicans. We're watch MAGA fracture. Democrats look to be in a good position into the midterms in two months. What happens if Donald Trump is really cornered and Democrats try to impeach him, Republicans don't stand up to support him, and he becomes more and more isolated in the White House? Right. Josh, let me come back to this point about how bad this dispute can get. I want to talk about some of the roots of it. I mean, one of the reasons we're not going to have a war with the United States and Canada is that Canada doesn't really have much of a military. And this has been a source of pre-Trump frustration on the part of the United States. The entire Canadian military is 70,000 or 80,000 active duty troops. For a country of 40 million, that's very small. Canada doesn't contribute its quote-unquote fair share to NATO, et cetera. Canada is not entirely blameless in this. That's my most provocative question to a Canadian. It's fixed. Is Canada have something, some role here that it didn't really think about how it was being understood in America? Yeah, I think there are long routes to some of what Trump is talking about. One is, you're absolutely right, Canada does not meet the NATO defense spending target. Either the previous 2% or the 3.5% they moved to, prime ministers have announced plans. Basically, they've never really gotten there. And that is always stuck in Trump's mind a little bit. And then, you know, they renegotiated this trade deal that he's, that President Trump is sort of now trampling over in the first term. Canada, you knows, drove a hard bargain. He's, Trump has said publicly many times that they drove him crazy, essentially. He seems to be remembering that. And there were specific complaints, including from Wisconsin, on dairy issues. And we kind of seem to see those rearing their heads again. And so some of these things are rooted in long-running things. Trump dislikes the idea of other countries benefiting from the U.S. security umbrella without having to pay a proportional share to it. But I should note, one of the things that's at least implicitly on the table in these talks is whether Canada will keep buying F-35s. Carney has not been committal on it. And that is, I just mentioned that by way of saying the scale of what Canada perceives the fissure to be. I mean, they are talking, they're having existential questions about whether they withdraw from these U. S. military programs. They're looking to Europe to buy weapons. Looking to European, right, exactly, in lieu of that. and we mentioned like you know kind of you know us won't invade canada last year i got that question from friends back home like trump isn't serious about invading it's like it's like canadians don't know when he's trolling when he'S not trolling they see this as an existential threat to their sovereignty whether you know you know i think certainly far less so kinetically right now but like you Know in terms of putting such heavy pressure on canada's economy that becomes a dependent state of the us and so so the question right now is the white house over weekend share this week rather shared a meme of an eagle attacking a canada goose all right trolling tears to your point that that photo is from a series of photos where the eagle gave up and flew away and the goose kind of wandered off that delighted canadians because they think that's what's going to happen here they think yes we're a smaller economy but we have the fortitude to wait this out even though the pain is going to be significant because they're just simply you you know, Canadians that are just so outraged by it. Idris, would you rather fight an eagle or a goose? We call them clorba chickens. We'll answer that one off air. On air, I want you to answer this question. There's an even broader question now. American allies around the world are watching how he talks about South Korea. They're watching what he said about Oman. They're certainly watching the way he's dealing with Canada. If you're a NATO ally at this point in a dangerous moment in Europe in particular, are you thinking that there's no way that Donald Trump is going to commit American forces per Article 5 NATO treaty to the common defense? I think you are hoping that it doesn't come to that, but you have to hope that Mark Rutte, who has, you know, said these kind of, you know, kind of like suck-up kind of messages to Trump, that that kind of holds the alliance together. As the NATO Secretary General. Yes, yeah. But you have to be planning for America not to come through. And even Carney articulated this at Davos a few months ago, right, when he talked about the plight of the middle power having to diversify away from America, that, you Know, I think a lot of allies were willing, and Trump won, when he was also not behaving this aberrantly they were willing to think that actually America could revert to something like it had before. The fact that, you know, it's really been the Trump era for a long time, that this has happened again, means that they have to think about alternatives. The French, I think, are feeling quite, you Know, vindicated in their skepticism of NATO. They withdrew from unified command. They've always maintained that it's important for France to have its own nuclear power. And now they talk about, you Now, they talk about you know a european army they talk about extending the nuclear umbrella over over europe when america refuses to do that it's affected the world um and there's no there's noway um i think even that a you know future president who who um repudiates all that trump has done i don't think that it snaps back at all well yeah just just to also you know speak if you don't care about canada at all that you know that not accusing anyone here at the table of course that's fine i think One thing, an interesting lens to view this in is this deal was a referendum of sorts on whether Trump wanted to back off some of his own tariffs at a time when he's facing really bad polling and a potential midterm blow, as Americans are rightfully concerned with the cost of living. The deal, what we're talking about is a deal that would have reduced tariffs on aluminum and steel. The U.S. gets half of its aluminum from Canada, not half of it's imports, half of its total aluminum. Steel, huge amount of steel comes from Canada, currently tariffed at 50%, and autos, which, of course, use a lot of aluminum and steel. And so these are pretty core sectors to President Trump's economic agenda, and he has heaped a lot of tariff costs on them. By the way, South Korean automakers have an advantage with a 15% rate and have to do none of this stuff. And so in this deal collapsing, put aside the Canada stuff, it's been an interesting litmus test on how Trump feels about his own tariffs, how Secretary Lutnick feels. They're not interested in watering them down very much. Right. I want to pivot rather wildly to the subject of Dolly Parton, which is as unifying a subject as tariffs and Donald Trump's presidency is a divisive subject. It's fascinating on so many levels. I mean, obviously, in a public policy show like this, in in a very polarized America, Ashley, people look at a Dolly parton figure and say that's one of the last things we all agreed on uh talk talk for a minute about about this kind of sadness about loss of a great performer and a great humanitarian but also this idea that oh all americans like her well what was wild to me was i learned about her death in actually a meeting at the atlantic a politics meeting someone sort of looked up from their phone and said oh my gosh dolly parton died and then that night at home, my family was talking at dinner, and my 15-year-old said that there was a moment they were changing classes, and someone did the same thing, looked at their phone and said, oh my God, Dolly Parton died. And there was sort of this sense of community and stunned silence, which I was just surprised by that she had so transcended not just what you're talking about, politics and partisanship and is sort of universally beloved, but that teenagers today I sort of still know her and know that role and I thought that was so telling and I would be remiss if I like her music and there's probably people at this table who know more of her music than I do, but I have three kids, two young kids and her imagination library where when you go into the hospital to give birth, you basically sign up and your kid gets a book from Dolly Parton every single month until they turn five. I just think it has touched so many parents in terms of literacy and introducing me to new books, too. Right. Idris, I'll give you the final word because you're from Kentucky, which is near Tennessee. Yeah, that's that's my that's My theory. That's my theory of the case. But but talk about talk about her role as this kind of unifying figure. Yeah. No, I mean, you know, I went I went to Dollywood as a kid and I also get the Imagination Library books. and that's been very, very telling and very, very good, but yeah, I wonder, we were talking, who else could fill this role and it's hard to imagine, but I think that she gave a lot of money also when there were floods and fires and just seemed to actually care a lot about ordinary people and never really got too involved in politics and I think like that was really good. It is fascinating that you can't really name many, many figures like that in American life anymore and that's probably not a good thing. She's popular globally because she represents so much of what the world believes America is and can be. She's maybe even popular in Canada. Still. And on that note... You will never be mad with them. And on a bad note, it's unfortunately all the time we have for our discussion tonight, but I want to thank our guests for joining me, and thank you at home for watching us. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington. Washington Week with the Atlantic is provided by Consumer Cellular. Additional funding has been provided by friends of Washington Week with the Arctic, including William C. Paley Foundation, George D. Hanby III in memory of Mary Jane Bunny Glick and of his brother, Jay Hanby, the Ewan Foundation, Sandra and Carl DeLay Magnuson, Rose Herschel and Andy Shreves, Robert and Susan Rosenbaum, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller, Charles Hamowy through the Charles Hamowie Fund, Steve and Marilyn Kerman, Leonard and Norma Chlorfine, Don and Janine Blom, and the following individuals. And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. We'll be right back.