Trump Runs as Canada Goes for the Nuclear Option…

0:00Michael Popok:Has Trump pushed Canada to consider a doomsday scenario, not only considering nuclear weapons production, but also cutting off the critical supply of nickel to America? See, America has a lot of critical and rare earth minerals, but nickel doesn't happen to be one of them. In fact, when God in history drew the line in North America between the United States and Canada, the nickel ore mines are really all on the Canadian side. And America needs nickel. In fact, Canada supplies 44 % of America's nickel needs. We need it for batteries. We need it for lithium ion. We need it for super alloys used for our military production, for airplanes.

0:49Michael Popok:We need it for a stainless steel. And if we can't get it from Canada, we'll have to go into the market and try to find it globally, like in China. Would Canada consider cutting off the nickel supply, pulling the plug on nickel to America? Well, as Doug Ford, the Ontario premier, said recently, everything is on the table. Does that also mean nuclear weapons? I mean, they're a nuclear power, but they've never had nuclear weapons. But shouldn't they be considering that now that Donald Trump has not only tried to shove them into a corner, but try to isolate Ottawa by heading down to Mexico to sign before the midterm some sort of bilateral trade agreement to try to put Canada on ice.

1:39Michael Popok:Certainly on the table, and politicians in Canada have considered it. I'm Michael Popok. You're on the Midas Touch Network, but you're also on Legal AF. Take a moment, come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit the free subscribe button. Let's talk about nickel and nickel supply. You got rare earth minerals and you got critical minerals. Now, nickel is not a rare earth mineral because it's not in short supply. But the easiest supply, the most efficient supply, is to tap into Canada's nickel production. It has eight nickel mines, nickel ore mines. America has but one. It's in the upper, upper part of Michigan.

2:21Michael Popok:It's known as the Eagle Mine. It produces about 4 % of what we consume for nickel. Nickel goes into stainless steel. You like your stainless steel appliances? You like things made out of stainless steel? Say goodbye if Canada cuts off the supply. And it's not only that we don't have the nickel or mines, we don't have the infrastructure or the supply chain around nickel production either. We rely on other countries like, right, Canada, the can-do atmosphere of Canada to take care of our nickel needs. China does it too. It's sort of a dirty business of processing nickel, a lot of environmental disaster issues.

3:03Michael Popok:But these countries have figured out a way to do it. The United States hasn't. It's not that we just don't have a way. We don't have enough of our own nickel. We can't even process the nickel that we make. And so if you want to go at America, you want to turn off its lights, pick the element, pick the mineral that's in almost no supply on the American side of the border, but an abundant supply in Canada. Now, let me play you a clip of one of the politicians in Canada, one of the leaders of one of their parties, talking about this exact thing, where Canada grabs us by the nickel shorthairs and tugs.

3:41Michael Popok:Play the clip. Going to meet with him, trying to wine and dine him is a failed approach. Donald Trump is not rational. You can't discuss a plan over a meal with him. He is a bully. And bullies understand one thing. That is strength. They also understand pain. So if he wants to pick a fight with Canada, we have to make sure it's clear that it's going to hurt Americans as well. There's going to be pain felt for not just Canadians, but also Americans. And so that's why I'm calling on my plan. We know that the United States needs our critical minerals. They're very important for the United States.

4:18So I'm calling on all political leaders to support turning off the taps on those critical minerals. Let's stop the flow of those critical minerals into the states. This is there's no quicker way to get Donald Trump to back away from tariffs than to shut off the tap on critical minerals with the state's need very clearly. Where are you on turning off the taps or restricting oil exports to the United States? When I was in law school, I learned that when you're in a fight or when you're in a legal battle, you don't pull out all your tools right at once. You escalate step by step. So that is a tool that should be on the table, but not something we start with.

4:51I'm proposing we start with critical minerals, but we need to look at every option. Every response to the tariffs that could hurt Canadians in a serious way should be met with tariffs in kind. And all solutions that we can propose should be on the table. And that's absolutely one of them.

5:05Michael Popok:Now, Doug Ford, Prime Minister, sorry, Premier of Ontario, has said the exact same thing. And a lot of this nickel issue, nickel mines come from his province. He said everything's on the table. Play the clip. Dave, how are you feeling? Is it still Ontario all alone? I feel positive. What I did say, too, we need a Team Canada approach led by the Prime Minister. And that's what we look forward to hearing the Prime Minister today and go out there as Team Canada. OK. To divide provinces, Ontario, BC and Quebec are particularly hit by these terrorists. Do you think that's on purpose? In fact, Mark Carney has the prime minister to rally his people has said virtually the same thing, which leads me to believe that doing an embargo against nickel supply to America potentially is in the offing, especially as America tries to head to Mexico and freeze out Canada.

6:04Michael Popok:play the Prime Minister Mark Carney as well. Powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. There is a hidden mineral that keeps America's military running. And without it, jet engines fail and submarines cannot be built and missiles stop working. The United States depends on Canada for approximately 50 % of this resource. And America has only one mine and zero refineries.

6:47Recent tariffs just made this critical material much more expensive and military readiness is now at stake. Canada is the biggest supplier of nickel alloys to the United States, supplying roughly half of total US nickel needs according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Nickel alloys are a critical input for the defense and automotive industries, and the United States only has one operating nickel mine called Lundin's Eagle Mine in northern Michigan. However, the United States does not have a single completed nickel refinery, which makes Canada an important ally in the nickel supply chain.

7:22The entirety of nickel output from Lundin's Eagle Mine is exported to a refinery in Sudbury, Canada, and then sold back to U.S. firms. Eagle Mine is the nation's only primary nickel mine.

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8:16Michael Popok:So here's what to do. Go to ironwall.com slash legal AF, fill in the quick form, and request your free risk assessment. Their team will show you just how exposed your executives are and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com slash legal AF. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real world attacks. The links in the show notes below. Now here's what the Chamber of Commerce of Canada said in Parliament just the other day. Let me read it to you. just to show you that I'm giving you some honest opinions here about nickel. Then I'll talk about nickel's importance to the Canadian economy.

9:05So you've got Mike Gullo.

9:11Michael Popok:He's the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce addressing the Canadian parliament in February. He said, well, look, we have eight nickel mines. The United States has one. We have three nickel refineries. They have zero. 70 % of Canada's refined nickel goes to support the United States, because even if it doesn't show up directly, it's supplying to manufacturers and fabricators who are using Canadian nickel to supply product and materials back to the United States. That's why it's up to 70 % of Canada's refined nickel ends up going back to the United States in its manufacturing and production area.

9:49Michael Popok:Roughly 80%, Mr. Golo said to the parliament, 80 % of the United States' aerospace sector and in excess of 60 % of their defense sector depend on Canada's critical minerals and Canadian nickel. What does that tell you? It tells you it's a great way to cut off everything if they want to turn off our lights. So instead of heading up to Ottawa to try to resolve the issues after Donald Trump ran out of moves, counter moves, and then there was the counter-counter tariffs. And Donald Trump didn't know what to do because he can't do counter-counter-counter tariffs, probably because he can't count that high.

10:25Michael Popok:So instead, he sent Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, to do a Zoom call with Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico, begging her, begging her for a trade deal in order to isolate Canada even more. Now, the impact of Canada firing back by embargaining nickel, it's an asymmetrical warfare because it won't really overly negatively impact their economy. Their economy is not dependent on nickel. In fact, it's a very, very small part of their economy. For instance, in critical minerals, Canada exports$153 billion a year of critical minerals. Only$4 billion of that is nickel. And nickel, they can shift the supply chain.

11:19Michael Popok:They can shift it away from America and others around the world, like the Netherlands and Belgium and China, will likely absorb the nickel. Now, it may lead to a lowering of nickel prices around the world as Canada floods the market with Canadian nickel and tries to pick up new customers to compensate for the loss of America. But it'll have a very negligible impact on the gross domestic product of Canada. Yet it is critical to the American infrastructure, military industrial complex and appliance industry, batteries, electric cars, all nickel, Canadian nickel dependent. And the more you push Canada and the more you have their leaders talking about it in terms of being on a war footing, the more you have to think they're also considering going nuclear.

12:14Michael Popok:And I mean that literally. They are a nuclear power in a sense that they have nuclear power. They use it for civilian use. But they have not signed on to the UN treaty about preventing any nuclear weapons around the world. They've kept that as something in their back pocket. And we know that nuclear powers like Israel and India secretly, North Korea secretly, use their civilian nuclear power to become nuclear weapon powers. And Canada can do it quite easily because of the nature of their reactors and their systems and the type of uranium that they use. See, they could already be coming up with enough enriched uranium to be used in a warhead.

13:05Michael Popok:And that's been actually speculated by legitimate news outlets and think tanks in Canada. Is it time for Canada to consider having a nuclear weapon? It's an existential debate that's for the Canadians to have on their own. But it just shows you how Donald Trump is changing the face of the world. It's inconceivable that the Canadians would consider having nuclear weapons to defend against American aggression at any other time than when Donald Trump occupied the White House. But that genie may be quickly leaving the bottle. I'm going to follow all of this. I'm going to keep a close eye on the nickel supply and what it does to the American economy as this fight between Canada and the United States increasingly looks like a fight that Canada is going to win.

13:55Michael Popok:P.S. Where's Donald Trump going to get the trillion dollars from now that he's cut off all economic ties with Canada to pay out America to vote red come the midterms? Yeah. Canadians are wondering that too, by the way. I'll continue to follow it. You're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. Hit the free subscribe button. Until my next report, this is Michael. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

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