Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Tariffs & AI Squawk Anchors 4/2/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, it's tea day. President Trump's tariffs possibly taking effect this afternoon. As we've been saying for days now, the details all quite unclear. What is clear? Uncertainty for automakers, grocers and consumers. And for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, frustration. He calls it Liberation Day. I call it Termination Day because people are going to be losing their jobs across the U.S. Plus, TikTok buyers are lining up and OpenAI has made its very first cybersecurity investment. When I was sitting with you and all of a sudden you broke out your phone and said, hey, do you want to hear yourself?

0:46I was sort of in shock. These AI voice impersonations could threaten your family's peace of mind. CEO of Adaptive Security Brian Long, he says the risk is growing. When I started talking to customers about this a little over a year ago, I would have about 5 % of executives that hadn't experienced an attack at their company. Now it's probably about 30-40%. It's Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025. SquawkPod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to SquawkBox right here on CNBC. We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

1:27Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs set to be announced this afternoon. It's going to happen in the Rose Garden at a ceremony there at 4 p.m. The White House saying the tariffs will take effect right after they're unveiled. So it's not like there's a couple of days, a week, a month or anything else to take place in between. But as we've been saying for days now, the details all quite unclear. Here, the president and maybe his closest advisors are believed to know, believed. I'm not sure they all know, but we'll see. In the past week, Trump has considered blanket tariffs on everything from the U.S. imports and reciprocal tariffs that vary based on country.

2:02Yesterday, the Journal reporting that Trump's advisors were trying to formulate a new potential strategy, a less intense across-the-board tariff on a subset of countries. So maybe this is all still a moving target. Unclear. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson telling lawmakers that today's tariffs will represent a, quote, cap, and that countries will be able to take steps to alleviate them. That's according to the Oklahoma GOP representative, Kevin Hearn, who spoke with CBC's Emily Wilkins. So there's going to be a lot of horse trading and negotiating after this, I imagine. We're going to be speaking with the premier of Canada's province of Ontario, who has tangled with the Trump administration on this very topic in a very vocal way.

2:43and we're going to see him this morning. He may be able to tell us if there's any progress on USMCA because we still don't know whether those goods are not going to be compliant. I don't think he's going to know whether there's progress. But whether he's going to talk about it with, you know, about maybe, and I don't know if he'd be. That's been part of the problem is that the other nations involved in this really haven't gotten much signaling either because I'm sure we would hear more leaks if that were the case. But at this point, it's been pretty tightly counted. I don't think there's any negotiation.

3:10I think this is the negotiation. Right. This is the first step of a long negotiation. This starts and then we see how people respond. Meantime, President Trump expected to meet with Vice President J.D. Vance and other advisors today to consider an offer for TikTok. As that deadline nears to a deadline here, try to keep the social media app running in the U.S., at least that's the goal. Reports characterizing this is the final proposal ahead of April 5th when TikTok could face a U.S. ban. Potential suitors for the short-form video app now include former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who's been on our broadcast to talk about it.

3:49Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is in the list. Wyoming entrepreneur Reed Reisner. And companies include Blackstone, Oracle, and Dresden Horowitz have all been flagged as potentially being involved in one way or the other. President Trump saying over the weekend that a deal with China's ByteDance to sell TikTok would be struck by this coming Saturday. But Trump has also said he could extend that deadline. And given the tariff situation and the negotiation with China over tariffs, the question is how does this become or does this become another chess piece in that? These are some serious people that are involved at this point, it looks like.

4:26In the past, we've had, I don't know, they were going to go the opposite way. Well, they were going to go in front of Shark Tank and Kevin O 'Leary, and they were going to have TikTok, you know. I was going to say it was serious when Microsoft and Walmart and Oracle were in. I'm talking about Kevin O 'Leary. But this group, to me, I mean, they're all interesting people. You're talking Frank McCord and the rest? Yeah, I don't know whether any of that really hangs out. The Oracle piece is a very interesting part of that. But I guess the question becomes, even if a deal was struck, if China's government would go along with it and how that rolls up.

5:01Do you ever think that O 'Leary's consortium was really going to buy TikTok, Mr. Wonderful? I was not sure, and I don't know if Frank McCourt's will buy TikTok either. Yesterday was a Tuesday, so it's not always elections, but we've been closely awaiting some of these. There are three of them, really. NBC News is now projecting that in Wisconsin, Supreme Court judge candidate backed by Democrats It says won that contentious race. Susan Crawford's win allows liberals to maintain a narrow majority in the highest court in the Badger State, G State. Technically, the race was nonpartisan, but it drew outside attention as the first major battleground of state election of President Trump's second term.

5:48There's a lot of money on both sides. A lot of money because they're going to redraw some of the districts, which could change the makeup of the House in the next midterms. So what do you think this makes? What do you make of Elon Musk's influence? I think it was a long shot, kind of a fool's there. And he didn't, you know, to him a couple of million dollars. I don't know how much he poured in. I think it was 20 million. Yeah, but I think it was also, I mean, that's a lot of money. I think that judge who won raised twice as much as the judge who lost, who was backed by Elon Musk. And there was money that came in from Soros and some other Democrats as well.

6:27on all sides. It may be more interesting or more important, and I don't know how you read it, but down in Florida, NBC News projects Republican candidates have won in a pair of special elections, which will give the GOP a bit more breathing room in Washington. Jimmy Petronas has been on the show a few times. Florida's chief financial officer won in the race to replace Matt Gaetz, a former Republican congressman, and Florida Republican Senator Randy Fine won to replace U.S. Representative Mike Waltz, who's now, obviously, National Security Advisor. Both of those were big Trump wins, 33 points in the one where Randy Fine won for Trump.

7:10He won by 14. And then in the first— I thought it was 17. I got 14. Was it 17? I heard somewhere. There's another one. What would you have for the other one? I got 15 for the other one versus a 32-point Trump margin. This was the one that people were watching closely because that was the one that even McCarthy yesterday said might only be a six or seven point. So was it outperformance then or was it underperformance from Trump, but not as bad as what people thought? Right, right. I guess that's how you read it. I mean, those are comfortable margins in both places, but not nearly what Trump won, obviously.

7:46But I think that after that state Senate race in Pennsylvania, I think people were wondering whether you could actually lose. That was brought up as a huge as a huge issue. Again, there was a lot of money that flew flooded into these two races as well. Right. Much more than national places that would come in. Right. Because that's and by the way, that's where dark money can usually make a difference. What was it in Wisconsin? Was it 100? They said what McCarthy said yesterday. Well, the reason why I was so focused on it was he was focused on Wisconsin. No, I know. He thought that Wisconsin was more important than Florida.

8:21The implications for the. Yeah, for that. But no one thought I was going to. No one thought really deep down. I mean, I think that most of the news stories did. And I think that he must went there to go do. Right. No, they were trying. But Wisconsin is I mean, Trump won by less than nine tenths of a percentage point in Wisconsin. I didn't think that was going to happen. What happened was status quo was preserved in all three of these races, basically, is what happened. Right. I still thought it was. I think that's why he was so interested in it and said things like the end of Western civilization.

8:56I don't think it was ever likely really to flip. And it didn't.

9:04Coming up next on Squawk Pod, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, a vocal critic of today's looming tariffs. He says it'll be a rude awakening for many American workers, but he's still willing to negotiate with President Trump. He knows and Secretary Lepnick knows that we're willing to take these tariffs off like in the next minute if he said he's taking their tariffs off.

9:32Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Yes, it is Tea Day, the built-up awaited day for the Trump administration's rollout of expected tariff policy. Hours before the president's planned Rose Garden remarks, our Squawk Box anchor spoke to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. The Conservative Party politician has become a surprising antagonist to the White House, calling for retaliatory tariffs against the United States. Ontario is a close neighbor with an economy heavily dependent on the U.S. auto industry. Here's Andrew. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, we very much appreciate you joining us this morning. I imagine you're going to be watching and listening to the president later today.

10:16But even before we get there, have you had any meaningful conversations with this administration about what these tariffs could look like? I have, Andrew. And first of all, thanks for having me on. I always start every interview. Canadians love Americans. I love America. And they're just an incredible neighbor. And saying all that, I had a conversation last week with Secretary Lutnik and just told him how we feel. It's going to hurt Americans. It's going to hurt American jobs. It's going to hurt investments. We've seen the market tumble. I'm sure it's going to start tumbling again today because people don't want uncertainty.

10:58Markets don't want uncertainty. And I've never seen anything like it, attacking your number one customer. President Trump is, not the American people. President Trump's attacking their number one ally, their number one customer. And it's just going to be unfortunate. He calls it Liberation Day. I call it Termination Day because people are going to be losing their jobs across the U.S. You can't just all of a sudden put tariffs on every part and every widget that comes across the border. Ontario alone employs over 9 million people. They wake up every single morning to produce products for Ontario.

11:39That's Ontario alone, not mentioning the entire country. Do you expect this to be a negotiation, meaning there has been a sense implied or otherwise, that we're going to hear a number, whether it's 20 percent or something else, as a sort of top. And that if folks like yourself come forward and say, you know what, we're going to take some tariffs off of this and we're going to do this, perhaps that those tariff numbers come down. Well, let's hope so. Let's sit down and discuss this because it's just going to hurt American jobs. I can't stress it enough. And, you know, again, he believes he's supporting Americans.

12:19He said he was going to create jobs, create wealth, reduce inflation. It's worked the total opposite. Inflation is fair. You have tariffs on a whole number of products. That's right. And we'd be willing to take those off tomorrow if he took all the tariffs off. We are not the problem. Andrew, do you know the problem is China's the problem. And he's taken a blind eye to China as they continue to build their critical mineral mass. We have all the critical minerals that our great neighbors need. We have the energy that our great neighbors need. I just want to go back for a moment. If, in fact, you're prepared to take your tariffs off, why wouldn't you have that negotiation and that conversation now before any tariffs get put in place?

13:03Well, we've had this conversation for over the last month. We don't want tariffs. We have another$65 billion worth of tariffs to launch today. That's the last thing we want to do because it's just, again, it's going to hurt both countries. It's going to hurt American workers. That's the last thing I want. Andromed, take the other ones off, not the ones you're launching today, the ones that you already got. You're saying you take all your tariffs off. I'm saying we will take them all. That's right. I guess my question is, why has all of that not already happened? And does President Trump know that you'd be prepared to do that?

13:41He knows. And Secretary Lutnick knows that we're willing to take these tariffs off in the next minute if he said he's taking their tariffs off. Let's look at the auto sector. So how much of this then is some kind of theatrical dance between both yourself, frankly, and the administration? I mean, it sounds to me like if you're prepared to take yours off right now, he should be prepared to take whatever we would implement. And we wouldn't have this conversation. What I can't figure out is whether both of you are waiting so that you can say that you've both won in some way. Andrew, let me be very clear.

14:19We didn't start this tariff war. You know, a tariff on Canada's attacks on Americans, simple as that. We've already got tariffs, Mr. Premier. You say you didn't start it. You already have all these existing tariffs that you're willing now to take off. We don't we're putting them on today, right? Joe, Joe, you've had these tariffs. I mean, we're getting tariffed on, you know, the auto parts, for example, is a big part of our economy here. And right away, I had a conversation with the prime minister this morning and I can I can tell you one thing. If he dropped all the tariffs, we'd have zero tariffs.

14:56We'd grow the as I say, you can't unscramble the egg. You have to make a larger omelet. And I believe in the Amcan Fortress. Premier, this is the idea that you're prepared to get rid of all of your tariffs is exactly what President Trump wants. And by the way, he would take that as a win. I mean, I think he'd take this interview as a win. If if in fact you're saying, OK, we'll do no tariffs because then he should do no tariffs. That's right. But right now he's doing tariffs on the vehicles. Right. So we're proposing the tariff, I should say. So it's just this tariff war between the two greatest countries is ridiculous.

15:34Again, we didn't start this. We want to build a relationship that we've had for 200 years. I thought you were going to come down and have some conversations about the USMCA and, you know, some of that stuff. Maybe that would be you did have that. It was their progress. Well, is it possible to talk about? I thought it was a great conversation. We're dealing with very bright business people. There's no doubt. Secretary Lutnik is bright. So is the president. I'm not too sure if they understand the supply chain system between Canada and the U.S. It's so integrated. It's been that way in the auto sector since 1965, and it's worked.

16:15And we buy as many cars as we sell down there. and the ones we sell down there, 50 % of them are made from American parts. Compared to Mexico, we buy 400 % more cars than Mexico, 200 % more than anyone in the world. Let's get back to growing our economy and strengthening our borders from China. As we're sitting here, China's building up their critical minerals and cutting the U.S. off. We have those critical minerals, and there's no one else I want to share them with than our greatest friend and ally. Peter Welch, the senator from Vermont, he pointed out that he's been talking to small and medium and large business owners in Vermont.

16:54China tariffs are one thing. They've been ripping us off for decades. And the president is standing up to them. I support that. But Canada and Mexico, where we have this USMCA agreement that he negotiated, by the way, and has been beneficial all around. Why unravel that? The Canadian tariffs are particularly troubling for me in Vermont. That's our biggest trading partner, but it's the biggest trading partner for 34 states. It is obviously the largest trading partner, Canada, for Vermont. He pointed out how crazy it could get if USMCA wasn't followed under some of these issues. If you have timber that is sent from Vermont up to Canada to be milled and cut and then sent back, and it gets tariffed on either side of that, you could be talking about some pretty substantial changes.

17:44Are these conversations you have had with members of the Trump administration? I had the conversation with the Secretary Lutnik. He knows what's at stake. We're the number one customer to the U.S., number one trading partner to 28 states. Again, Ontario alone, we're just Ontario, would be your third largest trading partner in the world, over$500 billion of two-way trade. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. And I just want to build our relationship, strengthen our trade and keep an eye on the people that don't like us. And there's one country that doesn't like us, and that's China.

18:21What has the administration's response been? Do you feel like you have an understanding of whether there's going to be room to negotiate? Or do you feel like you're just waiting to see what happens at four o 'clock and then see any conversations that take place after that? Well, I'm hoping there's room to negotiate because if we don't sit across the table, this just escalates. We need to bring the heat down right now and, you know, come with common sense solutions. And I'd be down there tomorrow to talk to Secretary Lutnik. I talked to him the other night and asked him, you know, what are we expecting April 2nd?

18:58And he said he wasn't sure. Now, I don't know if he was blowing smoke or he really didn't know what to expect. Maybe it's the latter. But I have a great deal of respect for for Secretary Lutnick. He's a smart person, smart business person. We need to get rid of these tariffs and focus on our real enemies around the world. Doug, I was looking for an article I saw recently that said Canada. One thing they can do to just reset their entire economy is just to embrace the energy that you're able to provide in such an energy resource. Do you think Mark Carney, do you support him? Is he the right guy to be leading Canada at this point with his I don't know.

19:38He talks about climate justice and climate this, climate that. I don't know. He definitely is a zealot. Is that the guy that you would prefer to be running the country when you need you need fossil fuels and exporting fossil fuel? Yeah. And I'm not going to jump in the middle of that. Oh, please do. No, no, no. Just hear me out for a minute. I'm not jumping into the federal election, but I will tell you, he believes in building pipelines all the way east, all the way west, another one south and another one north. I believe in the critical minerals. He believes in one window permits so we can get that critical mineral shipped down to our closest friend and allies.

20:23We have more critical minerals than anywhere in the entire world. And there's one place I want to ship them. And that's down to the U.S. and we have 33 of the most critical minerals right on your doorstep. 50 % of the high-grade nickel that the U.S. uses for their military, for their aerospace and manufacturing comes from Ontario. Let's ship you more. Let's ship you more. I guess getting back to our original point that Andrew was making, you're talking about the retaliatory tariffs that Trump's putting on and you kind of keep dodging the point about the original tariffs that were already existing that Canada had.

21:01And why not get rid of those? And then maybe there wouldn't even be retaliatory tariffs. Why not do that first? Well, I think he has to look at, you know, the tariffs that he's put on Canada. I think we need to sit down and let's get back to a USCA deal instead of a USMCA deal, because Mexico is bringing in cheap parts from China, slapping on a Made in Mexico sticker and costing American-Canadian jobs. So let's clear the slate and let's move forward. We got to go, unfortunately, up against a hard break. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you'll come on back, and I hope this does get resolved one way or the other as soon as possible, given just all the uncertainty that hangs over all of this.

21:46So good luck with that. Thank you, folks. God bless America. God bless Canada. Let's get this done. Tees will be next. Coming up, AI Joe, Becky, and Andrew. We're going to talk deep fakes and protecting against them with the CEO of a company that just got an investment from OpenAI. Tips to minimize your risk, like deleting your voicemail and artificial intelligence TV anchors. Do people actually fall for this stuff? Yes. Yes, they do, AI Joe.

22:22This is Squawk Pod.

22:48in its latest funding round, which also includes and was led by Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI's startup fund as well. And I should say, we met and he played this, it was almost like a party trick at a lunch on me where all of a sudden I started to hear my voice off of his phone. The Squawk Box team gave you some, well, the show gives you it. So take a look at, or a listen, at how this all works. This is a sample of our own AI-generated voices, and you can start to think about how scary this can really be. Let's talk about the tech. Are deepfakes really that big of a threat to companies right now?

23:30This is Becky. Just to make sure I understand, you're saying this kind of attack is already happening in real scenarios? Hi there, this is Joe Kernan. Someone gets a recording of my voice from, what, Squawk Box Clips Online, and then they can just call up our finance team pretending to be me. Do people actually fall for this stuff? I mean, wouldn't someone notice it's not really me on the other end of the line? So joining us right now, first on CNBC, is Brian Long. He's the co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Security. I did say, I mean, it was a little bit different, and maybe it's because we know what's going on.

24:05You can hear it in the voice. We're looking. When I was sitting with you, and all of a sudden you broke out your phone and said, hey, do you want to hear yourself? I was sort of in shock. And the idea that somebody could call somebody I know and say, hey, this is Andrew, and ask somebody to move money on my behalf is sort of a shocking and scary thing. Yeah, it's pretty wild, and the technology is getting better and better every day. So I think it's about 85 % the way they're today, but I think in the next year, you're going to see it hit the mid-90s. And I think beyond just hearing the voice and likeness of the individual, and this is really important, it's not just voice and likeness.

24:43It's trained in all the open source information out there about you. So clips about you, information about you, et cetera. With no secret things. Well, the other thing that came out of our little lunch together was, you know, I now have a password for our family because you and I discussed this idea that somebody could call you, you could think it's your son or your wife or your daughter or whatever, and ask and know enough about you based on what's on the internet to maybe have like a genuine conversation. But if they don't know this one little thing, maybe that's going to. So in the business context, is everybody going to have to have a password?