Taking on Trump: Canada and EU forge closer ties – The Latest

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0:45You can see the sort of contours of some kind of second circle around the EU. Europe and Canada are stronger together. I think it's laughable. If I think it's at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe. He's clearly upset because Donald Trump is a zero-sum politician and completely transactional. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff. Well, the European Union is going transatlantic, inviting Canada to be its first ever associate member. John Henley, you're our Europe correspondent. This is something that was announced by the EU Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.

1:32What does it actually mean? Ah, well, that's the sort of$64 ,000 question. Nobody actually knows, is the answer. I have to say she kind of pretty much blindsided everybody with this proposition. Including Carney himself? Including Carney himself, including all the media and including EU ambassadors. The words associate membership or associate member were not in the draft of her speech that was circulated to the press in advance. And they weren't either in the draft that was circulated to EU ambassadors. So everybody was a little bit taken aback. And I think, you know, people have subsequently been saying, you know, it's kind of a declaration of intent more than anything else.

2:20It's to do with a much deeper and stronger relationship. But quite what form that will take, nobody yet knows. OK, OK. Well, Mark Carney has been addressing the European Parliament today, saying that Canada and the EU are not fair weather allies, that Canada welcomed the ambition of associate membership. So even if he was surprised on Wednesday, he's come round to the idea, it seems. What did he say that he hoped Canada would get out of this closer relationship? Well, he's looking for, I mean, very much the same thing as the EU in the kind of, you know, in the big picture, which is to say stronger and deeper cooperation that will be to both sides benefit, you know, in a world that is changing very, very fast and looking increasingly scary.

3:10And specifically what both von der Leyen and Carney have mentioned in their speeches were, you know, specific areas where there could be much greater cooperation and where Canada could be really of great interest to the EU would be cooperation on things like energy. Canada, obviously, you know, enormous energy supplies, critical minerals. Canada is really rich in critical minerals. Things like batteries, high tech cooperation and defense. So all of those areas. And Mark Carney in his speech also mentioned Canadian membership in the Erasmus Plus kind of student exchange scheme and the EU's Horizon Science Research Program.

3:56And he made clear, I think, in his speech today that he was really what he was really interested in was the substance of the corporation rather than kind of whatever label, whatever name people chose to put on it. Yeah, and the sort of symbolism of it, even though that is extremely significant. It's fair to say that this has not gone done well in Trump's White House. He's been throwing his toys out of the pram. He's been threatening his favourite thing to threaten, which is tariffs. What have we been hearing from President Trump? And why do you think he's so rattled by this? Well, he said overnight, absolutely, that this was a laughable idea.

4:37He did kind of qualify it by saying that, you know, if the intentions were good, he'd be OK with it. If the intentions were bad, he would he would sort of tariff the hell out of it. Yes. I mean, he's clearly upset because Donald Trump is a kind of zero sum politician and completely transactional and finds it very hard to deal with the idea, as Carney and Fond du Lyon both said in their speeches that this is very much a deal about, you know, a deal for something. In other words, strengthening EU, you know, European-Canadian cooperation rather than against something. In other words, against the US.

5:19Yeah. I mean, it's very new as a concept, this idea of an associate member. And for the European Union, it is quite unprecedented. I mean, traditionally, it has been very, very difficult to join the EU. And of course, you know, when we, the UK, left the European Union, it was made very clear to us there would be certain things that we would absolutely not have access to, that rejoining would be intensely difficult, that we couldn't have one foot in the single market and still have trade benefits, etc, etc. etc. So why do you think that position has shifted? And do you think there are other countries that they are considering or looking at?

5:59Well, I think we need to make a really clear distinction here, that this is a kind of deal that would not be open to the UK, I think. I mean, European officials since von der Leyen's speech have been making it quite clear that this kind of status, whatever it ends up being called, would very much be for kind of close partner nations that are not in Europe. So they're talking about Canada. They're talking also potentially about Australia, New Zealand, maybe even Japan. But it's not a deal, as one EU official said yesterday, you know, this is not a deal that's intended to be for European countries with commitment issues.

6:41You know, European countries with commitment issues are going to have to sort those commitment issues out, which is basically the UK. And, you know, I think we should note also that, you know, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, they're already part of the European single market. They're already in the EU single market. They're part of the Schengen passport free zone. They're in the single market because they're in the, you know, the European economic area. So they have all the benefits. Canada is a very different kettle of fish. Well, I think we can certainly describe Britain as a country with quite deep commitment issues, as are many of the men who reside in it, as anyone who's been on a dating app recently will understand.

7:23But, you know, so this isn't, I mean, my next question was going to be, is this something that Britain could consider? Or could this answer some of the questions that Labour has about how to form closer ties with Europe? It sounds like not. Yeah, no, not in the near term, certainly. I mean, Britain has negotiated its trade and cooperation agreement with the EU. Keir Starmer at first and now Andy Burnham are both talking about the need for a reset and the need to kind of, you know, bring the UK back much closer into the EU orbit. I mean, I think there's a lot. There are serious commitment issues there.

8:04The Brexit wound is, you know, in the UK is still the wound that will not heal and certainly hasn't healed yet. And so there's a great deal of where it's on the UK side about doing anything kind of, you know, concrete that might look like it is undoing Brexit. But in the much longer term, and I think there is a point to your question, definitely, which is that in the longer term, you know, you can see the sort of contours of some kind of sort of, as it were, second circle around the EU of countries that, you know, do not want to be members, but want to be much more closely involved. And, you know, this is an idea that's been floating around Brussels and in EU circles for actually for decades now.

8:52And it could be that, you know, whatever actually emerges and it is going to take years. This whatever is decided with Canada. I mean, we should point out that, you know, there is already a free trade deal between Canada and the EU. It was negotiated nine years ago. It still has to be signed by 10 of the EU's 27 member states. So, you know, the EU doesn't move fast on these kind of things. It certainly does not. And the danger might be that Canada actually would like it to move an awful lot faster than it will probably be able to do. But much longer term, yeah, I think, you know, there could be this could help to be, you know, one of the models in a potential kind of second circle of EU associate mess.

9:35A second circle is an interesting way of looking at it, but this sense of a reshaping of new alliances. Mark Carney was at the football with our new Prime Minister Andy Burnham. You know, Mark Carney here is, of course, an interesting figure, having been the chief of the Bank of England for many years during the crucial Brexit years, during which he repeatedly warned of the economic risks of Brexit and was asked to stay on afterwards to kind of steady the ship. So it's an interesting triad to have Mark Carney hanging out with Andy Burnham, building ties with the UK and also building these relationships with Europe.

10:12It feels like that speech that we discussed earlier in the year by Mark Carney at Davos, where he said, you know, this is about middle powers coming together. And, you know, the old world is gone and we can't be nostalgic about it. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think the EU would balk slightly at being called a middle power. Because if it actually does get its act together ever, you know, it's clearly, you know, it's capable of being a major power. But no, I mean, this is all this is playing out in the context of, you know, the quite rapid unraveling of the rules based world order. It's, you know, Russia's invasion of full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

10:57As Mark Carney said in his speech, you know, the fact that sort of trade worth noting that, you know, the US, it represents 70 percent of Canada's exports and Trump is slapping a 50 percent tariff on those. You know, Carney said trade being used as a weapon. That's new. So on top of that, there's climate crisis. There's the sort of, you know, AI and the tech bros kind of march towards global domination. And there's an awful lot of stuff to sort out. And Carney, in his speech, used this very nice metaphor of a tree. He referred to oak trees on Vimy Ridge, which was one of the great battles, World War I battles, where Canadian soldiers sort of gave up their lives during the First World War.

11:48And a Canadian soldier collected a handful of acorns from trees on Vimy Ridge and took them back to Canada. And that's now a forest in Canada. And acorns have been brought back and planted in France. And he basically, he had this very nice line, essentially, that he called this a ferocious storm that the world is facing. And he said, a single tree will never stand up in that storm, but a forest might. It's good to hear some nice political rhetoric for the first time in a long time. Thank you so much, John. Thanks. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to John Henley, The Guardian's Europe correspondent.

12:28You can keep up with all his reporting over at theguardian.com. And do listen to our sister podcast, Science Weekly. Ian Sample is looking at the week that changed maths forever after OpenAI announced it had solved a major mathematics problem. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back on your feeds tomorrow morning as usual. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was produced by Angus Neal. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hoth.

13:03Around the time that I was finishing my PhD, I was feeling really awful. You message your mum saying, I'm struggling. Her reply is suspiciously polished. I called my mum and I just railed on her. I was like, mum, did you just use ChatGPT? Blackbox, The Chatbots, a new series from The Guardian Investigates about the strange things happening between AI and us. The whole series is out right now. Search for Blackbox wherever you get your podcasts. This is The Guardian.

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