Trump’s Greenland threats and Carney’s pushback

12:22Willy Lowry:Not long after Trump reposted that AI image of North America with the stars and stripes all over Canada and Greenland. And I think if you look carefully, Cuba and Venezuela. How do you think Carney's message will be received here in Washington?

12:38Paul Hunter:Well, I was actually surprised it did not come up at that news conference at the White House today. No, I know that the White House does pay attention to what comes out of Canada and what Canadian leaders are saying. I know that through sources that they do pay, particularly the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa pays very close attention to the Canadian media and pays very close attention to the messaging from Carney. I'm actually surprised that the messaging from Trump directly about the Canadian deal with China that Mark Carney announced on his visit to Beijing, that Trump had the reaction that he sort of did, because traditionally, the United States is trying to sort of prevent its allies from, you know, sort of getting closer to China in certain ways, particularly when it comes to trade and when it comes to, you know, auto trade and specifically with these Chinese EVs, that kind of thing.

13:26Paul Hunter:But I think it will be interesting to see to follow Donald Trump's social media over the next 24 hours. And, you know, if there is any sort of crossing of the path of Canadian and American officials at Davos.

13:39Katie Simpson:But lest we forget, Trump has often reacted at first positively, for instance, to Ontario's ad with Reagan's voices. He was asked about it and he said it's a good ad. If I were in their shoes, I would have done the same thing. And then, of course, he turned. Right. So just because his reaction thus far to Canada's deals deal with China has been positive, essentially saying, again, if I were in his shoes, I would do the same thing. Canada should be making deals. It doesn't mean that's the way he's going to think tomorrow.

14:10Willy Lowry:And I'll just add the China EVs deal kind of was a preview almost of the messaging today, wasn't it? It's like it's it's it's beyond time. It is now is the time to look elsewhere to make new plans. Look, a lot more to talk about, including how the idea of emergency has been used to justify all kinds of U.S. actions and how it could be used in the future. But first, for anyone listening on Spotify, please leave us a note in the comments section. Tell us what you think of the podcast and tell us what you want to hear about in 2026. Or you can also send an email to WashingtonPod, all one word, at cbc.ca.

14:46Willy Lowry:That's WashingtonPod at cbc.ca. And don't forget to hit follow so you never miss an episode.

15:19Katie Simpson:Follow FrontBurner wherever you get your podcasts.

15:23Willy Lowry:Well, Trump and his inner circle seem to have figured out that if there is an emergency, they, i.e. the executive office, a.k.a. the president and his inner circle, are awarded more power. In times of emergency, they get to do more. It's the law of the land, a law meant to enable fast action by presidents when fast action is what's needed. So who, by law, decides when there's an emergency? The president. Ta-da. And that is how Trump is able to act in this way. He and his team have realized that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You want the power? You need an emergency. Who decides if it's an emergency?

16:00Willy Lowry:You do. So now you have the power. It's that simple. Magical in some ways, isn't it?

16:06Paul Hunter:Yeah. And it's sort of the Trump administration has explored it in so many different avenues. I cover trade a lot. And when we get into, you know, the tariffs, and we'll talk about this in a bit, I'm certain, you know, declaring an emergency, you have additional powers, you can shore up the economy in ways that you can only do in an emergency.

16:27Willy Lowry:Without needing, you know, the nuisance of Congress to weigh in.

16:31Paul Hunter:No. And there's like, what is the threshold? What there's no sort of defined threshold for what an emergency is. It's up to the president to define what that emergency is. And so the Trump administration has figured this out, that this is, you know, something that they can keep in their back pocket to push ahead with their agenda with where the norms, the checks and balances that would normally keep a president more restrained. Those have vanished.

16:57Willy Lowry:Every president gets stymied by Congress, or they say they do, right? And it's almost like you can picture – there was a lot of talk in the run-up to the election a year or so ago that they'd been waiting. Now they knew where the bathroom is in the White House and the levers of power, how to get stuff done. And remember on day one with that stack of DOs, executive orders? Like they were ready, and they knew what to do, and they've been doing it ever since.

17:24Katie Simpson:Yeah, they've effectively neutered Congress, right? It's supposed to be these co-equal branches of power, but they're using this really like an avalanche of executive orders and of these emergency powers in a way that allows them to essentially do what they want.

17:41Willy Lowry:Legally, because they can, right? That's what they figured out. You're also hearing the word emergency come up with these ICE raids, if that's the right word, in Minneapolis. I don't think you could call them raids at this point.

17:52Katie Simpson:There are something like 3 ,000 ICE officers in Minneapolis. dwarfing the number of actual Minneapolis police officers. And then you're seeing and hearing the president use the threat of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to essentially, again, give cause and justification for the administration to use military force to subdue these protests. It's a pretty significant move. We haven't seen a president use the act since 1992 with the L.A. riots. And I think, again, it shows you the administration has figured out that, you know, this magical word, as you said, emergency allows them to do almost anything they want.

18:35Willy Lowry:Legally. Legally. And that's the thing. And I do wonder about people in this country who think, well, wait a minute. We created these laws for a reason. But we didn't think that somebody would take advantage of them in the way I think – and I mean that just in, I guess, the dictionary sense of the word. He's using the laws as they're written to do the things that he wants to do. And I just think that when the laws were written, I don't think they anticipated a president like Donald Trump. A little bit like NATO. Perhaps, indeed. And don't forget, it was just over a year ago that Trump said there was an emergency in Canada and Mexico as a way of justifying tariffs.

19:12Willy Lowry:Katie?

19:12Paul Hunter:Yeah. So that was one of the first things that Donald Trump sort of tackled with his trade agenda and his economic agendas, going after two of his closest trading partners, Canada and Mexico. He declared that there was a national emergency on the southern border and the northern border, even though the situations at the north and the south are completely different situations. In the southern U.S. border a year ago, yeah, there were significant challenges. There were people crossing illegally in huge volumes. The drug trade coming in through Mexico, that is a significant challenge. From the Canadian perspective and along the northern border, the numbers are not even in the same ballpark.

19:52Paul Hunter:It's something that less than 1 % of all fentanyl detected or stopped in the United States comes across the northern border. The number of people crossing across the northern border illegally, it's minuscule compared to what's going on in the United States. Yet at the same time, Donald Trump had the emergency power to declare that he would use tariffs to try and force Canada and Mexico to act. And in a lot of ways, the Canadian response is very similar to the way that we've seen other world leaders try to navigate Donald Trump's tariff threats. Canada also tried to address the concerns that Donald Trump had.

20:28Paul Hunter:Canada says, OK, you know what? Even if Canada represents less than 1 % of the fentanyl coming across the border, any fentanyl coming across the border is a problem. So let's try and work together. Let's spend a billion dollars trying to fortify the northern border. Did it do anything to solve the tariff problem? No. However, you have to put a big sort of asterisk beside this because Canada and Mexico were able to secure some tariff relief from these border emergency tariffs. Remember that these are the Kuzma exemption tariffs. So, you know, even though this emergency exists, as long as your good is compliant with the trade deal, you're good to go.

21:05Paul Hunter:You're still fine to do, which sort of undermines the emergency argument that the Trump administration has made about this whole thing. Right.

21:12Katie Simpson:And I think the thing about emergency, it's there's, of course, degrees to emergency, but it doesn't really matter. Right. Once he uses emergency, he can lop Canada in with Mexico.

21:24Willy Lowry:And by the way, do you think if every NATO country spent billions more as Trump wants, his desires for Greenland would go away? Nope. Nope. Nope. I think we're agreed on that. So now there's a Supreme Court challenge underway that could emphasis could pour some cold water on these emergencies. What's this challenge all about?

21:41Paul Hunter:So a number of American businesses who import goods from areas hit by Donald Trump's tariffs, remember Liberation Day and the reciprocal tariffs, they were originally called reciprocal. He just put blanket tariffs on trading partners. They challenged him in the court and lower courts ruled that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority, that the president doesn't actually have the power to do this, that this is actually up to Congress because Congress is in control of taxation and tariffs are taxes. And so it went before the Supreme Court and we're waiting for when the Supreme Court will issue its opinion on this.

22:21Paul Hunter:And so if the Supreme Court rules against Trump and they say, you know what, the president did exceed his authority. He does not have the power to do this. There could be sort of a huge sort of spectrum of sort of consequences or changes that happen. It could mean the tariffs are no longer allowed to be imposed. could force the Trump administration to possibly give out refunds. But I want to flag something particularly for Canada. So Canada does have some tariffs that would be affected by the Supreme Court case, depending on which way it goes. And it is those tariffs based on the border emergency and the fentanyl emergency.

22:57Paul Hunter:But these are the tariffs that have the huge exemption. So if you're shipping a good into the United States and it's compliant with Kuzma, you don't have to worry about tariffs. It's all good. It can still trade for free. The thing is, if those tariffs go away, while Canada will obviously welcome the end of a tariff, the question is what comes next? Trump and his team have said they have a strategy ready to go. They will introduce different tariffs, different measures, licensing fees. And will Canada get hit by different tariffs where they don't have an exemption? That's the big question. because they're not going to put this away.

23:40Paul Hunter:Donald Trump has said this is sort of the path that he is on and he's not going to back down from it. So is Canada going to get hit harder possibly or maybe not? Maybe there is some miracle and exemptions will continue. But again, that is only if the court rules against the Trump administration.

23:55Willy Lowry:Gosh, it's complicated.

23:58Paul Hunter:What a time to be a small business owner. Oh, my goodness. It would be so hard or not even small business order. Even on the refunds, you mentioned the refund.

24:05Willy Lowry:There's a complication thing. But I think this notion that try and try again, right? And if this doesn't work, they will try something again. If that doesn't work, they'll try something else and something else and something else and something else, will you? Oh, I have very little. Why go to me when we have Katie Simpson over here?

24:25Katie Simpson:You know what?

24:26Paul Hunter:I had to cover the renegotiation of NAFTA, and it taught me a lot about trade. But I'll never forget. More power to you. One last thing about the tariffs. Um, so Donald Trump, when he announced the reciprocal tariffs, um, it was in the Rose Garden and Trump has got his big board up and we're trying to, we're sort of far back and my vision is horrible. I can't really see. And we're, we're trying to figure out, okay, where's Canada? Where's Canada on this list? And someone from the White House staff starts handing out the list basically of all the countries that are going to be hit. And me and my colleague from the Canadian press are standing there going through like eight pages, just flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping.

25:04Paul Hunter:And then we realized, oh my God, Canada's not in here. Canada's not in here. What is going on? And so we had to try and track down someone from the White House. Is there a reason why Canada isn't here? Has Canada been spared from this? What's going on here? And it was that Canada wasn't going to be included in this batch of sort of tariffs. And it just sort of spoke to the fact that Canada had been anticipating that it would be hit in these reciprocal tariffs. And no one knew until the Trump administration was handing out the paper that that was going to be the case.

25:32Katie Simpson:But Greenland was, I believe.

25:34Paul Hunter:I don't remember.

25:35Katie Simpson:You know what? I don't remember that. As was the beautiful island of Réunion.

25:39Willy Lowry:I think, speaking of Rose Garden, I was there when the, as Trump would call it, the USMCA, as we call Kuzma, was signed off on. And on that day, I recollect he said it was a great deal.

25:51Katie Simpson:The greatest deal. The gold standard. Of course, he negotiated it.

25:54Willy Lowry:Yes. But now it's a terrible deal and needs to be renegotiated, you know, as in the year ahead. Look, that's a great place to leave this conversation for now, I would say. But clearly a lot more to talk about. And that's what we'll be doing here every week on two blocks from the White House. Hit follow in the podcast player you're using right now so you never miss an episode. Katie, Willie, sobering or not, this was good.

26:18Paul Hunter:I hope that we can talk about something positive one day.

26:20Katie Simpson:I don't see that happening.

26:22Paul Hunter:Not in the near future.

26:22Katie Simpson:Not for a little while.

26:24Willy Lowry:Jeefers, thanks. On that note, thanks to both of you. We'll see you again next week. Thanks, Paul.

26:31Paul Hunter:Thank you. Sorry.

26:33Katie Simpson:I didn't know you didn't want me to say thank you. And I want to be the only thank you.

26:43Katie Simpson:For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.