Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We’re talking about all of it with Zack Beauchamp of Vox, who recently reported deeply on the roots of Trump’s trade warring. Zack, good to have you on again.
Sargent: So to recap, after trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed last month, U.S. tariffs went into effect on Canadian goods. And a few days ago, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs went into effect. Trump has since amplified the claim that Canada is ripping off the U.S. So, Zack, can you just set the record straight on that? Is Canada ripping us off through trade or not?
There’s a view that, well, this policy that you’re doing disadvantages our farmers and advantages yours, or maybe your labor practices and regulations are a little bit different from ours, and that hurts us in this particular exchange, costs us some jobs. That is basically the most normal of possible disagreements any countries could have about trade relations.
And the U.S. benefits from trade with China too, to be clear. It’s just that China has done things that make the benefits far more one-sided than they should be. But when it comes to Canada, there’s no argument by any serious or credible economist that having an open trade relationship with Canada has been net harmful to the United States. Quite to the contrary.
So I think he’s referring to the fact that we’ve had free trade agreements with Canada in autos going back many decades. And to your point, the real story here is that the auto industry in America and Canada is kind of like one thing. It’s so integrated that it’s actually become kind of a transnational entity, in a sense. And that’s actually been good. It’s allowed a lot of specialization.
Beauchamp: Yeah, I mean, it’s very confusing when you hear Trump talk about trade, because he seems to misunderstand some very, very basic elements of what global trade is. Like he thinks that when you’re importing from a country, you’re giving them money. You’re just giving them money, right? And then that money doesn’t come back to you in any way, it doesn’t benefit the people in your country from getting those goods. They aren’t helping anything.
Sargent: Yeah, I mean, it’s like when I go to the grocery store, I want to give them my money so that I don’t have to farm, right? In order to grow my own food. That’s sort of the essence. So then I can do other stuff, right, Zack?
Beauchamp: I mean, trade is just a domestic economy on a global scale, right? On a really basic level. A domestic economy is people exchanging goods and services to allow for mutual economic growth through increasing productivity, right? That’s what a domestic economy is. Trade allows you to do that on a global scale.
This guy defends Trump, but note the phrase “for whatever reason.” No one knows why he’s doing this, right? Zack, you dug into this. I mean, what do you make of that Republican angst?
I mean, they wouldn’t go that far, because they’re still operating within the confines of the Republican Party. But it just is not the policy fight that any constituency in the Republican Party, or even in the MAGA movement, was really gearing up for.
But no—so what’s happened is that Trump has managed to infuriate one of America’s, if not America’s, closest allies. Certainly one of its closest allies, but I’d make the case for closest, at least in the 20th and 21st centuries. And its neighbor, one of its closest allies—and has done so for no discernible political or strategic rationale. It’s just not a rational thing to be doing.
When I look at numbers like that—you know, Maine and Michigan are not that blue. And you have a huge majority of working-class voters opposing the tariffs in what are functionally swing states. I think that really blows up a whole lot of narratives.
Beauchamp: I mean, I think it’s because these things have tangible effects on people’s lives, right? I remember earlier this summer I drove from where I live, in southwestern Ontario, to New York to meet some friends, upstate New York. And I went into a brewery that was local there, and not that far from the Canadian border. And I told them that though I’m American, I’m living in Canada now. And they got sad.
On another level, it’s saying that we have a level of affection and connection to these people because we live so close to each other. There’s a real sense that this is sort of an integrated region, that you just pop over the border if you want to go somewhere for a long weekend quickly, or just to visit something.
It’s just, in these border states, there is a commitment to being part of this broader ecosystem. It’s part of people’s identity, it’s part of their daily lives, it’s part of how they make their money, it’s part of how they see themselves. And Trump is disrupting that.
And so I think the broader American reaction is confusion. The immediate reaction in more affected areas, or places where this feels more real, is, why are you doing this to us? Why are you doing this to our friends?
I want to try to get at what this might mean in a deeper sense, though. Trump also posted this graphic of all of North America, Canada very prominent in this graphic, all of it being defined as the USA, as if it’s a threat to essentially annex all of Canada.
Sargent: Yeah, I think that’s right. But it definitely, you know, it was a shot at Canada. It was really Canada Derangement Syndrome in the raw. But so, I thought Paul Krugman had an interesting line about some of this stuff, where he said that Canada is probably going to get hurt worse than the United States—although the U.S. will also get hurt in these trade hostilities. But Canada will put up with it. They know why they’re fighting. As Krugman put it, they’re fighting to defend their national identity.
At the end of the day, MAGA nationalism just melts away when you scrutinize it for a second. And all that’s left is dear leader’s whims and unhinged proclivities, don’t you think?
And so he thinks he can bully them around—especially when you combine that with his, I think, longtime fascination with tariffs, again in a sort of non-rational way. And his view—this is sort of the sense I get from him—that he’s starting to think about his legacy, and he wants it to be a physically larger United States, right?
You can find some ideological antecedents for the idea of Canada becoming part of the U.S. Interestingly, Pat Buchanan wrote about that at one point—the paleoconservative politician who was really a predecessor of Trump in some ways. But Buchanan and Buchananism wasn’t about Canada. That didn’t make it a major policy priority, inasmuch as it accepted the post-NAFTA order.
I mean, I think the best way to think of it is like mad-king hours, you know? And the Lake America-Lake Ontario thing is a really good example.
And I think maybe people that you’re talking about in places like Michigan, who understand themselves as participating in a kind of broader thing across the border, who see themselves as integrated with Canada, look at this kind of talk, and it just sounds like white noise to them.
So I’m hopeful that there’s kind of an opening here for the failures of Trumpism, the world historical failures, like this ridiculous trade war, to open the way to get lots of Americans to understand interdependence and positive-sum relationships, on immigration and trade, as positive things. Do you think there’s maybe an opening for that?
Or writer, or, I guess, in this day and age, filmmaker, podcaster, whatever—
Beauchamp: Well—OK, all right. But that—it needs to be articulated as such, right? The case needs to be made. And I think, at that level of abstraction, it’ll appeal to some people, to be sure, but it won’t become the way that people understand that. I think there is, as you say, an opening for somebody to use this experience as a deeper examination of what’s gone wrong with Trumpism.
Sargent: I agree. Just to underscore why I’m a little bit optimistic, and to return to your point that we need a storyteller to knit all this together—I think that when you’ve got people in a state like Michigan saying, as you put it, Mr. Trump, why are you doing this to our friends?—in their heads, they are intuitively understanding the situation the way we are describing it.
They’re intuitively in that place that Democrats can speak to, I think, effectively, and say, MAGA right-wing nationalism is a catastrophe. It’s not the way the world works. We can do better.
It’s not just going to come up out of the ether. It will require intellectual entrepreneurship to persuade people that this is the case. That’s the only point that I’m making there.
Beauchamp: Yeah. I think that’s right. This is part of it. It’s clear, I think, that the American public does not want what Trump is doing with trade policy. What they take from that, right—just sticking with the specific issue of trade, rather than the sort of broader ideological narrative around MAGA—that is a very open question, right?
Maybe there’s a different way. You don’t have to go full NAFTA, or full, you know, globalization, peak era of the ‘90s. Maybe, politically, that’s not the right thing to move toward after Trump—who’s to say. But the lesson is certainly not that the right thing to do all along was to follow Trump’s impulse on these issues. I think the evidence is weak that this was ever an especially important issue in Trump’s wheelhouse that caused him to win a lot. It’s very weak, I think.
Sargent: Very well put. And if Democrats win the midterms, they can grab hold of this. Zack Beauchamp, always good to talk to you, man. Thanks so much for coming on.
Beauchamp: Of course.
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