REGINA, Sask. — We look at how the geopolitical freeze is keeping Canadian snowbirds at home, hear from the University of Calgary on why the American midterm results will not stop the tariffs, and check in with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe on how the province is advancing major utility purchases to save local steel jobs.
Podcasts are available now on GX94, Yorkton, or on 620 CKRM, Regina, hosted by Steven Wilson. Or read the transcript below:
Steven Wilson — Welcome to Trade Dispute: Impact on the Prairies. I'm Steven Wilson. The United States ambassador to Canada is injecting a sudden burst of optimism into the cross-border trade standoff.
Speaking over the weekend, the ambassador publicly predicted that a finalized trade deal could be achieved before the New Year. However, the competing narratives coming out of the White House and the Prime Minister's office show the two sides remain fundamentally at odds over who is actually holding the leverage.
President Donald Trump continues to assert that the U.S. is extracting direct financial concessions from Ottawa, repeating his claim that Canada has agreed to provide duty-free fertilizer to benefit American farmers. Prime Minister Mark Carney is directly contradicting that narrative, stating that American negotiators are asking for less and offering more. The Prime Minister claims Washington is retreating from its aggressive posture and has officially taken Canadian red lines on sovereignty, culture, and third-party trade agreements entirely off the table.
As the diplomatic spin continues, the federal government is defending its aggressive economic response.
Following warnings from economists that the new $140 billion federal budget would trigger a debt crisis, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne aggressively pushed back yesterday, stating flatly to reporters that federal deficits are actually lower.
The economic fallout of the dispute is also reversing traditional seasonal migration. Demographic data published over the weekend shows that geopolitical hostility and high inflation are pulling Canadian snowbirds out of the U.S. Sun Belt, dealing a severe secondary blow to southern American economies that rely heavily on Canadian tourism dollars.
In Washington, Democrats are celebrating their midterm sweep of the House and Senate, but trade experts warn the election results will not bring immediate relief to the border. Carlo Dade is the Director of International Policy at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. He says the president's tariff powers are a structural issue that Congress cannot easily undo.
Carlo Dade — The issue we face with the U.S. in tariffs is structural. So this takes a couple seconds to explain. But tariffs are generally a power reserved for Congress.
It's the power to tax. However, Congress has ceded some of that power to the president to impose tariffs in emergency situations. These are the various acts that you hear in the media every day, Section 232, Section 301, et cetera, International Emergency Economic Powers, IEPA.
These are all powers that Congress has given to the executive to be able to impose tariffs. So the only way to repeal these tariffs is for Congress, both houses of Congress, to vote to do so. That is not a simple 50 plus one vote.
What is required is a majority, a super majority in both houses. So that means, for example, you need 67 votes in the Senate to overturn the president's tariffs. The election moved the Senate and it moved the House, but it did not move the House or the Senate to 67 votes.
So, for example, the Senate has voted three times already to repeal the Trump administration tariffs. In fact, in April of last year, the Senate voted 51 to 47, 51 to 48, to repeal the tariffs on Canada. Yet we still have the tariffs.
So until you get a movement where you have two thirds of both houses, the president will continue to be able to keep the tariffs he has in place and issue new tariffs.
Steven Wilson — In border states like Montana, business associations that have been desperately lobbying against the trade war are now distracted by massive domestic legal battles. Following the midterms, the Montana Chamber of Commerce and the Montana Mining Association filed federal lawsuits against their state attorney general over Initiative 194, a newly passed law banning corporate political spending.
Here on the prairies, farmers in Manitoba are scrambling to mitigate compounding financial losses as they attempt to survive recent severe flooding and the impenetrable American tariff wall.
In Saskatchewan, small and medium-sized businesses are being forced to adapt. Local manufacturers, including a Saskatchewan trampoline maker, are completely abandoning American consumer markets and retooling to operate within new intra-provincial trade frameworks.
The provincial government is also pivoting aggressively, officially welcoming an extension of a bilateral trade agreement with China through 2028. The deal secures Chinese market access for Canadian canola meal and peas in exchange for favorable access for Chinese steel and aluminum.
Speaking to the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Premier Scott Moe noted that while the vast majority of provincial exports remain untouched by American tariffs and import bans, the targeted sectors are facing complete devastation.
Scott Moe — In Saskatchewan, we are maybe somewhat more fortunate at the macro level than other provinces.
We have about 94 per cent of our exports to the U.S. are not being charged tariffs to date. However, the six per cent of our economy that is being charged tariffs, it's tremendously impactful. In the forestry industry, those tariffs are north of 35 per cent.
In the manufacturing industry, they're very, very significant.
Although it is six percent of the exports that we send to the U.S., it's a hundred percent impact on those particular exports and the people that are working in those industries.
Steven Wilson — To protect local jobs and serve as a domestic shield, Moe says the province is advancing internal utility purchases to keep heavy manufacturing plants running.
Scott Moe — What we have done in the instance of Saskatchewan Power Utility Corporation has advanced some of the procurement to our steel producers in the advanced procurement on steel power poles for example so that they can maybe bring four or five years of ordering into this year and keep everyone busy and maybe replace some of that American impact in production that would actually result in layoffs at the steel plant. So it's a way for us we get SaskPower gets the power poles to get them a year or two early but everybody gets to keep their job through a pretty tumultuous time.
It buys us some time so that we can actually get to that free and fair trade deal and actually have those steel workers employed throughout.
Steven Wilson — We will continue to watch for updates out of Ottawa and Washington particularly about the idea of a new deal by the end of the year as floated by the American ambassador. I'm Steven Wilson. Thank you for listening to Trade Dispute: Impact on the Prairies.
Listen weekdays at 9 a.m. on 620 CKRM and GX94 for new installments of Trade Dispute: Impact on the Prairies.
