"It Will Be Terminated" Trump Just Raised the Stakes on USMCA

As of now, it's just going to stick around for 10 years.

You're okay with that?No, it's not sticking around.It'll be terminated.

A deal is done.Kind of.Welcome back to Moose and Loose.My name's David.Today, we've got Donald Trump inking a MOU with Iran to end the conflict.And with that, we've got a bunch of stuff coming from the G7.

Carney gives up his chair to Trump during a photo op.Trump says quite a bit about USMCA on the tarmac.Let's jump into this.Starting this episode off on CBC, we have the updates here of what's happening, the deal, the MOU that's just been inked.

Donald Trump has signed a draft agreement with Iran aimed at ending the war.That was the US president commenting on the memorandum of understanding just last hour.He was on his way out of a dinner hosted by the French president in Versailles.The details of that 14 -point agreement were released earlier today by the Trump administration.It includes, among other things, an end to conflict on all fronts.Pakistan's premier says the deal takes immediate effect.

Well, this is very much a kind of pause, if you like.This is a memorandum of understanding, not a final peace deal that's apparently going to be negotiated over the next 60 days.Nonetheless, we do now know some of the key points of this, which include an immediate cessation of hostilities, not just Iran and the U .S., but Lebanon as well, which is, of course, crucial, something that the Iranians have long said is a major issue for them.Also, the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.

For 60 days, that will be without any tolls.But the Iranians are saying that after the end of this 60 days, during this time period that the MOU lasts for, after that, they will introduce a toll system, which is something the U .S.says is not acceptable.So already there you have another sticking point and another thorny issue that will need to be sorted out.dollars not gone down well here in the U .

S.with many Iran hawks.And although the U .S.is trying to say that this is – or certainly the Trump administration is trying to say that this is really the floor of negotiations, not the ceiling.They see this very much as the beginning of negotiations.

But certainly it does appear from the text that we've got that the U .S.has perhaps not got as much as Iran out of this deal.

And what is the latest from Tehran?

Well, Tehran is also also saying that this, I should have mentioned already, has been signed digitally by both countries' leaders.That in itself was something of a surprise because we expected it to happen on Friday in Switzerland.But it has been done seemingly while Donald Trump was having dinner with the French leader Emmanuel Macron.As for what Tehran is saying, they seem to be very happy about this deal, calling it a case of national pride and.terms of it a record of American failure.They are pleased about the fact that sanctions are being lifted on their oil exports, that there is going to be an unfreezing of some of their frozen assets, and the fact that the naval blockade that the US had enforced on their ports has now been lifted.

They are keen to concentrate on talking about sanctions relief, Iran and and And what does Mark Carney do?He gives him his chair.And if we do look, you can see Trump's chair is lower than at least this guy's chair.And who knows if they set this up?Because he's complaining he looks worse in photos because of it.I mean, they did this before at that UN speech.

They turned off the escalators as soon as Trump came in.So he had to walk up the stairs.

So you can see Carney here on the left gets up.

He sees an opportunity to give his chair.

Did you get it up?Are you Mr. Chairman?I'm the General Secretary.He had a great time.Yeah, he's a spy.

When you look at yourself in a picture, you say, what happened?I had the lowest grade in all of England.

You know what?This is the UN.I'm kidding, I'm kidding.It was so fun.

If you heard there, I think Carney said just like the UN.Like at the UN, something like that.In other Trump news, here he is on the tarmac saying he doesn't like USMCA.He may sign it.There's interesting language in here.

How long do you hope USMCA negotiations or review go on?

Well, it's not something that's To me, I think it's better without it, I mean, to be honest with you.I'm not a big fan of it.I liked it because it got us out of NAFTA.In other words, after six years, you had to close it.Got us out of NAFTA.That's the thing I liked about it most.

We do better without an agreement.I would rather leave it unsigned.I'd rather have it terminated.I would rather not have the agreement, but I may sign it.We do better as a country if we don't have an agreement.Yeah, I'm thinking about maybe we won't be able to make a deal.

I would rather not have the U .S.The primary reason I wanted it was because there was no way out of NAFTA, which was the worst trade agreement ever made, like ever.And they had no termination.And it was very hard to get USMCA for that reason.And I had a six -year clause.

Who would have thought I would have been here in the six years?They got it six years because they hoped I wouldn't be here.My term was supposed to be over with.So on top of everything else that comes up, I would prefer not having an agreement, but I'm open to doing it.We'll see what happens.

So as of now, it's just going to stick around for 10 years.You're okay with that?

No, it's not sticking around.It'll be terminated.In other words, it expires.

In a decade.

It expires.I prefer this.I view it as possibly expiring immediately.

He views it as possibly expiring immediately.That's not how it's written.How it's written is it goes to an annual review.It can't just be terminated.But I mean, if he wants to change it further than what it is now, he has to take it to Congress and the Senate, the House and all that and vote on it in the United States government.Now, it's interesting, too, saying that he may sign it.

I would prefer not having an agreement.But I'm open to doing it.

So he's open to doing it.So is this last minute negotiation playing hardball?I mean, who knows?Which is what they're discussing here on this panel.

We're sitting here at our desks just an hour out from the show, Dimitri, getting ready to talk about the subjects we thought about.And then all of a sudden, see that the president has clipped.And Josh Wingrove, who I should say, with Bloomberg, as I pointed out, also, of course, worked in Canada and is a Canadian for many years, just asking question after question about COSMA.He said a lot of different things, but in the aggregate, the president really, Dimitri, talked down the deal.What do you take from that?

Well, I would look at the other aggregate, where for the first time he actually said, I might sign it.And why might he sign it?Because he probably does not want to go through the process of the Houseand the Senate.I will tell you this, I know media always obsess over whether or not there was bilateral meetings.I will tell you, I'm glad there was not a bilateral meeting, and I will give you two examples.

Three Amigos Summit, George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, go for a walk on the beach in Cancun, and that is the moment where they both made the deal to figure out a solution to solve wood plumber.Example number two, G7 Summit, Muskoka, 11 .30 at night, Barack Obama and Stephen Harper sat on the couch and shushed all of us away.And that's where they made a deal for Canada to extend its military mission to Afghanistan in a non -combat role in exchange, I would say, for a deal on the Buy America.Vashti, you were there back then.So these bilateral meetings, while everybody says, oh, you didn't get one, I've sat in every single bilateral meeting during G7 summits, and I accompanied Prime Minister Harper to every single G7 summit.It's full of us officials and political staff who want to make sure that our bosses stick to the talking points, and our bosses want to ensure they stick to the talking points and not make any concessions.

So if Prime Minister Carney had some private conversations with that, which I suspect he did, I will see my glasses half full today.

I think there were in the prime minister did reference a number of conversations, Laura, with with the president that took place.I think he said, like, you know, we talked about his birthday.We talked about Iran.We talked about.I'm wondering, though, what you read into.I mean, the reason that the media is asking about whether or not there's a meeting is simply because the COSMO deadline is coming up and everyone's looking for any kind of indication about where things stand ahead of that.

Yeah, exactly.And I think Dimitri thinking that Carney's going to get some secret rendezvous meeting with Donald Trump, walking out into the grass.and then working all of this out, like that's ridiculous.Sure, maybe that's where those deals happen because you get rid of a lot of the people involved and it's just two guys talking.I don't think Carney will have that opportunity.I don't think he's going to get a deal there, nor do I think he wants to.

get a deal there.

Indication we got today was from Donald Trump.Dimitri reads it one way.What, what way do you read it?

I read it like Donald Trump doesn't actually know necessarily what he wants right now or that he is mixing his negotiation tactics, right?That was a lot of information in a very tiny clip that is really conflicting.And so I, right now I wouldn't say I feel particularly glass half empty or glass half full.status quo from a Donald Trump perspective to me. off the record, not official bilateral conversations at this moment in time are probably what we need to be happening.

But it comes down to it.Nobody knows what Trump's going to do.Just nobody knows.The only thing we can do is offer him an unbelievable deal that he can't say no to.But that's not what they're doing.

I think Canada wants to get certainty for businesses.We saw Michael Sabia, the clerk of the Privy Council, who sort of the right hand to Prime Minister Mark Carney say at the summit in Toronto last week that businesses need that reliability, businesses need that certainty.And that is a shift from the messaging we saw over the winter, where the sense was Canada was playing for time.They thought we could go through the midterms.And so I think that Carney, his top ministers and staff and officials are all sending that message out.What's interesting to me is that Canada seems more optimistic.

Mark Wiseman, the ambassador, said, don't worry, things are going well.Donald Trump, Jenna Charette, sorry, Donald Trump, excuse me, Dominic LeBlanc, my apologies to the minister.You know, all of them have sent the signals that sort of something's happening and and that something is moving in the right direction.I take more.

Is she really this clueless?Something's happening.There's nothing happening.They're not even talking.They're not having meetings.Nothing's happening.

Jumping back to what she said at the start here about how the Kearney government wants to getcertainty for businesses.Since when?All they care about is net zero and pushing that out.I'm guessing most of Carney's ministers and MPs have no idea what he's doing with his net zero agenda, Brookfield Global Transition Fund, Brookfield, all that stuff.They just go along with it because they're getting paid $200 ,000 or $330 ,000 a year.

But for this lady from the Globe and Mail to say, oh yeah, Carney wants to focus on getting certainty for businesses.Since when?Carney lies all the time.Tell me what he's doing.done in the last 60 days that has brought certainty for businesses in Canada.Name one thing.

Although you are attributing very keen communication strategy to any political party, so we'll see.But you're right, I would lean the same thing.I think what's also interesting is there isn't a lot of prepositioning being done about what concessions may have to be on the table.I read Tanya McCharles in the Toronto Star this morning, Sharon, who had a for the first time, you know, reported on a list of like a dozen things that the Americans want to see changed that were fairly specific in nature that would have a salient impact on big industries in this country.And I thought with great interest, like I've never heard a single thing about any of those things from anyone in the government.

There it is.That's exactly my point that I just made.The government is not doing anything to reassure businesses.And the Toronto Star just came out with an article, as she said, that points all this out, that there's a lot of things the American government wants to do.Canadian government not talking about it.They don't care.

It's all about getting rich for Mark Carney.

Interesting in terms of how the government has communicated this.And I think it's been purposeful.And a lot of it has been purposeful because I think they're not trying to trigger the masses.And I think what we've been talking about now is how This message around everything is going to be OK, we heard Ambassador Wiseman kind of say that at a speech this past week.We've heard that tone and tenor come out of pretty much everyone at the government table and the negotiators.And I honestly think that why they're doing that is because there is this misconception amongst the general public that come July 1st when the official negotiations start, that is the period when

that The U .S.has to decide, do they want to reset this deal or do they want to elongate it even longer?So I do think there is a bit of a strategic message that is going on on everyone's front around trying to bring the tone and tenor down.The one thing I will say is just going back to the whole idea where you have opposition members and others complaining that the prime minister didn't have an official bilateral meeting with the president.I've sat through five years of G7 meetings and I can tell you, similar to Dimitri, the most consequential things happen behind the scenes in these one -off discussions.

Never when it was staged, never when there was press allowed to come in, never when staff were around.So for anyone who thinks there's no actual discussions taking place, I'd say it's completely wrong.It's actually good that these are not happening in front of the camera because that's when Donald Trump often feels like he has to be performative and things tend to blow up.

That's right.So Donald Trump not meeting with Mark Carney is a good thing.Not getting a deal.Signing an agreement is a good thing.And I get the point that, you know, Dimitri and Sharon Kerr are making here with, well, Donald Trump will be more relaxed, more loose.He's not performative.

Maybe that's the case.But either way, they should still at least have a meeting to discuss things where Carney can bring up what's on the table for Canada.But obviously, we know that's not going to happen.This whole thing is a big performative thing from Mark Carney and Donald Trump.You don't want to be negotiating with this guy down to the last wire.We should have already got this deal a year to go and here they are dragging on to the last minute.

Well, what's going to happen?They have more leverage than us.Carney's not creating leverage.He's making us weak.He's putting us in a weak position.We have the ability to create so much leverage in approving a brand new pipeline in a refinery, which then threatens the $100 billion of oil we send down to Texas where they refine it and then sell it for $200 billion.

That's a financial hit to their economy.Yet Carney doesn't do that.Why?Because he's 91 % invested in America, net zero.What is it?Just think over the past

year and a half, Carney could have got a deal and he's waiting to the last minute.Now getting Donald Trump's time is very difficult.Look at everyone stare at Trump and what does he say?

Dear colleagues, we have a photo.

Would you like to stay for the meeting?It's okay with me.

Thank you very much.Thank you.

Now ending this episode off on a positive note, this is the poll I showed you from the previous video with this absolute domination here of the Conservatives in British Columbia.Provincial poll 47 % to 36%.But what you haven't seen is this modeled out is crazy.We're seeing the Conservatives in British Columbia would be up plus 20 to 64 seats and the NDP down to 28 seats minus 19 and the Greens going minus one.This is good news for Canada.We need to get as many provinces on board to fix the country.