Last Week Today Episode 184 Show Notes for Monday, February 3rd, 2025
Tariffs off the Table for 30 Days as Negotiations Continue, Bernier's Overview, USAID is DOGE’s First Juicy Target, CDN Politicians Walk Back New Taxes, No Traitors in Parliament & Catholic Outcry!
Tariffs off the Table for 30 Days as Negotiations Continue
According to the February 3rd, 2025 CTV News post, “Canada to appoint a ‘Fentanyl Czar’ and bolster border as Trudeau and Trump reach deal to delay tariffs, ” Canada and the United States appear to have avoided a costly tariff war, for now at least, after leaders of both countries found some common ground during their second call on Monday.
U.S. President Donald Trump had ordered 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports, with the exception of energy, which would be subject to a 10 per cent tariff. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced counter tariffs on $30 billion in American goods, primed to rise to $155 billion later this month.
But we’re all now friends again, at least for the next thirty-days.
To be fair, while the Trump administration was more than capable of implementing their threatened tariffs, its difficult to see how Canada’s “lame duck” Trudeau administration can do anything more than bluff and threaten, given the minority government, the proroguing of Parliament, the expected upcoming election and the ongoing Liberal leadership campaign to replace Canada’s current PM.
Most of the accommodations on the Canadian side seem related to controlling the Canadian border and curbing the importation and re-exportation of the both into and out of Canada and into the US and with security considerations.
As outlined in the February 2nd, 2025 RBC Economics post, “A US Canada trade shock now in play: first economic takeaways.” this is the most significant trade shock since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of the 1930s, which are widely blamed for exacerbating and prolonging the Great Depression.
At least, that’s the story the legacy media seems to be currently popularizing. The reality is much more nuanced.
The US president is implementing “American First” policies designed to develop new government revenue revenue streams, provide relief to American citizens by decreasing or removing current US income taxes, bolster supplies of “critical” minerals required for US manufacturing and encourage the manufacturers to relocate to American soil.
Whether or not this policy is beneficial to US trading partners like Canada, Mexico and the US, is another story entirely.
A good overview of the current situation is the February 2nd, 2025 Mark Moss on YouTube post, “Trump’s Tariffs: The $1 Trillion Bet No One’s Talking About!”
Not a lot of people know what tariffs against international trade actually means. The best description seems to be the February 3rd, 2025 Peoples Party of Canada (PPC) press release, “Maxime Bernier’s response to Trump tariffs.”
The post, credited to PPC leader Maxime Bernier, reminds us of some useful things. According to Bernier:
It's important to understand that the 25% tariffs announced today by President Trump are NOT being imposed on Canada, but will be paid for by American consumers and businesses who buy products imported from Canada. Tariffs are a tax, and the Americans who will have to pay more or for our products will be the first to suffer.
Of course, Canadian exporters of these products will lose customers, contracts and sales, and will be forced to reduce production and lay off workers. Or they will lower their prices to keep market share and see their profits diminish.
With 75% of our exports going south of the border, our economy will certainly be hit badly by this measure.
The stupidest thing our government can do to face this crisis is to impose the same kind of "dollar-for-dollar" tariffs on American imports.
The U.S. economy is ten times larger than ours, far less dependent on trade than ours, and far less dependent on our market than we are on theirs..
Not only would retaliation tariffs have a far less impact on U.S. exporters, they would immediately impoverish Canadian consumers who are forced to pay more for imported products and destabilize Canadian companies that need U.S. input in their production processes.
This would double the negative effects of American tariffs on our economy.
In essence, Bernier is objecting to the current Canadian response to the American tariffs.
Bernier also seems to understand that the US is committed to its tariff strategy for a number of very good reasons. Canada’s only real options are to join the US and Mexico (and maybe Greenland) in the creation of what is essentially a North American defense zone with reduced tariffs, or else strike out on its own.
Canada has surprisingly little leeway in current negotiations.
As outlined in the January 31st, 2025 Financial Post story, “Canadian economy shrinks in biggest decline in almost two years,” Canada’s economy is currently shrinking.
The Canadian government had planned a variety of mitigation strategies to shield the Canadian economy from the worst of the Trump tariffs, including punitive Canadian tariffs, throwing government printed money at the problem to insulate Canadian businesses affected by the tariffs, and pulling US based LCBO products from Ontario store shelves.
Those options will likely go on hold for another thirty days.
Its worth noting that Canada isn’t special in this areas. As outlined in the February 3rd, 2025 New York Times post, “Canada Follows Mexico in Reaching Deal to Delay Trump Tariffs,” the same US plan is currently rolling out against Mexico. Tariffs are also rolling out against China and are expected to soon be implemented against the EU.
Stand by for adventure. The international trading environment is at the beginning of undergoing the biggest shakeup since the 1930’s.
Also in the News this Week
USAID is DOGE’s First Juicy Target
As outlined in the February 2nd, 2025 Yahoo News post, “Musk Says DOGE Halting Treasury Payments to US Contractors,” US President Donald Trump has put Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO — and largest donor to his election effort — in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the administration’s effort to modernize federal information technology and cut government waste.
And Musk may have found DOGE’s first juicy target, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the government agency responsible for administering foreign aid.
Over the weekend, Elon Musk threatened to eliminate the main US agency handling foreign aid because of massive fraud and corruption.
On Monday, it was announced that USAID would merge with the State Department under Marco Rubio's leadership, although the move appears to require congressional approval.
Musk is posting his findings on “X” and those findings are highly controversial. As summarized and revised from a February 3rd, 2025 Grok query, DOGE has claimed to uncover instances where the Treasury Department authorized payments to fraudulent or even terrorist entities.
According to the Grok AI:
Musk has stated that payment approval officers were instructed to approve all payments without denial, which raises serious questions about oversight and accountability.
There have been allegations that USAID, which oversees humanitarian, development, and security programs globally, has been involved in wasteful spending. This includes reports of USAID funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to what some describe as CIA fronts or favored organizations under the pretext of humanitarian aid.
Specific examples were mentioned, such as high proportion of being allocated towards overhead (over 60% of the budget), $45 million for diversity scholarships in Burma and $50 million for condom distribution in Gaza, and a whopping $1.7 Billion going to foreign groups, including $40 Million allocated toward the World Health Organization, that no one seems to have known about before the DOGE investigation.
President Donald Trump and DOGE have targeted USAID for potential closure, with Musk suggesting that the agency has been run by "radical lunatics". This has sparked a political debate, with Democrats expressing concerns about national security and the legal authority of DOGE's interventions.
There's been a significant shake-up within USAID, including the resignation of the Chief of Staff and the placement of top security officials on leave following disputes over access to classified materials.
As outlined in the February 3rd, 2025 Shore News Network post, “Zelenskyy Says $100 Billion in U.S. Aid to Ukraine Has Gone Missing,” even corrupt Ukraine president/dictator/CIA stooge Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t believe he’s gotten all the foreign aid he’s been promised.
As outlined in the February 3rd, 2025 Al Jazerra explainer, “What is USAID, and how central is it to US foreign policy?,” the agency is central to US foreign policy because of the huge amounts of money it can disburse to the local populations.
In some cases, the funds available for local distribution makes local USAID offices more influential than the local CIA office. There are even reports that CIA works through local USAID offices to disperse funds to support clandestine policy initiatives, in which case, many of the disbursements would be off-books.
As noted in the February 3rd, 2025 New York Times post, “Rubio Blames ‘Insubordination’ for Changes at Aid Agency,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio seems to have taken over as acting director of USAID, for the short-term.
CDN Politicians Walk Back New Taxes
2. Meanwhile, back in Ottawa, the Liberal leadership hopefuls are backing off from almost every recent tax increase proposal.
The January 31st, 2025 Global News post, “Ottawa pushes back proposed capital gains tax changes to 2026,” notes that Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced Friday that the Liberals will not implement a planned hike to the capital gains inclusion rate until January 1st, 2026, pushing back from the original date of June 25th, 2024.
The January 31st, 2025 CBC News post, “Carney says he'll scrap the carbon tax, introduce green incentive program if he becomes leader,” discusses Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney’s decision to “to scrap the Liberal government's carbon pricing policy should he win the Liberal Party leadership contest in a vote on March 9th.” Carney plans to replace the carbon tax with something he calls a “green incentive program.”
The February 2nd, 2025 Global News post, “Pierre Poilievre has called for emergency tax cut to put Canada 1st while condemning Trump’s tariffs,” notes that opposition leader Pierre Poilievre is also offering up a tax cut.
The consensus opinion right now is that no leader will survive the expected upcoming Federal election if they commit to raising taxes.
No Traitors in Parliament
Also in the news tonight, there’s no traitors in Parliament, at least according to the January 31st, 2025 National Post story, “10/3 podcast: No 'traitors' in Parliament, foreign interference inquiry finds.”
The story references the Final Report of the Foreign Interference Commission, released on Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 to less than stellar reviews.
The report found essentially nothing to see here and suggested that we should all move along now.
Whether the report survives the test of time is uncertain.
Catholic Outcry
And finally tonight, here’s the January 31st, 2024 Mongo Minds on Bitchute post, “Tom Homan Responds To Catholic Outcry.”
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