Taking stock: Bad blood, bad neighbours and the return of Elizabeth Holmes

Will Bain (0:02)

Hello, and welcome back to Business Daily from the BBC World Service, where today we are taking stock of a business week awash with social media videos, fake fights with ice hockey sticks, and Marching Canada geese with Donald Trump haircuts. A row which has ranged from serious concerns for businesses, both sides of that border in North America, to high fars around the naming of bodies of water. So today we've tried to take advantage of that, rather than argue about the name of lakes, we're going to try and make sense of the potential impact of that escalating U.S.-Canada trade row, with our guests north and south of, what's still at the time of recording, is Lake Ontario. And Andy Uhler is back with us. Andy is a freelance business and energy journalist, joining us from Austin, Texas, and north of the border. Columnist for Canada's CBC News, Takara Small, is joining us from Toronto. Who had the best social media game this week then, out of the two countries, Takara, before we get to the, well that's probably is the most serious bit, isn't it?

Takara Small (0:59)

Yes. I mean, Canada, I think takes the win here. There may be some disagreement on this call, but I think Canada has really pulled that ahead.

Will Bain (1:07)

Andy, it got kind of weird on the US side.

Andy Uhler (1:10)

Well, yeah, I mean, AI slop, sort of a site or part of it, right? Everything gets kind of weird with the Trump administration when they have a whole bunch of people putting a whole bunch of things into cartoons and things like that. So yeah, you never know.

Will Bain (1:24)

Yeah, from the cartoons to the serious impact on what it does for business, we're going to get into all of that today. So this is Taking Stock from the BBC World Service.

Yeah, not just the memes and the AI slop, as Andy put it going around this week, but also cheese, ice wine, golf carts and forklift trucks, the latest eclectic mix of products to be caught up in this escalating tariff. Rau, the US said it plans to ban the sale this week of all Canadian dairy and other imports, including motorcycles and most alcoholic beverages. Comes after Ottawa a little bit earlier on in the week imposed $20 billion of retaliatory tariffs on US goods. This is how the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney summed up why they were making that move.

Mark Carney (2:14)

The most fundamental issue is that the cumulative US demands revealed that they wanted us to become even more reliant on them. In too many areas, they wanted dependency, not a true economic partnership. In the spring of last year, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us. And I promised that that will never, ever happen.

Will Bain (2:36)

And the impact on business has been pretty immediate too. Now in their second year of that tariff warfare, and after what had been a bumper football World Cup between the countries at her Toronto pub, owner Katie Bradley said the impact of a prolonged trade war was still being felt.

Katie Bradley (2:53)

We're in that sort of uncertainty right now. We don't know how it's going to impact the restaurant industry right now, but food costs are constantly getting higher. Labour costs have to rise to reflect that.

I mean, alcohol used to be the way any restaurant would make their money and their buck, and even that. We see the cost of these goods getting higher and our margins getting smaller. And soon it's just going to be unsustainable. Restaurants are going to have to change and adapt and be a lot less interesting. And maybe, you know, the culture of dining out is dying a little.

Will Bain (3:29)

The old York Tavern, Takara, in Toronto. I understand that is a haunt of yours, right?

Takara Small (3:35)

It is. It's a place I'm quite familiar with. I used to frequent it when I was a student. And I find it really interesting that she used the word interesting because we have definitely seen smaller businesses suffer under what's happening under these tariffs.

Will Bain (3:49)

Already?

Takara Small (3:51)

Already. I mean, a lot of the impact isn't just related to this conversation, this ongoing relationship right now. This goes back to the first administration and obviously COVID didn't help. So people are really feeling the pain. And I will say it takes a lot to get Canadians riled up. It takes a lot to make Canadians angry. And I am seeing across the country people who are creating petitions to kick out US representatives in the country. We are seeing Canadians who are pledging not to buy anything from America, who are saying they will not visit America.