Culture
Man of steel, and aluminium: Carney talks trade with Trump
In this episode of The Intelligence, host Jason Palmer discusses Mark Carney's upcoming trade negotiations with President Trump amidst rising tariffs affecting Canada's economy. The conversa...
Man of steel, and aluminium: Carney talks trade with Trump
Culture •
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Speaker A
THE Economist hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. When cable television first took hold, new kinds of programming got people buying infomercials and shopping channels. Now that same mix of commerce and entertainment is starting to play out online, creating a new generation of shopping addicts. And John Singer Sargent was the most prolific American painter of the 19th century. For a while, his lush portraits of the well heeled went out of fashion. But in an age where sneaky looks into luxurious lives are all the social media rage, he's back. First up, though, President Donald Trump likes to say that in negotiations with Canada, America holds all the cards. Yet Prime Minister Mark Carney points out that Canada can get dealt in elsewhere.
Speaker B
And yes, we're going to spend more time to extend the analogy in the game with the United States, but we're going to play other games with other players.
Speaker A
Mr. Carney will be in Washington today to talk with Mr. Trump about trade barriers, barriers that are starting to weigh on Canada's economy. And so to weigh on Mr. Carney himself.
Speaker C
Mark Carney's government enjoys one of the highest, if not the highest, approval rating of any big Western country. But it has started recently to slip.
Speaker A
Hal Hodson is our America's editor.
Speaker C
This seems to be because Canadians are basically feeling the pain from Trump's tariffs on aluminium and steel and wood in Canada. And they now cite the rising cost of living as their number one priority, far and away outweighing everything else they used to have standing up to Donald Trump right up there at the top of their priority list. But that is dropping down. And so Mark Carney's status as this guy who stands up to Trump and Canadians love him for it, that's kind of ebbing away and they're feeling more and more pain. So it's incumbent on him to go and try and stop the source of their pain.
Speaker A
So what will that look like on the ground? To your mind, what's his sales pitch likely to be?
Speaker C
Well, Carney actually sat down to talk about that for our upcoming video series, the Insider.
Speaker B
There are certain areas where we will want to be integrated and continue to fully cooperate with the United States.
Speaker C
Carney's team is going down there expecting to get some form of partial relief, probably on steel, possibly aluminium. And it's worth noting that the aluminium tariffs are actually already hurting American companies quite seriously because they just can't get enough aluminium to meet their needs. But getting relief on these tariffs is really Only Mark Carney's most immediate concern, and sure, it's a big one, but he's got a whole much bigger, much deeper challenge, which is, to paraphrase him, rebuilding Canada's economy to be something that can exist happily next to a United States, which he believes has changed permanently.
Speaker B
Is that we went through a multi decade period of steadily increasing integration with the United States and to some degree with the rest of the world, and that that process is over. That's a rupture. That's a change in a very quick period of time.
Speaker C
Carney basically thinks that even after Trump leaves office, an America of the future is going to keep barriers to its market access, that it's going to be very hard for a future leader to drop those barriers and move back towards free trade.
Speaker A
So what is Mr. Carney thinking about how to adapt Canada to that imagined world?
Speaker C
So these are Carney's other players and other games, and he's got a lot of plans for Canada. There's stuff that he wants to do at home. He wants to liberalize trade within Canada. Canada notoriously has quite high barriers to trade between the provinces and car. He says that if you take those barriers down, you get a GDP boost of, I think he said, a quarter of a trillion dollars. So that's quite a lot. And he says that that alone would be enough to offset even the worst case scenario where Trump tears up the trade deal with Canada and puts high tariffs on all Canadian exports. So that's a pretty big deal just on its own. He's also planning to build vast amounts of infrastructure all across Canada. Pipelines for oil and gas to the coasts, expanding ports, electricity lines, mines for critical minerals. All of which ties into the last big thing he's trying to do, which is to massively expand the Canadian trade world. He wants to get Canada out of this linkered local minima that it's been in for a long time, where why would it bother forging big trade partnerships abroad? It's got the world's most dynamic, richest consumer market on its doorstep. So if you're a Canadian business, why are you flying to Asia to try and flog your stuff? You can just sell it to the Americans and that's no longer going to be the way.
Speaker A
Okay, but if Canada goes looking for other customers, what does that look like?
Speaker C
The number one target for Carney is Europe. The European Union, the world's second largest free trading bloc after North America and usmca, the trade arrangement that Canada, Mexico and the United States are part of. That one's fairly easy. Those discussions are already underway. The second one is a multilateral free trade agreement called cptpp. It used to be a collection of countries with Pacific coastlines, but then the United Kingdom joined it, and now it's just a collection of countries and Canada is in it. It represents about 14% of the world's GDP. It's pretty big. It's the fourth largest free trade area in the world. And what Carney says he wants to do, in effect, is bridge these two free trade zones together to make one almighty free trade zone out of the free traders of the willing and then use that muscle to stand up to the trade practices of China and the United States.
Speaker A
That sounds, in principle, very sensible. But also, trade deals take time.
Speaker C
Trade deals take a lot of time. And also investment in building pipelines takes quite a lot of time. And actually dropping your internal barriers to free trade takes a lot of time because the provinces have their own interests like maple syrup and booze, that they care a lot about. And in the meantime, the trade shock is there right now and Canadians are suffering. And we're back to why is Carney going to Washington? He's going to Washington to try and get an alleviation of the short term pain that he really does require in order to get to this long term Canadian nirvana. Two thirds of Canadian manufacturers say explicitly that they're experiencing pain because of the tariffs. Unemployment is up. Canada's annualized GDP fell by 1.6% in the second quarter of 2025. Carney says it's stabilized a bit, but that's pretty serious drop. And so any deal that Carney can strike with Trump that can ease that pain is gonna be very, very welcome at home.
Speaker A
But what about the diplomatic environment around this? You mentioned that Canadians are less exercised about standing up to Mr. Trump than they once were.
Speaker C
Yeah. So it's a little complicated. When you listen to the interview with Carney, he talks about why his government is popular relative to others. He says that they are popular because they do what they say they're gonna do, and they do it quickly and they do it at big scale. And that's what people like. And he says our motto is Build Canada strong. That's what. But it's quite possible that the people don't care about that. And the reason the people like his government is because he made a big show of standing up to Trump during the election. He was a big anti Trump icon, and he is the opposite of Trump in many ways. And it's possible that that affection for his government is going to wane over time, just by dint of it being further and further from the contest where Carney said we will never give Canada away. And he keeps repeating these lines, taking on Trump's suggestion that Canada should join the United the 51st state. But it has less and less traction over time.
Speaker A
But nevertheless, even if it's not explicit anti Trumpness, Mr. Carney has said that the previous relationship with America is over. Things do have to change.
Speaker C
He said the way things were is over. But he's very clear that that's because of choices America has made that he says he respects. But what he's equally clear about is that a relationship with America will continue and that he wants it to be a relationship that's as good as. And underlying all of this is the fact that Canada is never getting away from the United States. The United States is a superpower on its doorstep. It is deeply integrated with Canadian defence, with defence of the Arctic. Their economies, as we've already said, are deeply intertwined. Carney even talks about deepening the connections between some of the sectors of the economy. So the Canadian future? Yeah, sure, if Carney is successful, it involves booming trade with Europe and Asia and a liberalized Canadian economy. But it also involves a lot of America and it will do for a long time to come.
Speaker A
Hal, thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker C
Lovely to be here, Jason, thanks.
Speaker A
The full interview with Mark Carney will air on Thursday 9 October, when the economist launches its new video offering called the Economist Insider. You can find it on our app and our website. On the Internet, you're never far away from something being sold to you. Social media have product placements just like films do. Influencers pocket cash to recommend all kinds of products or places. Now platforms like TikTok are going further with e commerce features and it all keeps blurring the line between shopping and entertainment.
Speaker D
So shopping has always been very difficult to resist on the Internet. Websites are made with colors that draw you in and buttons that draw you in.
Speaker A
Avantika Chilcote is the Economist's Global Business correspondent.
Speaker D
But now with social media, and particularly with live streaming, it's getting even more difficult to resist that urge to spend splurge.
Speaker A
Sorry, tell me about the overlap between shopping and live streaming.
Speaker D
So shopping in the west has generally been something you did on a website. You'd go on an e commerce site and scroll through products and check out. But that's changing very quickly, particularly amongst the young. For one, people are shopping directly via social media. If you use TikTok for example, you'll see TikTok shop, which is a shopping function that lets you shop directly onto the app. Specifically, one thing that's getting very popular is live stream shopping. Hi, I'm Molly from Dolce Glow. We are now live on TikTok shop. So we are going to be doing some bundles, some mystery boxes. It looks a bit like television shopping, which is the sort of thing you would see on hotel televisions or sort of in the 1980s daytime television. So how stunning are these ladies?
Speaker E
I'll link it in the yellow basket for you. If you're looking for a Renko, I'll link it.
Speaker D
Grabbing. But it's just a quite jovial, charismatic host showing you products, interacting somehow with the audience and just flogging you stuff.
Speaker A
Okay, so as a child of the 80s, I remember lots of this kind of television programming. What's the problem with it? Just a new means, a new platform, a new medium to flog your stuff, as you say.
Speaker D
Well, one thing you're noticing is that particularly in East Asia, where these innovative forms of retail are really popular, you're seeing a really high rate of people having shopping addiction. And shopping addiction is not just, you know, the odd spur of the minute purchase. It's actually something that becomes pretty all consuming. I spoke to lots of therapists about this and they're comparing it to online gambling or porn addiction. It's something that is linked to anxiety, it's linked to depression, it leaves people with high debt and it sort of ruining their relationships. I kept asking these therapists for examples. You know, how would you know if you had shopping addiction? And it's stuff like hiding parcels or receiving a parcel and actually not knowing what's in it, receiving a parcel and immediately putting it in the bin because you don't actually want the stuff, it's just that action of making the purchase that you are completely addicted to.
Speaker A
I guess the question is, it's always been easy to buy things online. Why are these new means, these live streaming channels and so on, such a better route, apparently, to an addiction.
Speaker C
Effy.
Speaker D
So one thing I noticed is that there's a huge amount of literature on this, academics studying shopping addiction through these channels. And what I noticed is this link between entertainment and retail. So the things that are addictive are things that give you a dopamine hit. You get the surge in a chemical in your body and you start to chase that surge in dopamine. And there's one paper I was looking at that's done by researchers in China and they point to these atmospheric cues in a life stream. So an atmospheric cue might be the fun explanation a host gives you of the product that they're showing, or it might be the live chat that a viewer has with other viewers. And these are all things that become addictive. They give you a dopamine hit. They could become things that you seek out. Similarly, with some research I looked at in the west, this idea of sort of having fomo, of having a fear of missing out on social media, where you can see reviews by other people, you can see what other people are buying, you can see even sometimes how many other people have purchased this product, it can create in people a fear of missing out which brands can exploit and which people do become quite addicted to.
Speaker A
So what you're describing here is a kind of refinement of the same things that keep people addicted, if you like, or extremely tuned into social media channels and just kind of leveraging that for turning the attention economy into the stuff economy.
Speaker D
Yeah, exactly. And the place that you really see this far ahead of the west is particularly in China. That's why so much of the good literature I've read has come from China. They've been innovating in this way for a very long time. Leave social media aside for a second. But we talk a lot at the Economist about Temu and Shein, which are these e commerce giants in China. And if you go on their websites, personally I feel kind of overstimulated. There are all of these pop ups offering me limited time discounts. There are these buttons and stickers. A lot of the products seem to be discounted. It's very, very stimulating, basically. And you're also seeing that similar form of shopping on social media. So TikTok, which we know is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing based company, they have launched their TikTok shop function in the west relatively recently. In America, where it's quite new, you saw sales growth of 120% on TikTok shop in the first four months of this year. They've also then after that launched TikTok shop in France, Germany, Italy. You're seeing the same forms of shopping that are already popular in China basically being exported to the West.
Speaker A
But if this is a means to an addiction, a shared problem to some degree, does that mean that regulators should step in? Can they?
Speaker D
So the thing to be clear about is not everyone is going to get addicted to shopping. It's just if you're predisposed to this addiction, all of these new forms of shopping, and making it much more difficult to control. I mean, I spoke to a woman who had a shopping addiction in the 90s and she said, well, you know, at least at that point I could only shop between about 10am and 6pm E commerce made that worse. And now that you have this gamified social form of shopping, I can see how it's even more addictive. The link between live streaming, social media and shopping addiction is just being formed, and you're seeing regulators, particularly in the eu, becoming conscious of it. They have digital directives that are very strict about platforms that manipulate users through design and operation. At the moment, specifically, the European Commission is investigating Temu, that Chinese E commerce giant I mentioned, basically looking at whether they are making their product incredibly addictive. The thing I would say is when you speak to shoppers, a lot of the stuff that makes it addictive to shop also makes it incredibly convenient and quite fun. So I don't think it's going to be very easy to get retailers to stop innovating in this way. And to be honest, a lot of consumers might not really want that after all.
Speaker A
Avantika, thanks very much for your time.
Speaker D
Thanks for having me, Jason.
Speaker E
Detestable, boring, curious, monstrous crowd shattered.
Speaker A
Alexandra Sewage Bass is the Economist's culture editor.
Speaker E
Madame X, with the subject's heavy makeup and strap of her tight black gown falling off her shoulder, scandalized visitors to the Paris salon in 1884. In a concession to Prudes, its young American painter, John Singer Sargent ended up repainting the dress strap in its proper place. But he did cut his ties with Paris, leaving first for England and later America. His paintings capture sumptuous fabrics and elegant sitters, and they evoke the Gilded Age in which they lived and the golden surroundings of his patrons. Sargent's work blends the loose brushstrokes of Impressionism with a more formal and traditional style of painting that represents how a subject is actually looked. So you feel like you can almost know the person whose portrait he painted. A hundred years after Sargent's death, Sargent Hollitrie is thriving, the painters being celebrated in a recent documentary and a spate of museum shows, including ones at Tate Britain and Kenwood House in London and at the Musee d' Orsay in Paris. The Paris show is focused on his years in France. It was previously at the Metropolitan Museum, where it attracted around 500,000 visitors. It's more per day than the museum's most recent exhibition on Van Gogh, who is of course a far more famous name than Sargent.
Speaker D
I'm sorry to banish you up here.
Speaker E
But at least you don't have to.
Speaker D
Drag the painting along when you go home.
Speaker C
I'm happy, I assure you.
Speaker E
The light is excellent in here. Sargent also made a cameo of sorts on the Gilded Age. Gladys Russell of Robber Baron's Daughter had her portrait done by Sargent. Sargent is popular today, I think, because his paintings offer what social media posts and television shows such as the Real Housewives do. Both the front row seat and a backstage pass into the luxurious lives of the wealthy. The portraits strike a special chord in an era of social media where everyone is thinking about how to present themselves for public view. And so these portraits with the direct gaze of the subject at the viewer, do really well on social media. They're very alluring in a thumbnail size, partly because of that direct gaze and partly because of the bright colors that Sargent uses. John Singer Sargent is the most prolific American painter of the 19th century. He did about 900 oil paintings, many of which are portraits. I think that they really resonate with people today, not just because of the social media connection, but also because they offer an escape from today. They are glamorous, they are luxe. They're just extremely good paintings. And so people who go to the shows are often able to either suspend their worries and thoughts about today's era and then sometimes even see connections to today. As conspicuous consumption has gone into high gear and the wealthy continue to display their opulence in very public ways. I think that Sargent's paintings feel both of another time and extremely timely. He's spreading farther than he ever has. He's extremely popular in Asia. For example, this is the first solo show devoted to him in France. And so, as people may have heard of Madame X and the scandal around the painting, they're able to see the breadth of his work and how engaging so many of his portraits are. No one is calling his art detestable or boring anymore.
Speaker A
That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
Speaker C
Sam.