Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / VCP: Liberation Day & Tariff Troubles with Sylvain Charlebois @FoodProfessor

Transcript

VCP: Liberation Day & Tariff Troubles with Sylvain Charlebois @FoodProfessor · The Vance Crowe Podcast

• 0:04
  Unknown: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today, I'm gonna break from doing my normal in-depth interviews with somebody or sharing one of the talks I gave recently because I think there's a subject that needs to be discussed.
• 0:17
  Many people in agriculture
• 0:19
  know about April 2 as Liberation Day, and the rest of The United States has barely seen this as a blip on their radar. But when I was up in Canada just a couple of weeks ago, this is all everyone was talking about. In fact, it had been talked about so much that people were throwing up their hands and saying, I wish we weren't only talking about tariffs.
• 0:39
  But I think this is an important and probably momentous,
• 0:43
  event that's about to happen.
• 0:45
  We could see this being one of the most consequential
• 0:48
  decisions in modern history because it's going to change our relationships
• 0:52
  not just with Canada and Mexico,
• 0:54
  but with countries all over the world. And it isn't just The United States pushing on these other countries. Now, places like Canada and India are taking advantage of the uncontrolled situation
• 1:05
  and making their own bed to be able to sleep in in the future.
• 1:09
  So I wanted to find somebody that could come on and illuminate this subject in a way that nobody else could. And that brought me to Sylvain Charlebois,
• 1:18
  otherwise known as the food professor on X.
• 1:22
  Now, I'll tell a little bit about how I encountered him in the episode. But I have to say, there are very few people that have studied this issue quite as deeply as he has. And what we are going to hear now is a thirty minute conversation where we discussed what's going to happen.
• 1:37
  How did Canada get into this position and how is this all going to play out between the two partners?
• 1:43
  The Food Professor is an extraordinary,
• 1:46
  commenter and actually has an amazing podcast called, what else, but The Food Professor. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. I hope it illuminates what's about to happen. And I think that everybody should mark this in their journal because
• 1:59
  there is the possibility that the world will never be the same after we have altered our trade relationships
• 2:06
  so dramatically
• 2:07
  as we are on April 2. We're gonna get to that in just a moment, but I did wanna mention about legacy interviews.
• 2:13
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• 2:19
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• 2:28
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• 2:35
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• 2:37
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• 3:04
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• 3:11
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• 3:29
  Alright. Without further ado, let's head to this interview with the food professor. So the way that I found out about who you were was I was at the, Grain Farmers of Ontario and your name got brought up, I think, on the stage and there were, like, kinda murmurs. And you definitely have a polarizing
• 3:45
  impact on, Canadian farmers. I think the supply managed people are, they were a little bit bristly about you.
• 3:52
  Unknown: Of course. Well, you were in Ontario, and supply management is a big piece of, of of the ag economy in that province, and it's the same in Quebec.
• 4:01
  And I do have some some really specific,
• 4:05
  opinions
• 4:06
  and views on supply management. I actually do think it hurts agriculture in general.
• 4:11
  I'm not I'm not, I'm not for abolishing the whole system,
• 4:14
  because there is there is a legacy there that we need to recognize.
• 4:19
  We are North of of The United States, and in The United States, you have,
• 4:24
  you have
• 4:25
  hundred thousands of very competitive, efficient
• 4:29
  dairy farms. So,
• 4:30
  overnight, if you were to abolish supply management, you would basically see the entire dairy sector in Canada collapse. And I'm not sure there's some appetite for that in Canada. So you have to think about some sort of bridge
• 4:43
  strategy from what we have now, which is highly inadequate
• 4:47
  to and not modern at all to something more efficient, more competitive
• 4:52
  over time. And a couple of years ago, we actually published,
• 4:55
  a paper in a in an academic journal, and the title was called supply management two point o. And that basically was the road map for the sector to become more
• 5:05
  competitive. So the core of the system,
• 5:07
  would remain,
• 5:08
  but you would actually make some adjustments on on the pricing formula. You would reform the Caine Dairy Commission.
• 5:15
  You would certainly,
• 5:17
  want to recognize,
• 5:19
  opportunities outside of Canada as well. Because I do think that we produce,
• 5:24
  good quality products in Canada, but we just do it for ourselves. And so over time, that led to
• 5:31
  a very opaque system, and no really nobody really understands the system altogether. So more transparency would probably allow Keynes to understand what's at stake here.
• 5:41
  Unknown: I don't think any Americans had any concept of supply management or interprovincial
• 5:46
  tariffs
• 5:46
  until Trump mentioned tariffs. But if you're in The United States right now, unless you are a grain trader, almost no one in The United States is talking about the tariffs that are gonna be implemented tomorrow.
• 5:57
  And when I was up in Canada,
• 5:59
  everybody was talking about them.
• 6:01
  Why do you suppose is such a giant difference between our two countries?
• 6:05
  Unknown: Well, because we're we're the tenant, and, The US is the landlord.
• 6:10
  I mean,
• 6:11
  let's be honest here. That's what I said
• 6:13
  on stage last week to poor producers.
• 6:16
  We our our biggest competitive advantage as a country was to be north of a a a superpower called The United States,
• 6:23
  and and we don't necessarily
• 6:25
  appreciate that now as much because of some of the,
• 6:29
  some of the challenges that, president Trump is is throwing at us, and a lot of people don't like it. It's funny because about a month ago, I was actually with grain growers in Mexico, and I do find that Mexicans have a totally different attitude towards what's happening. They're they're basically getting the same shocks as we are, but their attitude is completely different. And, I do hope that at some point,
• 6:53
  in Canada, specifically,
• 6:55
  instead of just focusing on emotions
• 6:57
  and,
• 6:58
  and the psychology
• 7:00
  of trades,
• 7:01
  I'm hoping that at some point, the the the
• 7:05
  reasoning around dealing with this new administration,
• 7:08
  would be
• 7:10
  would be would become more rational. That's what we need in Canada, and and we also have to look at the global,
• 7:17
  at the global landscape.
• 7:19
  We have tariffs,
• 7:21
  against China. We started a war against China, and now they're actually implemented tariffs against us. We have tariffs against India. They've actually applied tariffs on lentils in Canada.
• 7:32
  It Canada's a bit of a mess geopolitically. So I I know there's a lot of attention given to the Trump administration,
• 7:38
  but we have no lessons to give to anyone on earth about geopolitics at all. We're we've been outplayed by the Mexicans
• 7:45
  several times. Trump has been in power. And we're not played by the Chinese as well several times, the Indians as well. So we need to really start looking at ourselves in the mirror right now. Well, maybe a good place to start with that conversation is how is Mexico responding to this in a way that's different than the Canadians?
• 8:02
  Well, I mean, they,
• 8:04
  it's funny. I one one Mexican grower, when I was there made a comment that stuck with me. He basically said, well, you're going through
• 8:12
  your wall moment with the fifty first state. Because back in 2016, if you remember, it was all about the wall, right, between Mexico and and they actually were very upset, and you saw boycotts,
• 8:24
  and people were enraged.
• 8:26
  But president Shandbaum
• 8:28
  is very, very rational, very objective about what's happening. She doesn't agree at all with president Trump, but she wants to work with them. And that's the most important thing.
• 8:37
  And
• 8:38
  in our case, it's the same thing. We need to work with the Americans. We need to because we deal with the Americans. And
• 8:46
  so we are stuck with our geography. That's not gonna change. We're not we can't move Canada. So we have to work with the Americans,
• 8:53
  no matter
• 8:54
  what president Trump has in mind. But as we move forward, we have to keep in mind that America is 2025%
• 9:01
  of the world economy. That that that's something you cannot change.
• 9:04
  Unknown: Yeah. It seemed to me that when Trump first kicked off this fifty first state, it was an attempt to really needle the liberals, and
• 9:12
  I think that he was unprepared for the kind of pendulum swing. It went first like, oh, towards the conservatives and
• 9:19
  then swung way back when Carney came in. I don't have any sense for where your election is headed. Do you think this is playing out the way Trump expected, or what do you think is going on there?
• 9:28
  Unknown: Well, I I don't think the Americans understand Canada and vice versa, by the way. It goes both ways, just so you know. Because America I actually work at Texas A and M, and I go there on a regular basis. And I can tell you,
• 9:41
  really,
• 9:43
  both countries don't understand, understand each other. But let me give you, like, in a couple of sentence what has happened. Canada is inherently a liberal
• 9:53
  country. If you if you look at our history
• 9:57
  throughout, like, a hundred and fifty years, we're inherently a liberal country. We will elect a conservative
• 10:04
  party to clean
• 10:06
  things up. So that's what we've done. So when we think there's too much corruption,
• 10:11
  too many problems economically, we elect conservatives.
• 10:15
  But in times of crisis, and I would say that this is certainly one of them, we go to the center.
• 10:20
  And, we we tend to be very risk averse as an electorate.
• 10:25
  And so my guess, what has happened the last several,
• 10:28
  weeks is that,
• 10:30
  while everyone really disliked
• 10:32
  Trudeau, even the Liberals,
• 10:35
  but now he's gone. And, the Liberal government,
• 10:38
  which has a huge margin of error compared to the Conservatives, they can make mistakes. They can their campaign can be awful, and they can still win. And that's that's how
• 10:49
  I define Canada. But because of the crisis, because of the uncertainty,
• 10:53
  people are going center and they're looking at the Liberals, and they don't see the same problems anymore. Problems have disappeared along with Trudeau.
• 11:00
  And Mark Carney has a, I would say, an impressive
• 11:05
  resume, but he's he's relatively unknown. If you actually read his material last twenty years,
• 11:12
  it's not what he has delivered in the last three weeks. He's very different. I mean, he basically hijacked
• 11:18
  the conservatives
• 11:19
  playbook around
• 11:21
  capital gains, taxes, and everything that is really conservative.
• 11:25
  He basically took all that and and made his made made that his own.
• 11:30
  And people are buying into it without knowing really who he is. So I think there is a risk factor, but based on what he has said in the last three weeks,
• 11:40
  apparently, Canadians actually like that, and they feel reassured
• 11:43
  that a centered government is the way to go to deal with,
• 11:48
  with the Trump administration. I think that's really what's going on right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's something that actually caught the Trump administration by surprise because it's it's hard to understand if you're not in Canada.
• 11:59
  Unknown: Yeah. It absolutely
• 12:00
  surprised me. And then I would say largely the number of people that I know from Canada are from the West. And so far more conservative,
• 12:08
  far more feeling beaten down by the East. And so when they talk about Kearney winning, this is like Trudeau two point o, maybe even a more sophisticated,
• 12:18
  faster moving Trudeau. So I hear talk there. Understand the skepticism
• 12:22
  Unknown: and the doubt because, I mean, it doesn't
• 12:25
  I read I've actually met Mark Kearney and his wife. His wife has a a podcast, and she invited me on his her podcast. And so,
• 12:33
  I knew who they are. I know who they are. And, I'm I personally am not comfortable with their approach, but in the last three weeks, I would actually vote for him.
• 12:44
  So this is the question. I mean, what if he gets elected, is he gonna deliver on what he has said the last three weeks, or will he go back to his own his old self?
• 12:53
  Trudeau
• 12:55
  was elected as a center,
• 12:59
  as a centered
• 13:00
  leader,
• 13:01
  and a leading a centered government, but he went way left once he got elected and never looked back.
• 13:07
  So that's scaring a lot of people, especially people out west.
• 13:11
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, I hear talk of, you know, if if Kearney gets in, then our move our next move is secession. It is to become fifty first, maybe even the fifty second state, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
• 13:21
  Is that just people on the right that are, you know, extreme, or do you feel that might be an entire western belief system?
• 13:29
  Unknown: Well, I've, I I think I mean, probably 90% of Albertans are angry
• 13:35
  are and not satisfied
• 13:37
  and concerned about the future of our country.
• 13:40
  But would that be enough to secede? I'd say probably about 20% of our burdens. I mean, based on I'm just basing myself on on polls that I've seen. 25%.
• 13:52
  But
• 13:52
  I I lived out west for many years.
• 13:55
  Raised my kids there as well.
• 13:58
  I totally get the Western view
• 14:02
  of Central Canada.
• 14:03
  Absolutely get it.
• 14:05
  And I'm in The Atlantic here. The problem with The Atlantic is that it's all it's very liberal. We just play along and and that's about it. But out West, they have the economic
• 14:15
  power.
• 14:16
  They can actually make things happen. They pay bills for Canadians.
• 14:21
  The Atlantic is a poor region, so we just follow along. That's economically, we don't have much of a choice. But out west, I can under absolutely understand
• 14:29
  and appreciate why there's so much anger. And your experience in Ontario well, Ontario is Central Canada. I lived in Ontario. I I work at the University of Guelph, which was about two hours away from where you were in London.
• 14:41
  And
• 14:43
  beyond Ontario, there's not a whole lot that people know about,
• 14:47
  really. They don't understand the West. I actually once had to explain to a colleague with a PhD
• 14:53
  what potash
• 14:55
  was. Yeah.
• 14:56
  Unknown: Well, I mean and their take on what's going on in politics is totally different. I mean, I was sitting at a dinner and I, I think somehow the trucker rally,
• 15:06
  convoy, whatever you wanna call it, got brought up and I assumed that farmers like this would be like farmers out West. No. No. Some of them viewed it as a strong insurrection, as a major misstep,
• 15:17
  as an occupying of the capital on par with January 6 in The United States. And I was completely unprepared for that perspective. It's my own shortcoming for not understanding the sophistication of Canadian politics, but it blew my mind.
• 15:30
  Unknown: Keep in mind that, this is the first election we're going through,
• 15:35
  during which,
• 15:37
  a lot of money.
• 15:39
  Millions of dollars are given to media so they can do,
• 15:43
  so so reports can do their jobs. It's really odd what's going on right now. So we have a program to to support media.
• 15:51
  It's worth $800,000,000.
• 15:53
  So we're giving to CTV Global's and, of course, CBC is a is a crown corporation.
• 16:00
  The the people on terror listen to the CBC quite a bit more than out West or even
• 16:06
  in, in The Atlantic. And, and you can feel that influence. I actually give talks
• 16:12
  all over the country. I'm in Ottawa this week. I was in London last week. And and every time I go on stage, I I I remind myself
• 16:20
  of where I am because it it will have an impact on what I say to or at least how I say it.
• 16:28
  Unknown: You know, one of your,
• 16:30
  things that you do on x, you posted a photo of,
• 16:34
  oranges
• 16:35
  that, had a little tea next to their price tag, which I thought, woah, what's going on here? Talk a little bit about that. And is that just at Loblaw's or is this a wider trend?
• 16:45
  Unknown: Just a Loblaw initiative. And as you know, Loblaw's is our number one grocer here, represent about 30% of the of the, market,
• 16:53
  which is unique as in The US, the number one grocer is Walmart, and Walmart is at about 20% if I recall correctly. So Loblaw is
• 17:02
  massive. It's huge. It's the largest private employer in the country.
• 17:06
  And they've been blamed for a few years now for profiteering
• 17:11
  and, and I've actually defended them because I look at I look at financial reports. I'd I'd never I've never seen any evidence of gouging at all. Margins are very low. But people didn't believe it. They believed, and I can tell you the media, going back to the media, a lot of reporters just believed that gouging was actually a real thing.
• 17:29
  And I think they got tired of it, and now they're much more proactive now. And when they actually see,
• 17:36
  like, a a wave coming in, that could actually push
• 17:40
  prices higher, they're they're be they're being very proactive.
• 17:43
  And so I I've actually disputed the strategy. I I I don't get the t thing. I honestly,
• 17:49
  because first of all, you need to understand what the t stands for. Two, you need to understand what counter tariffs, not tariffs, counter tariffs, how they work, how they impact
• 17:58
  prices. And we all know,
• 18:01
  people in the food in food distribution like you and many of your listeners would understand that it's not just a tariff products that are gonna go up in price. It's it's basically everything because you're not looking.
• 18:12
  Consumers don't look at just prices. They look at deltas
• 18:17
  between prices. So if one product goes up because of tariffs,
• 18:21
  other products go up. And, of course, the the Loblaw
• 18:24
  policy doesn't look at ingredients,
• 18:26
  and there are a lot of ingredients coming in to,
• 18:30
  Canada that are tariff.
• 18:32
  But if it's a made in Canada product, there's a little maple leaf. There's no tea. There's no tea beside. So I think the tea approach is is is to kinda avoid the blame game, but also is
• 18:44
  to kinda,
• 18:45
  cater to the nationalistic
• 18:47
  Unknown: rhetoric that we hear a lot right now. Well, you had made the point about the the other tariffs that are going on that are gonna impact food. So if you impact aluminum,
• 18:56
  that's gonna impact the price of a can, and that is gonna get tacked on to the price that somebody's paying. So being able to track how the tariffs impact prices is gonna be very, very difficult on top of just the other challenges that you have with the loonies
• 19:11
  valuation against the US dollar.
• 19:13
  Unknown: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And and this is the one thing that Keynes aren't talking about.
• 19:17
  The American dollar is is is off to its worst start since 02/2008,
• 19:23
  and we all know what happened in 02/2008.
• 19:26
  And our dollar is valued the same versus the greenback as it was,
• 19:32
  six months ago.
• 19:33
  That means so your dollar is getting weaker,
• 19:37
  but no one is actually banking on our own dollar as well. And so we're we're in trouble. In 02/2008,
• 19:43
  if you recall,
• 19:45
  as the American economy was really challenged by everything that went on there, our dollar went over par. Like, it went over a dollar. Not this time. Not this time. And so, of course, all of imports are gonna remain quite expensive,
• 20:00
  and we import for probably about $70,000,000,000
• 20:03
  worth of of food. It's all negotiated in American dollars.
• 20:07
  All of that is gonna become is gonna remain quite expensive.
• 20:11
  And so that's why I always laugh about, this anti fifty first state
• 20:17
  movement in Canada because,
• 20:19
  I mean, I'm not don't get me wrong. I'm not for the fifty first state. I'm proud to be a Canadian.
• 20:25
  But
• 20:26
  having an American currency may not be all bad.
• 20:30
  You know? It does bring some
• 20:33
  benefits.
• 20:34
  And I'm I'm not sure Keynes have actually entertained that thought all that much.
• 20:38
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, my sense is The US,
• 20:41
  their current banking policy is to try and bring the value of the dollar down. So that way, they can do more exports. There's no doubt in my mind. So,
• 20:50
  Unknown: again, there there's a lot of name calling going on against president Trump. There's a lot
• 20:56
  of judgmental,
• 20:59
  reporting going on,
• 21:00
  versus Donald Trump. I I I don't think he's crazy. I actually think that,
• 21:05
  that he do he does have a strategy.
• 21:08
  It's it's becoming clear to me. I don't agree with the strategy. I'm not sure it's gonna work, but I do think he has a strategy.
• 21:16
  I think his team has a strategy.
• 21:18
  It's just the problem is that he will bring down many other economies including Canada's.
• 21:24
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, just, I think it might be a war of attrition. You had posted just a couple of days ago about the food prices rising in Canada just in the last year. Cantaloupe up 34%.
• 21:34
  Avocados up 25%.
• 21:36
  Those maybe not that big of a deal because you can go without them. But ground beef up 15%. Eggs up 10%.
• 21:42
  Like, people that were already struggling with inflation, not able to buy houses in Canada,
• 21:47
  already paying carbon taxes,
• 21:49
  very difficult position. If you keep raising food prices, that's where people feel it the most acutely.
• 21:55
  And how long can you go on if your prices keep going up?
• 21:58
  Unknown: That's that's why I'm very concerned about Canada's strategy
• 22:02
  around around the Trump administration and and and a tariff war.
• 22:07
  Going going at war against nobody will win a tariff war, not not even the Americans, but still, you can't go against the number one economy in the world and expect,
• 22:18
  some sort of rivalry with a dollar
• 22:21
  for dollar approach. I mean, that's
• 22:24
  that's that's being delusional.
• 22:26
  And so I I'm very concerned because it will impact,
• 22:30
  prices at the grocery store. It will impact food affordability in Canada. And, I'm not entirely convinced that people understand that. And, so,
• 22:39
  Unknown: obviously, I I'm very concerned about about this approach right now. Yeah. When when you talk about people not understanding, I think that's one of the big reasons it's not being talked about in The United States. I mean, in The United States, we have all kinds of things going on. They're unveiling
• 22:52
  unprecedented amounts of fraud in Social Security. They're deporting,
• 22:57
  gang members to El Salvador. There There's lots going on. There's a lot going on. So if you're a news station and you wanna explain how do tariffs impact, you know, you and how long will that take, I mean, it's just too complicated.
• 23:11
  And on top of that, then you've got the complications with, so what is the government gonna do about it? And this question, it's not very well formulated. But a couple of weeks ago, didn't Canada give was it $6,000,000
• 23:22
  to farmers to help them through this? Is was that the right amount?
• 23:26
  Unknown: Yeah. So so China, as you know,
• 23:30
  this is the beauty of of,
• 23:32
  of of China and its geopolitics. They're they're very, very smart people. Of course, I don't agree with their politics, but, I mean, they decided so in October,
• 23:41
  Canada, along with,
• 23:43
  the Biden administration, the then Biden administration,
• 23:47
  the then prime minister Trudeau decided to actually implement
• 23:52
  tariffs on Chinese EVs
• 23:54
  along with the Biden administration to create this North American fortress.
• 23:58
  And
• 23:59
  since October and this is the one thing you probably wouldn't have seen in Ontario where you were. I mean, they don't see the point. They don't see they don't see the problem because our the automotive sector is very important in Ontario. But out west, they're crying foul, of course.
• 24:14
  So they created this fortress, and everyone was holding its breath,
• 24:19
  waiting for China to respond. They never responded
• 24:21
  until
• 24:22
  until
• 24:24
  Mark Carney's appointment as liberal leader and prime minister on March 9. Beautiful.
• 24:29
  So, basically, 25%
• 24:32
  against lobster. We sell we export for $3,000,000,000 of lobsters to China every year. They're not happy. Okay? A % on canola.
• 24:40
  Okay? Not all, not canola seed, but still it's a clear signal. Canola,
• 24:45
  Canada oil,
• 24:47
  clear symbol there. And, of course,
• 24:50
  pork is also hit by by tariffs as well. And, of course, I was with the pork, folks in Ontario, and they weren't necessarily pleased. And and we started the war. And so in response to to help farmers,
• 25:03
  the day before the election, Cody Blois, the minister of agriculture who I know, decided to,
• 25:10
  top up the agri stability program from 3 to 6,000,000 to help out farmers.
• 25:15
  Here's the problem.
• 25:16
  Very few farmers actually use the program.
• 25:19
  They just don't because it doesn't work for them. And, it's hard to qualify.
• 25:24
  And if you do qualify, you can actually lose if you miss a payment.
• 25:28
  The rules are incredibly strict, too strict that no farmers
• 25:32
  actually use a grease stability. So it was really
• 25:36
  shot in the dark. It was just so it was just
• 25:39
  simply just noise to reassure the public. So people thought failed. Well, that's enough. That's great from $6,000,000. That's a lot of money for a farmer.
• 25:47
  Well, it's not gonna be useful at all.
• 25:49
  Meanwhile, prime minister carner Kearney,
• 25:53
  while the car industry is facing
• 25:56
  not
• 25:57
  paying or being subject to tariffs,
• 26:01
  the car industry is facing tariffs on April 2,
• 26:06
  and he offered a $2,000,000,000
• 26:09
  package to the car industry.
• 26:11
  And that's why out west, people are upset because it's it's two ways of dealing with
• 26:17
  issues that aren't necessarily equal, really.
• 26:20
  Unknown: Yeah. And when you compare the amount of support like that versus The United States, I mean, they haven't even gotten done giving out $10,000,000,000
• 26:27
  to farmers for last year's
• 26:29
  supposed underperformance.
• 26:31
  Now they're already talking. Brooke Rollins just last week said, hey. If these tariffs impact farmers, we're gonna make sure we give more support, which means more dollars going straight to farmers. So if you're doing a war of attrition,
• 26:42
  US Farmers are gonna get a lot more support from the government than Canada. From the politics,
• 26:46
  Unknown: from a political perspective, I mean, when you look at Washington versus Ottawa, the pecking order is completely different when you look at ag in particular.
• 26:55
  So,
• 26:56
  secretary
• 26:59
  Collins sorry. Rollins or Collins?
• 27:02
  Unknown: Collins.
• 27:02
  Unknown: Yes. Rollins. Sorry. I I had a blank there.
• 27:06
  The, so secretary Rollins basically
• 27:09
  is really up
• 27:12
  in a pecking order in Washington compared to our own ag minister.
• 27:16
  Just to give you an example, when, Mark Carney was, was sworn in as prime minister, he sworn in his cabinet, and the last person to be sworn in was the mister of ag.
• 27:27
  So it's
• 27:28
  ag is an afterthought, and you can see that whenever there's a crisis, whenever there's a problem in Ottawa,
• 27:35
  Ag is just not up there at all. It's just not up there at all. A lot of different issues actually come first, and and that's hurting our farmers.
• 27:42
  Unknown: Well, with the last few moments we have remaining,
• 27:46
  liberation day for The United States,
• 27:48
  it's not liberation day for Canada. What do you think happens in the twenty four or forty eight hours after this, this goes into effect?
• 27:57
  Unknown: Well, you tell me.
• 27:58
  I mean, it's just
• 28:00
  I
• 28:01
  and and this is probably what, like, universally, I think everyone
• 28:06
  doesn't appreciate this this this hesitance.
• 28:09
  I mean,
• 28:10
  I I think people will appreciate the strategy as long as we know what the strategy is.
• 28:17
  Because right now, like, especially in ag and food, I mean, the the hesitance,
• 28:23
  the forward buying, you know what's going on right now because a lot of companies are just Ford buying. They're just waiting,
• 28:29
  and there's a lot of inventory out there. I mean, our GDP went up in January just because people were forward buying. I mean, there's a lot of inventory out there just because people don't wanna pay tariffs.
• 28:40
  So we don't know what the tariffs are gonna be,
• 28:44
  what products are gonna be impacted by tariffs.
• 28:47
  The the this uncertainty needs to stop. If if if America wants tariffs, just go ahead. Just go right ahead. We'll deal with it. But the uncertainty is really hurting. So I
• 28:57
  think I'm hoping that
• 29:00
  Liberation Day will bring more clarity
• 29:03
  to the tariff strategy
• 29:05
  that's coming out of Washington.
• 29:07
  Unknown: Well, professor Charlebois, you have a podcast. Would you tell people about your podcast and where else they can find out more about
• 29:14
  Unknown: you? Yeah. Absolutely. So we've had a podcast for about five years now. It's one of it's actually the top Canadian podcast
• 29:21
  under management in Canada. So we rival
• 29:24
  Harvard Business Review,
• 29:27
  McKinsey,
• 29:27
  all those firms, and so we're pretty happy about that. It's called the Food Professor,
• 29:32
  and it's a weekly program. And, so it goes live on every Thursdays.
• 29:38
  Unknown: Well, I love it, and you are one of the most prolific, tweeters on x. I, I'm really glad I was warned to stay away from you because that was all the signal I needed to be like, oh, that's a guy I'm gonna follow.
• 29:49
  Unknown: Who told you that? Some farmers in Ontario.
• 29:52
  Yeah. They're farmers.
• 29:54
  Now listen. I I was in Guelph, and I I am from Quebec. And I am and I I I I totally understand.
• 30:01
  You you see, with supply management, you're not allowed to say anything.
• 30:05
  It's the code of silence.
• 30:07
  I'm a I am outspoken,
• 30:09
  which is why I'm often singled out because most academics can't speak up and won't speak up because it's very dangerous.
• 30:16
  The dairy lobby in particular is incredibly powerful.
• 30:20
  They hire hundreds and hundreds of people, but they have 72 people on payroll
• 30:26
  just to manage their reputation. That's all they do. 72 people.
• 30:30
  Unknown: So these people are well equipped. Well, I would absolutely love to have you on. I'm so glad you were willing to do this, right on the, the steps of this big momentous,
• 30:39
  day, and, thank you. We'll have you on again soon. Thank you for having me. Take care.