Canada’s Secret Sauce w/ Christy Michalak of NGen

Although, you know, these days I lose faith that anything could change now.

But basically, in less than a week, Canada, U.S. trade talks have collapsed.

The U.S. imposed 50 percent tariffs on 28 billion dollars worth of Canadian goods.

Canada announced matching retaliation.

And manufacturers are now facing the biggest period of trade uncertainty in years.

Yeah, it's been tumultuous and just really crazy to follow everything.

But, you know, I was reading an article put out by the Canadian press where they spoke to National Bank CEO Laurent Ferreira.

And, you know, he said all the things like it's becoming difficult to predict the outcome of this trade dispute.

because of the way things keep escalating.

But he also noted that Canada's economy has been fairly resilient through the uncertainty so far, which echoes some of what we've been hearing from experts as well.

But one of the examples he pointed to was the push towards major Canadian projects and investment like power infrastructure, energy, and the shipbuilding investment recently, which I kind of want to talk about a little bit.

I don't know if you read that story, but This sort of came out around the same time as Carney's announcement about the tariffs as well.

So there was battling each other a little bit.

But while we were focused on the tariffs, Prime Minister Carney was in Quebec and he announced an $11.3 billion contract for six new Coast Guard icebreakers at Davie Shipyard.

So this is a huge investment.

And the trade talks had just collapsed.

New tariff threats were dominating the headlines.

And then Carney comes out.

This is the largest shipbuilding contract in Quebec history.

It's expected to support about 5,000 jobs during construction and involve more than 1,500 suppliers across the country.

He highlighted how this would use Canadian steel suppliers.

and include some companies in Ontario.

So that's all great news across the board.

There was also a pretty clear buy Canadian theme running through this announcement.

And the government says that the vessels will be built in Canada and use Canadian steel.

Although, you know, these days I lose faith that anything could change now.

But basically, in less than a week, Canada, U.S. trade talks have collapsed.

The U.S. imposed 50 percent tariffs on 28 billion dollars worth of Canadian goods.

Canada announced matching retaliation.

And manufacturers are now facing the biggest period of trade uncertainty in years.

Yeah, it's been tumultuous and just really crazy to follow everything.

But, you know, I was reading an article put out by the Canadian press where they spoke to National Bank CEO Laurent Ferreira.

And, you know, he said all the things like it's becoming difficult to predict the outcome of this trade dispute.

because of the way things keep escalating.

But he also noted that Canada's economy has been fairly resilient through the uncertainty so far, which echoes some of what we've been hearing from experts as well.

But one of the examples he pointed to was the push towards major Canadian projects and investment like power infrastructure, energy, and the shipbuilding investment recently, which I kind of want to talk about a little bit.

I don't know if you read that story, but This sort of came out around the same time as Carney's announcement about the tariffs as well.

So there was battling each other a little bit.

But while we were focused on the tariffs, Prime Minister Carney was in Quebec and he announced an $11.3 billion contract for six new Coast Guard icebreakers at Davie Shipyard.

So this is a huge investment.

And the trade talks had just collapsed.

New tariff threats were dominating the headlines.

And then Carney comes out.

This is the largest shipbuilding contract in Quebec history.

It's expected to support about 5,000 jobs during construction and involve more than 1,500 suppliers across the country.

He highlighted how this would use Canadian steel suppliers.

and include some companies in Ontario.

So that's all great news across the board.

There was also a pretty clear buy Canadian theme running through this announcement.

And the government says that the vessels will be built in Canada and use Canadian steel.