Canada Election: It’ll Be Carney or Poilievre Against Trump’s Tariffs

Canada chooses a leader to take on Trump

Canadians vote on Monday to determine which political party forms their next government.

But President Trump’s tariff assault on Canada and his vow to annex the country and make it the 51st state have turned the federal election into a referendum on which of the two contenders — Prime Minister Mark Carney of the Liberal Party or Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives — can best handle the American president, Ian Austen writes for DealBook.

The only English-language election debate last week opened with the moderator asking Carney, who has been the prime minister for just over a month, what the “starting point” would be for talks with the Trump White House.

“The starting point has to be one of strength,” Carney responded.

Both candidates have promised a tough response. Trump’s belittling of Canada’s sovereignty and his tariffs, which have already led to layoffs and concerns about factory closings, have prompted a surge of patriotism among Canadians and open hostility toward the United States — the country’s largest trading partner. In sharp contrast with Mexico’s approach of dealing with Trump, both Carney and Poilievre have vowed to fight back.

Here are the strategies they’ve campaigned on:

• Hit back: Carney has emphasized his commitment to retaliatory tariffs. Poilievre has said that they are necessary to “deter” Trump’s trade attacks. Canada has imposed tariffs on imports from the United States that are expected to generate about 38 billion Canadian dollars annually, or about $27 billion.

  Trump has imposed tariffs against key sectors of Canada’s industrial economy: 25 percent levies on autos, aluminum and steel, and a similar levy on goods that are outside the scope of the trade agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico. A tariff on auto parts is scheduled to take effect on Saturday.

  Autos and auto parts are Canada’s largest exports to the United States outside of oil and gas.

• Diversify: A former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, Carney conspicuously made his first trip as prime minister to meet with leaders in Britain and Europe. Canada has a free-trade agreement with Europe, but it is unclear how much potential Canada has to significantly raise exports to that market.

  Poilievre, a lifelong politician, has vigorously pushed to build a pipeline across Canada to ship oil and liquefied natural gas to Europe. Canada currently exports more than 80 percent of its energy to the United States. Carney has also suggested finding new energy markets and building pipelines.

• Canadianize: To end the current process of auto parts crossing the border several times, Carney has suggested the creation of “all-in-Canada” parts manufacturing network. He has offered no details on how he would persuade manufacturers to adjust their supply chains to suit Canada’s goals.

Neither candidate has gotten specific. Carney says his experience as a central banker and in private investment (he has a doctorate in economics, worked at Goldman Sachs and was chairman at Brookfield Asset Management and at Bloomberg) makes him the ideal negotiator and economic crisis manager.

Poilievre, who was campaigning on crime, taxes and high prices for food and housing before the tariffs and before the election was called, has not focused as directly on the trade war. Polls show the Liberals slightly ahead of the Conservatives in the popular vote, but the Liberals are likely to have a strong majority of the seats in the House of Commons to form the next government.

DEALBOOK WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU

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HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

China’s Huawei reportedly develops a new A.I. chip to take on Nvidia. It’s meant to compete with Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductor; TikTok parent Bytedance is among those in discussions to place orders, The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s the latest example of Beijing’s push to move away from U.S. technology in the face of export controls.

America’s academic leaders make a stand against President Trump. After the White House froze billions in federal funding for leading universities, a group has formed to counter the president’s broad attacks, with more than 400 college leaders signing a letter opposing Trump’s moves to audit curriculums and oversee hirings. Meanwhile, a private collective of top universities has banded together to plot strategy, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Gordon Brown lodges a criminal complaint against Rupert Murdoch’s papers. The former British prime minister alleges he has been a “victim of the obstruction of the course of justice” by Murdoch’s U.K. papers, as the phone hacking scandal that forced the closure of one of the media mogul’s tabloids and led to a split of his empire, continues. His U.K. company has denied the accusations.

A game of telephone

There’s more confusion on Monday about the state of U.S.-China tariff talks, as new data shows that global trade has begun to falter and jittery investors brace for a huge earnings week.

The latest: Beijing on Monday outright denied President Trump’s claim that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, called him to discuss their tit-for-tat trade clash. Trump told Time last week that they had in fact spoken, and that talks were progressing. Beijing’s statement comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has become a point person on trade negotiations, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that he wasn’t aware of whether the two leaders had spoken.

Who to believe? Companies are focusing their attention on Wall Street and Washington. Several business leaders have used the earnings-call spotlight to warn about tariffs. The hope is that the message may reach Trump administration officials, adding to pressure on the White House to find an off-ramp with trading partners.

That said, Trump pushed back on the notion that he was swayed by restive bond holders in deciding earlier this month to pause implementation of reciprocal tariffs. “​​The bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t,” Trump told Time.

Meanwhile, the trade fallout worsens. Cargo shipments between the two countries have plummeted, and Temu, the popular Chinese retailing app that’s been hit especially hard by Trump’s tariffs, has jacked up costs for U.S. customers, Bloomberg reports. Economists have forecast that the levies could reignite inflation and ding economic growth, while retailers have begun to warn it could lead to empty store shelves.

That puts extra focus on a big week for earnings and economic data. What’s in store:

• Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, and first-quarter G.D.P., are set for release on Wednesday with recession fears on the rise.

• Friday is jobs day. Some economists expect to see a tariff-driven drop-off in hiring for the April payrolls report.

• There’s also an earnings-palooza, with four of the Magnificent 7 stalwarts set to report. First up in that grouping are Microsoft and Meta (on Wednesday); Apple and Amazon follow on Thursday.

Big Tech earnings have fueled a slew of market rallies over the past two years, and Google’s Alphabet and Tesla helped give stocks a boost last week. Can the tech giants keep the streak alive, or will trade-war tensions prevail?

The latest in the content wars: Spotify vs. YouTube

Spotify has paid more than $100 million to podcast publishers and creators since January, Jessica Testa is first to report for DealBook.

The payout is the result of a program introduced this year that opened up new revenue streams to eligible hosts. But it is also an attempt to draw more creators (and their audiences) to Spotify, as the rise of video podcasting has driven many of them to YouTube.

Video has come to dominate podcasting. More than half of Americans over the age of 12 have watched a video podcast — but primarily on YouTube, according to an Edison Research report from January. The service claims to reach 1 billion podcast consumers every month, making it the dominant platform for podcasts — a media king and kingmaker — and leaving onetime audio-only platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts in the dust. (Spotify introduced video podcasts in 2019.)

Compared with YouTube, Spotify has become a podcast underdog, with about 170 million monthly podcast listeners among its total audience of 675 million. One indication of how far Spotify has to go to catch up to the top player: YouTube paid out more than $70 billion to creators and media companies from 2021 to 2024.

The company reports earnings tomorrow and is expected to make about 540 million euros in pretax income on 4.2 billion euros in sales, according to S&P Capital IQ.

But Spotify remains a major player in the industry thanks in part to its talent roster — it distributes and sells advertising for the biggest podcast in the world, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” And it achieved its first full year of profitability in 2024. (Rogan’s podcasts are also available on YouTube.)

The new partner program aims to chip away at YouTube’s dominance. Spotify previously paid creators only by sharing advertising revenue with them, much like YouTube. Now it also gives them incentives to upload videos, with eligible creators earning additional money based on how much premium subscribers engage with their videos.

The company is trying to attract more viewers. At the same time that Spotify announced the partnership program in November, it announced that paid subscribers in certain markets wouldn’t have to watch dynamic ads in video podcasts. Video consumption has already increased by more than 40 percent since January, according to Spotify.

Can Spotify persuade creators to shift priorities? David Coles, host of the horror fiction podcast “Just Creepy: Scary Stories,” said he is re-evaluating his “home platform” after his Spotify revenue recently surpassed his YouTube revenue. Last quarter, Coles said he received about $45,500 from Spotify. After joining the company’s new partner program, his quarterly Spotify income rose to about $81,600.

This increase can be even more dramatic for larger shows and podcast companies, like YMH Studios, a comedy network with 2.1 million YouTube subscribers that produces popular podcasts including “2 Bears, 1 Cave.” While declining to share exact figures, YMH Studios said its quarterly Spotify revenue more than tripled after joining the partner program.

Although creators emphasized that these are still early days, Alan Abdine, the head of advertising revenue at YMH Studios, called the new payment program “a game-changer” and “a very happy surprise.”

“Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it.”

— Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent. He delivered an extraordinary on-air rebuke last night during the news program’s first episode since the resignation of Bill Owens, who had led the award-winning CBS program since 2019. Paramount, which owns CBS and is led by Shari Redstone, is now in mediation with President Trump over his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News. It comes as Redstone is seeking government approval for her company’s merger with Hollywood studio Skydance.

THE SPEED READ

Artificial Intelligence

• Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI is looking to raise $20 billion at a valuation of $120 billion. (Bloomberg)

• Google’s A.I. staff in the U.K. plan to unionize to fight against the company’s plans to sell its services to defense contractors. (FT)

Politics, policy and regulation

• President Trump’s son, Don Jr., and tech entrepreneur Omeed Malik started a private Georgetown club for the ultra rich who want to get even closer to the president. (Politico)

• Some Republican lawmakers could sink President Trump’s tax bill over key issues such as the SALT deduction and the Inflation Reduction Act. (WSJ)

Best of the rest

• Behind the private group chats on Signal and WhatsApp that are shaping tomorrow’s conversations on podcasts, X, and Substack. (Semafor)

• Five years after Carlos Ghosn escaped in a crate, the fugitive and former head of Nissan is now teaching business strategy at a university in Lebanon. (WSJ)

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