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00:00On Tuesday Donald Trump went to Wisconsin and promised he would protect the dairy farmers against unfair trade and he cited Canada in particular. And he also said for good measure we're going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all. I think this is your first chance to give your reaction to this constructive dialogue you'd like to take it away. Well I think one of the fundamental things that Canada and Canadians know is that trade can be a tremendous driver of economic growth. One of the challenges that we've seen in the rise of sort of populist or nationalist politics around the world over the past years is a reflection that trade hasn't always been great for everyone. Sometimes it has benefited only the top tier of of of any economy. Certain multinationals not smaller businesses. And there is a generalized anxiety amongst significant majorities in our populations across western economies that are anxious about their own economic well-being and their own future and worries about the other worries about foreign trade or foreign investment are easy to point to as a challenge. The issue however is if you end up going down a highly protectionist route if you end up creating barriers and you tariff walls and what have you you end up slowing down economic growth and everyone ends up suffering including and especially the middle class. So but in this particular case he's trying to get rid of it. He's tried to get rid of the milk subsidies that you give to people invest more in this particular case as we as we approach trade. We have to make the arguments for it. We have to reassure people that we're being fair and responsible of trade and that there is ways to include everyone in the benefits of trade whether it's small and medium sized businesses whether it's agricultural producers whether it's all that and any conversation around that starts with recognizing the facts. No I understand how certain governors are speaking to certain constituencies on that. That's it's politics at the same time the US has a four hundred million dollar dairy surplus with Canada. So it's not Canada that is the challenge here . And the way we approach are very constructive relationship with the United States on trade and on other things is to base both around the facts of the issues and a shared desire to see citizens on both of our sides of the border succeed. We know that the trade after the free and open trade between Canada and the U.S. creates millions of good jobs on both sides of the border. So we're not going to overreact. We're going to lay out the facts and we're going to have substantive conversations about how to improve the benefits for citizens on both sides of our borders. But on the particular things to do with milk I think every time every Canadian family pays several hundred dollars more in terms of their annual milk bill because of the measures you have shown you as a protector of the middle class on this one thing you would admit that Donald Trump has a point . Let's not pretend we're in a global free market when it comes to agriculture and every country protects for good reason its agricultural industries and we have a supply management system that works very well here in Canada. The Americans Chu and other countries should choose to subsidize the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions of dollars their agricultural industries including their dairy. Different countries have different approaches and we're going to engage in a thoughtful fact based conversation on how to move forward in a way that both protects our consumers and our agricultural producers in this thoughtful fact based discussion. Maybe we could look at NAFTA and where do you kind of rate the dangerous NAFTA. Because he came in making these big statements and at this precise moment it doesn't seem as if there is a way of getting rid of NAFTA. Well there's less. One of the very first things that we did and this is this isn't unique to the this particular administration any incoming administration needs to hear from Canada. But just how important the Canadian US trade relationship is because it's often overlooked or taken for granted by American policymakers and lawmakers as we did a really good job of highlighting just how many good middle class jobs on both sides of the border in particular in the United States depend on the free trade with Canada. So the argument we've made about trade being good for everyone about amplifying our success on either side of the border the auto pact being a great example of that where a given part can criss cross the border six times before ending up in a in a finished automobile . We have a relationship unlike just about any one else in the world between two countries and a lot of that is based on mutually beneficial trade policies. Your ambassador in Washington said that he thought the border tax was. Was it would never happen. Do you agree with that. Do you think that's something which is now off the table. I'm I'm not going to make any predictions about what's going to come forward on the U.S. side on policy sides but I know that we have made a very clear case that adding taxes or regulation to a park criss crossing six times the amount of bureaucratic red tape the amount of layers of of of impediments to jobs on either sides would be really problematic and I don't think that people who are promoting that border tax within the American Congress have fully thought through some of the consequences that that might. But do you think this is an area where Trump may have overreached and actually he's going back. This is an area which has no meaningful hat and no cattle. I think I think the issue facing President Trump is that he made a promise to do things that were good for the middle class and that he was going to help people who felt that they weren't part of the economic success of their country and killing jobs because of thickening borders between Canada and the U.S. isn't something that Mr. Trump is particularly interested in talking about TPP which seems strange as you haven't said you want to continue with that. You haven't spoken out in favor of that which sits oddly with your general pro free trade stance. Is that something you think could be developed without America. We're in favor of trade deals were in favor of progressive trade deals when we came to office. The Canada Canada EU deal CETA was in big trouble. It was basically stalled a whole bunch of significant parties in and across Europe had decided that it was a bad thing and we had to go back to the drawing board a little bit and make it slightly more progressive and make tweaks to it that would reassure people that there was still a capacity to protect workers protect the environment protect labour rights protect health benefits those kinds of things. So we're always looking for good trade deals for Canada. I think as we move forward in what seems to be a post TPP world we're very much interested in continuing to grow our relationships with Asia. Look at look at how we can how we can pull things together but not through TPP itself. It might be separate. I know there's lots of discussions whether there's going to be a TPP minus the US whether there is going gonna be different clusters or Camping's or more bilateral. We're just happy to be engaged in these discussions because we know that trade will benefit both Canadians and our trading partners .

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Trudeau Says Canada Not the Challenge for U.S. Dairy

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau comments on Canada's protectionist dairy quotas during an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. (Source: Bloomberg)

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