{"id":86301,"date":"2025-10-18T12:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/86301\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T12:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:16:07","slug":"how-the-nhl-and-reality-tv-explain-trades-team-canada-implosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/86301\/","title":{"rendered":"How the NHL and reality TV explain trade\u2019s Team Canada implosion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked this week whether he was considering lifting tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Prime Minister Mark Carney said \u2018it\u2019s not that simple.\u2019Liam Richards\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

I will go to my grave still hollering crankily that there is no such thing as \u201cCanada\u2019s team,\u201d an idea that surfaces every time there\u2019s one Canadian team left in the NHL playoffs.<\/p>\n

And the reason it\u2019s not a thing for anyone but the most casual bandwagon-jumper is exactly what\u2019s ripping the trade version of Team Canada apart at the seams at the moment. <\/p>\n

In sports, your team is a matter of who you love, of which colour blood runs through your veins, but it\u2019s also about who you cheer against, and all the history and rivalry that feeds that. That doesn\u2019t evaporate just because there\u2019s one Canadian team left standing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada\u2019s team\u201d is a feel-good idea that doesn\u2019t hold up in the real world, in other words, because it ignores the fact that the people most invested in the issue at hand have more intense individual motivations than simply wishing their countrymen well.<\/p>\n

Campbell Clark: Team Canada shoots on its own net in trade talks with China<\/a><\/p>\n

This is why fissures of anxiety and frustration are erupting among the trade version of Team Canada all of a sudden. No region or sector of the economy is cheering against another out of spite like you would in sports, but as the mad king\u2019s trade war becomes more intractable, different interests are colliding in a way that feels like someone has to lose for someone else to win, or even survive. <\/p>\n

That was made explicit last week by the Chinese ambassador. Canada must drop its 100-per-cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles \u2013 imposed alongside the U.S. a year ago, when that country still looked like a pal and manufacturing partner \u2013 if it wants Canadian canola and pork producers released from their own steep retaliatory tariffs<\/a>, he warned.<\/p>\n

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew wrote an open letter urging Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> to \u201cseize the opportunity\u201d to stanch the bleeding in two agricultural industries key to his province.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile protecting our automotive sector is important, the current approach has created a two-front trade war that disproportionately impacts Western Canada,\u201d the Premier wrote.<\/p>\n

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe underlined that with Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand in China this week<\/a>, it was time to sort it out.<\/p>\n

Enter Ontario Premier Doug Ford<\/a>, whose province is home to Canada\u2019s auto sector: \u201cI respect what they\u2019re doing, but there\u2019s no damn way we should drop tariffs on China.\u201d<\/p>\n

He professed sympathy, saying \u201cI get it\u201d on other premiers advocating for their own industries \u2013 but he emphasized 157,000 direct jobs and $46-billion in new investment in auto manufacturing as his own reasons for doing the same. Mr. Ford is also insisting that Canada should leverage retaliatory tariffs on the Americans again, rather than being \u201cnice, nice, nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford this week broke from his counterparts in Manitoba and Saskatchewan when he said tariffs on China should remain.Blair Gable\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Higher U.S. tariffs<\/a> kicked in this week on softwood lumber<\/a>, and British Columbia\u2019s David Eby was the next premier to remind everyone of the pain points at home. When auto or steel workers in central Canada have their jobs threatened, \u201cit\u2019s treated as a national emergency, and rightly so,\u201d he said, but his province has its own lifeblood that doesn\u2019t seem to get the same airtime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re asking for today is that same respect, that same concern, that same sense of emergency is shared for the forest sector in this country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney was asked on Thursday whether he was considering lifting the EV tariffs given the Chinese ultimatum, and he unspooled an unusually pointless non-answer. When reporters pushed him \u2013 yes or no? \u2013 he bristled that it was \u201cnaive\u201d to boil a relationship with another country down to one or two issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a deeper set of conversations that are going on,\u201d the Prime Minister said. \u201cSo it\u2019s not that simple, and nor is the relationship in the auto sector that simple as just, open a door here with China, with no impact on the relationship with the United States and the impact on activity here in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

This bobbing and weaving suggests that kiboshing the EV tariffs is not on the table, given the risk of derailing U.S. negotiations, which Mr. Carney\u2019s government keeps indicating are close to some kind of payoff. For the same reason, he ruled out Mr. Ford\u2019s demands to resume retaliatory tariffs.<\/p>\n

U.S. automakers on track to pay $10-billion in tariffs by end of October<\/a><\/p>\n

That pugnacious nationalism that everyone shared back in the winter and spring, when we were all flipping our middle fingers to the south and purging our grocery carts of anything made in the USA, was real and necessary. A better and more complete solution to all of this still seemed possible then. <\/p>\n

But now, the federal government has shifted into harm-reduction mode, making concessions (killing the U.S. retaliatory tariffs, perhaps holding the line on the Chinese EV tariffs) and focusing on negotiating a U.S. tariff reprieve for the industries it believes will have the greatest impact (energy, steel and aluminum). <\/p>\n

It makes sense strategically, but it\u2019s precisely why some are feeling like they\u2019ve been thrown under the Team Canada bus, while others are sitting up front next to the coach. We\u2019re no longer in the realm of the hypothetical or even the hopeful now; the damage is real, accumulating and uneven.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a blood sport other than hockey that offers a playbook for how Canada might navigate this with more solidarity, and it\u2019s an arena Mr. Trump loves: reality TV. Every halfway skillful reality TV producer knows that the surest way to stoke conflict is to make resources scarce and give some competitors an apparent advantage \u2013 which is where Canada has landed this week. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, the best way to connect people is to give them a mutual enemy to despise, focusing all the tension in the air like a sunbeam passed through a magnifying glass. Reality TV producers do this each time they cast an obnoxious, preening whackjob on a show and give them unlimited camera time, so that everyone else can seethe together about how much they hate them, unable to look away.<\/p>\n

The whackjob has already been cast for us. Canada should be talking a whole lot more about who is the shared villain here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Asked this week whether he was considering lifting tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,11957,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-86301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dei","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}