00:02 Speaker A
President Trump says he’s ending Canada trade negotiations over an anti-tariff ad and it’s not the first or even the second time he’s made this threat. And it’s all coming as the US and China gear up for important trade talks. Washington correspondent Ben Wershkul joins us now with the very latest. Ben.
00:20 Speaker B
Yeah, Josh, as you mentioned, um Donald Trump last night kind of reset China or Canada trade relations by with this late night tweet where he posted about it that he was going to terminate the the trade talks with Canada. This comes but the market reaction today has been sort of largely muted. and that comes because as you mentioned, he’s done this a few times before. This is actually I counted it up. This is the third time he has talked about ending trade talks with Canada. The first time was over digital service taxes, the second time was over the Middle East. This time was over an ad that that the Ontario government decided to run, slamming Trump’s tariffs using the words of Ronald Reagan to do so. Um the market reaction I think is is pretty warranted because these past um examples are all about concessions, about getting concessions, and it appears this one may be ending the same way. The Ontario Premier just in the last hour has announced that he’s going to pause these ads. So so in his words, he can allow trade talks to resume. There’s a big big caveat there that he’s going to keep running the ad over this weekend during the first two games of the World Series and then and then stop it on Monday, presumably so talks can continue. Well, it’s to be seen if that’s going to be good enough for Donald Trump. But clearly, there clearly there’s a lot of back and forth here. The larger the larger deadline that I think everyone is watching with the US Canada relationship is next summer. That’s when the USMCA, the US-Mexico-Canada agreement is set to be renegotiated. That’s when about 85% of goods that travel between the two countries is up for negotiation, the tariffs there. So that’s the big deadline to watch. This is a lot of a lot of back and forth um up until then.
01:46 Speaker A
And Ben Washington, so we’re going into the weekend here. No end in sight, Ben, for this government shutdown of ours. What what are some of the the most pressing challenges right now coming up?
02:02 Speaker B
Yeah, today today is a big day if you’re a uh if you’re a federal worker. Today’s a real big crimp point because a huge number of the government’s employees are not getting a full paycheck today. Today is what’s called the bi-weekly electronic funds transfer pay date in the government. In other words, that’s when the money hits your account and that number is zero as of today because now this is a full pay period that is that is not being paid. So this is going to be this is going to be significant for a lot of these workers. This is hundreds of thousands of folks. And then there’s a bunch more coming in the days ahead. Next Tuesday is when air traffic controllers aren’t going to get a full paycheck for the first time. They are on a slightly different schedule. So that’s a big that’s a big one because we’ve already been seeing delays at airports. We’ve seen some in Newark. We’ve seen them in Washington Reagan Airport here in Washington because of these air air traffic controller shortages. and that’s expected to get worse in the weeks ahead, especially once once they’re zeroed out. The the third one quickly to add is military. That comes at the end of the month. They’re paid on a bi-month bi twice a month basis. and that is that’s a big one politically and that would be another full paycheck, the first time in American history that all branches of the military don’t get their back don’t get paid.
03:07 Speaker A
And thank you. Appreciate it.