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Our full discussion transcribed below:
by Rod D. Martin
August 28, 2026
I appeared on NTD Newsroom with Don Ma to discuss why Mark Carney and Doug Ford cannot replace the American market or escape Ottawa’s self-inflicted energy trap. Trump knows exactly how much leverage he has.
We discuss:
How Chinese EV dumping threatens America’s auto industry…and how Canada uses the current trade regime to enable that
Why Canada’s China pivot is mostly a bluff
How Ottawa made Canada oil dependent on America
The end of American compartmentalization: how Trump links trade, borders, and defense
PLUS, Scott Bessent’s “economic D-Day” against Iran, and how it targets China, the Gulf States, and Western Europe
It’s 14 minutes of the in-depth analysis you need. Watch the interview, and pass it along!
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Our full discussion:
Iran’s Oman Gambit and Midterm Elections Strategy
Don Ma: Joining us now to discuss whether the U.S.-Canada trade dispute could be related to national security and China is Rod Martin, geopolitical analyst and founder and CEO of Martin Capital.
Rod, as always, thank you for being here with us.
How big of an element could China be in this Canada-U.S. trade dispute? Canada is opening up its auto industry to China and potential Chinese investment, allowing close to 50,000 Chinese EVs per year into the country. How are you reading this dispute between Canada and the United States with this element of China?
Rod D. Martin: Needless to say, there are several levels to it. But addressing the EV issue is actually quite important, and it is something Ottawa acknowledged in the talks up until the point where Mark Carney decided to hold his breath until he turned blue.
If you listen to his speech the other day explaining his withdrawal from the agreement, Carney was very clear: The American concerns are legitimate. They are understandable. We do not even necessarily disagree with them. We just do not like how Donald Trump says it.
That is a really stupid reason to mess up your own economy. It is just dumb.
Donald Trump is incredibly focused on things like the Chinese EV issue, which is just another case of dumping. It is another unfair trade practice by the communist Chinese: using steeply subsidized products manufactured in China. These cars may not be manufactured by slave labor, but a lot of what they manufacture is.
They take those things that are cheap because of their cheating and sell them radically below what an American or European company can possibly compete with. In that way, they drive American and European companies out of business through unfair trade practices and unfair competition that would send you to prison if you tried it here.
So yes, the President is laser-focused on that. He absolutely intends to protect our auto industry. And the truth is, Mark Carney and Doug Ford should be too.
There are a bunch of U.S. car plants in Ontario in particular. If those moved to Tennessee, Ontario would lose tens of thousands of jobs. That may sound like crazy talk, but Ford just announced it is pulling out of China and moving all its manufacturing out of there. There is no reason it could not move out of Canada too.
Canada’s China Bluff
Don Ma: Why does it seem like China is potentially moving closer, or Canada is seemingly moving closer to China? Look at China’s record. It does not have a reliable one when it comes to being a trade partner. I would imagine Canada is not completely naive to it. What is the motivation behind this new relationship?
Rod D. Martin: Honestly, most of this is the equivalent of Donald Trump renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Of course, I say that sitting here where, if you look out my window, you can see the Gulf of America, which he also renamed.
I think a lot of the Canadian cozying up to the communist Chinese is in that vein. It is jockeying for position.
Canada is in a vastly weaker position in this negotiation. Make no mistake, this negotiation is not over. We are going to get to a deal, or I am reasonably certain we will. But Carney wants to give the impression that he has options. China is a scary, scary option, or at least it should be, except that we know better.
The truth is that 70 percent of Canada’s exports go to the United States. By contrast, just 14 percent of U.S. exports go to Canada. We could sell that stuff somewhere else if we wanted to. It would not be that hard. It would not make a dent in our economy.
If Canada loses 70 percent of its exports, it is in a depression.
So it is jockeying. It is a little bit of playing chicken, but I think there is a logical end to it.
Ottawa’s Self-Imposed Pipeline Trap
Rod D. Martin: The other piece is that you cannot just shift those exports around. A lot of what Canada exports cannot go to France, cannot go to China, and honestly cannot even go to Eastern Canada.
More than anything else, I am talking about oil. Canada’s oil goes to the United States. We sell it for them on the Gulf Coast, and we use a lot of it here at home.
But the same socialist government in Canada that honestly has an affinity for Beijing, because they are socialists too, has done everything in its power to block pipelines that could give relief to the economy of Alberta.
Carney makes a big show of saying, “We are going to expand the pipeline capacity going to British Columbia so we can sell to Asia.” Then he allows the First Nations to completely block it.
It is the same thing in the East. There was a pipeline on order to link Alberta directly to Eastern Canada through Canada. The government blocked it.
So guess what? All of the oil that has to be shipped from Western Canada to Eastern Canada flows through the United States. If they really want to have a trade war, we just close the pipeline. Ontario is shivering in the dark.
Trade, Borders, and an Unequal Relationship
Don Ma: Earlier, we played a package of one of our reporters asking people on the street whether they think Canada is trying to gain short-term benefits that could lead to long-term security issues with this deal with China.
From what I heard you describe, it seems like Canada would not even get short-term benefits. It would just get long-term security concerns.
Rod D. Martin: As long as Canada remains a NATO ally — and considering Mark Carney’s greatest desire is to get Canada to join the European Union, it is certainly not leaving NATO — as long as that is true, Canada is not going to allow Chinese bases in Canada.
What it is going to do is give the Chinese economic advantages to tweak Trump. That hurts us through the mechanism I described earlier. It is the dumping more than anything else.
But Canada also has crazy, loose immigration laws. Any terrorist, intelligence agent, jihadi, or anybody else in the world who wants to come to America can get here through Canada. That is one of the things under discussion: You guys actually have to get control of your borders, or we are going to have to get control of ours.
This is a serious national-security issue, and it directly impinges on China.
In the long run, the Canadians really do need us. I am not saying we do not need them. We just do not need them anywhere near as much. There is a significant power imbalance.
In addition to the relative export percentages I just gave you, think about it this way: The United States economy is more than ten times the size of Canada’s. We can absorb an awful lot of goods that might otherwise have gone somewhere else without finding another export partner. The truth is that we have.
Donald Trump has concluded deals with countries representing two-thirds of the gross domestic product of the entire planet, and we are 26 percent of the entire world economy ourselves.
Where does Canada go? It can absolutely make our life annoying and difficult. What it cannot do is affect the American economy in any lasting way.
Canadian Freeloading in Trade and Defense
Don Ma: You are essentially saying that Canada’s dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs, around $20 billion, simply cannot be sustained long-term. This is just a way to gain negotiating leverage.
Rod D. Martin: Yes. It is a catastrophe for Canada. You would not want to own a business in Canada that is trying to deal with this.
I actually had an investor call this morning with a Canadian firm. They are doing wonderful things with cutting-edge technology, and they are having to restructure things around Mark Carney’s crazy pullout from this trade deal. It is causing enormous disruption.
In the short term, it helps Mark Carney’s poll numbers, because the socialists up there just love tweaking Trump, and so do no small number of conservatives. Doug Ford is just nuts. I do not know what he is thinking.
Those guys want to play this game, and they are hoping beyond hope that they do not actually have to accept a fair trade deal.
The truth is, they have been nuking our dairy farmers for decades with 280 percent tariffs on dairy. I am sorry, but you are just blocking us out of your market. It is the same thing on a bunch of other products, including softwoods. It is just grossly unfair.
Throw into that the fact that Canada’s military has atrophied so much. This is a country that was a major combatant in World War II. Canada performed heroically in the most important war in world history, and today, honestly, it couldn’t fight off a Boy Scout troop.
It is a joke. Canada is freeloading on the American taxpayer and the American defense budget.
Trump sees all of this holistically. Past administrations wanted to compartmentalize all these different aspects and deal with them one by one. Trump sees it as one big thing.
Canada is going to have to get serious about its defense-spending commitment. It is going to have to get serious about actually putting hulls in the water, planes in the sky, and doing the things it needs to do with its own money, not ours.
We will help Canada get richer if it will just accept a fair deal in which we have the same market access in Canada that it has in the United States.
Scott Bessent’s Economic D-Day
Don Ma: President Trump has said for decades that Canada has been ripping off the United States when it comes to trade.
I want to ask you one last thing about what our White House correspondent reported earlier: President Trump may be considering actions to punish China through economic pressure. The United States might sanction Chinese banks for assisting Iran.
If the United States does that, will it jeopardize Trump’s relationship with Xi Jinping? Should the United States punish China for helping Iran?
Rod D. Martin: Yes, absolutely. Otherwise, what Scott Bessent announced the other day is toothless, and nobody will ever take us seriously again.
I have to say, Scott Bessent is the best Treasury Secretary this country has had since Alexander Hamilton. This guy is a brainiac, and he knows how all the pieces fit together.
When he gets up there and says, “We have designed a package that adds up to an Economic D-Day for Iran,” he is not fooling around. This is a guy who helped execute the breaking of the British pound, for heaven’s sake. He knows what he is doing.
At this point, we have closed Iran’s ports. They cannot get anything in or out. We have discussed on your show several times that there just are not enough ships on the Caspian Sea. There just are not enough railways from Iran to China, or anywhere else for that matter. There is no way to close that gap.
They have to have their sea lanes, and we have closed them.
So what is left to do? We are starving them out. The speaker of the Iranian parliament literally said the other day, “We are starving here. We cannot sustain this.”
What is left that you can take from them? You can take their allies. You can take the people who are still surreptitiously supporting them.
That is not just China. It includes several Middle Eastern and even European allied countries, such as Britain and France, that have facilitated Iranian shadow banking for decades despite the sanctions. They have violated those sanctions again and again and again.
The United States Treasury is about to smack them all.
Don Ma: Rod, we always appreciate your comments. Thank you for your time today.
Rod D. Martin: Thank you.
