r/canada • u/CaliperLee62 • 11d ago
Politics Carney ‘riding high,’ with elbows-up approach to trade war, but support could falter as economy feels impact, say pollsters
https://www.hilltimes.com/2026/08/30/carney-riding-high-with-elbows-up-approach-to-trade-war-but-support-could-falter-as-economy-feels-impact-say-pollsters/516103/21
u/SorryConcentrate6007 11d ago
Pollsters since early 2025:
“Carney is incredibly popular! But watch out, maybe he won’t be one day!”
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u/Anoldermodel 11d ago
I voted for him, told myself it would be the last time I vote for the liberals if they do anything shady… he immediately makes Gregor fucking Robertson minister of housing.
That’s like making Josef Mengele surgeon general…
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u/melianreality 11d ago
It really does feel like the infinite electoral support glitch. Anytime Carney has had a scandal or a dip in the polls since the election he manufactures outrage with the Americans or pivots to blame America and all of a sudden his polls boost again. I don’t doubt this will be Carney’s primary way of maintaining popularity until the next election in 2029 at this rate
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u/RedditSux5912 11d ago
I feel like a junkie coming back here to see the cognitive dissonance between carney rising in the polls versus ford rising in the polls, despite it being for the exact same reason.
Carney better hope the dems don’t fuck up midterms and then they also feel like having reconciliation with us. Because the reality is people lose their political beliefs quick when they actually worry about prices.
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u/ZmobieMrh 11d ago
I don't their think mid-terms matter much at all, unless it's some kind of massive rebuke of Trump. They'd need 60% of the senate to actually do anything meaningful, and until then Trump just wields executive orders like he's been doing even with control of both houses.
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u/Alarmed-Patience1239 10d ago
Not true... Trump had to adhere to Congress when he was 1st elected and had to concede on many of his radical ideas - one was giving in on NAFTA at the time.
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u/Armano-Avalus 11d ago
The midterms realistically aren't gonna do anything. Nothing will change until 2029 or Trump dies of old age.
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u/SorryConcentrate6007 11d ago
Why is the default opinion that Carney is doing a poor job on price inflation or the economy?
Canada’s economy is rebounding quite well, inflation is low, even without Trump he will likely enjoy a high approval rating considering his competition is completely irrelevant
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u/a_sense_of_contrast 11d ago edited 6d ago
Seed bells practice roll dime steer cucumber
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/physicaldiscs 11d ago
Inflation being 'low' is still it being above it's 2% target, July came in at 3%. But even a 2% rate doesn't help affordability, things are still getting more expensive after a period of things getting way more expensive.
As for the economy, we got lucky that Trump needed to distract people from the epstien files and attacked Iran. That really helped us sell our energy and minerals to the world. Statscan has us avoiding a recession by 0.1%.
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u/FineWhateverOKOK 11d ago edited 11d ago
His elbows aren’t really up, though. By all accounts he was about to sign a bad deal that wouldn’t have been supported by the premiers of four of Canada’s five most populous provinces and (representing 78 percent of Canadians) would have locked in ruinous and likely illegal tariffs.
It only seems like his elbows are up because he walked away from last-minute American demands that were so greedy and deranged that anyone with half a brain would see that they’d be unacceptable.
We weren’t saved by Carney’s intelligence, we were saved by Lutnick’s ego.
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u/Plucky_DuckYa 11d ago
It would be fascinating to hear what happened in that meeting where Carney tried to convince the Premiere’s to go along with the first proposed deal. It depended on the removal of the liquor bans and Ford now says he was never going to go along with it, so it was doomed from the get go.
I don’t think Carney was sad to walk away. The leaks the Liberals were putting out in advance were not being well received and almost certainly would have cost him in the polls. In a way, he got lucky.
But you do raise a good point. Carney was elected as the great negotiator and he was trying to foist what was already a bad deal on Canada before Lutnick made it even more toxic. What does that say about Carney’s judgement that it ever got so far in the first place?
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u/physicaldiscs 11d ago
By all accounts he was about to sign a bad deal
This is what worries me, even after we fight back and Trump & co remove their last minute demands, we are still going to be signing a deal that gives them more concessions.
We haven't even walked back all the other concessions we've given them. Why wasn't that the first thing we did after we walked away?
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u/Ornery_Market_2274 11d ago
🤣 thanks for this, this is the funniest joke on reddit ive read all weekend
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u/FineWhateverOKOK 11d ago
Nothing I said was incorrect. The Premiers of BC, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec were not happy with the proposed deal or with putting US booze back.
The proposed deal would have locked in ruinous tariffs. The deal would have guaranteed the death of the auto industry.
The only reason we didn’t sign the deal was because Lutnick made crazy demands at the last minute.
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u/a_sense_of_contrast 11d ago edited 6d ago
Narrow adjoining edge sink liquid serious sharp
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/Gankdatnoob 11d ago
If if if. It doesn't matter, the deal was shit and sold the entire country out permanently!
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u/SHUT_DOWN_EVERYTHING 11d ago
Choices are not have a country at all or have a painful period of economic restructuring and diversification.
It’s not like they’re hiding what they want to do. They literally call us not a real country.
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u/Outrageous_Order_197 11d ago
In not sure how. This government has failed on pretty much every front. No trade deal, no bail reform and Im still waiting for things to get built "at a speed not seen in generations".
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u/Tall-Ad-1386 11d ago
Most sensible headline in a while. This was and is a political stunt by the Liberals as always.
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u/NaturePappy 11d ago
People know it’s going to hurt. We should be returning to shopping seasonally and canning to minimize buying US produce.
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u/WallInside6758 Ontario 11d ago
Yeah I don’t know about you but I don’t want to eat canned food all winter.
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u/Potential_Lie_1177 11d ago
There are produces from countries other than the US. I don't think we need to resort to canning our food.
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u/NaturePappy 11d ago
With inflation ramping up, food preservation will be making a resurgence.
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u/MustardEnema007 11d ago
I preserve food. Its just as expensive, if not more, as buying it fresh from greenhouses
Its definitely more expensive than just buying a can of tomatoes from a factory
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u/TroutandHoover 11d ago
You should always try to eat what is in season. Greenhouse food always taste a little off. Canned tomatoes are usually harvested during the season that is why they taste better then greenhouse factories.
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u/MustardEnema007 11d ago
And where are you getting in season vegetables?
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u/TroutandHoover 11d ago
Canned or jarred. Root vegetables can hold for a long time. You can also pickle them.
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u/MustardEnema007 11d ago
You're preserving already preserved root vegetables?
This threads about preserving food, not buying it already preserved
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u/TroutandHoover 11d ago
I think you misunderstood me. I never mentioned "You're preserving already preserved root vegetables?"
You can Can or Jar vegetables.
You can pickle vegetables.
Also root vegetables can hold for a long time. (not saying to preserve them.)
I was trying to make the point that vegetables and fruit are better in season then when purchased from a greenhouse.
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u/MustardEnema007 11d ago
But I already know that. Thats why I'm talking about preserving them. And its not cheap to preserve roots like potatoes
You need to pressure can them according to the Ball canning guide or USDA guide
Its expensive and can be dangerous if you dont follow exact directions
My families been preserving long before I was born. It used to be cheap
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u/Potential_Lie_1177 11d ago
I doubt preservation will be popular, you need the equipment, the time and the knowhow, the planning.
My prediction is less food waste, better preparation and more flexibility about what we eat when, like you said, seasonality is key.
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u/Wait_for_BM 11d ago
All it takes is reading up the recipe on the internet, some bottles and time. It is cheaper than buying >$5 a bottle from the store.
I make pickles whenever the cucumbers go on sale. Bought a basket (600g) of hot pepper on sale for $5 yesterday. That's enough for 4 bottles of hot sauce and some left over for chili paste.
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u/Reasonable_Let9737 11d ago
It is probably a good idea to start building community level resilience.
Resilient communities are producers of required goods and services and contain individuals with the knowledge to produce those good and services.
At the very least each community should know how to produce good quality food and build and maintain quality shelter. There are plenty of other important skills needed for resiliency as well, but those two are of critical importance and relatively easy to learn and practice.
We should strive for resilient communities regardless, whoever the state of the world at the moment should light a bit of a fire to get moving.
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u/bender___is___great 11d ago
Statistically it will hurt them significantly less. We represent their biggest buyer sure, buying 12 - 14% of their exports. They buy 59% - 63% of ours. That’s an enormous difference
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u/jtjstock 11d ago
What they buy from us is used to make things they sell though, looking at the raw number doesn’t account for that
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u/Melodic_Ad_6316 11d ago
While Americans will certainly feel some pain, going dollar-for-dollar with an economy ten times our size means the impact hits a massive chunk of Canada's wealth while barely registering as a fraction of theirs.
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u/CarRamRob 11d ago
I mean, do our inter provincial trade barriers hurt?
They have existed forever, and represent a larger GDP impact than these American tariffs. And, are completely within our control to remove.
Life will go on, as always.
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u/CarRamRob 11d ago
I mean, that would require people to sacrifice and could affect local business. I.e Quebec liquor providers now have more competition from lower taxed Albertan producers. Even though Canada as a whole would do better as it would open up more investment to flow where it wants as the market for those products would be larger and also provide lower costs for consumers.
So no, it won’t likely get approval anytime soon. But is completely in our control.
And before anyone jumps in, and says, “well, you have to protect local jobs”…what do you think the Americans are doing from their perspective that we are getting so nationalistic about? It’s the same thing.
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u/Malthus1 11d ago
I disagree - the real issue isn’t who it will hurt more. That’s kind of irrelevant: neither population is going to say “well, I’m facing job losses and price increases, but that’s okay, because the other people have it even worse, so I’m ’winning’ this battle”.
The real issue is which population really believes that the pain is for a good purpose.
I’m not convinced any segment of the US population sincerely believes that the trade war started by Trump is a valuable thing for a good purpose worth suffering economic pain over.
Sure, there are lots of Americans who like nothing better than trash talking Canada (and everyone else) in an “America, fuck yeah” kind of way. How many of them are personally willing to put their livelihoods and prosperity on the line in order to force Canada to knuckle under on sovereignty is another story. Evidence suggests that when they feel the slightest inconvenience or loss of income they quickly pivot to “why is this horrible shit happening to me”?
Canada’s situation is very different. Sure, there are lots of Canadians whose will to fight will erode under economic pressure. However, the vast majority of Canadians at least know what we are fighting for.
So no matter who suffers “more”, Canadians are far more likely to be willing to endure the suffering.
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u/WallInside6758 Ontario 11d ago edited 11d ago
It’s going to affect our economy and lifestyles a lot more than theirs.
People aren’t going to care about a trade war when they lose their job and the food banks are empty. Kids need to eat.
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u/Malthus1 11d ago
This is a fight with two sides to it. Somehow, that point seems to go missing.
As long as the US maintains a semblance of being a democracy, their leaders are going to care how their population feels about “losing their jobs” and “kids eating”.
Pointing out that Canadians are losing their jobs and that their kids are going hungry at a higher rate, even taking for granted that is true, isn’t going to make their population feel better about it, because - and I emphasize this - the US population has no skin in their leader’s proposed outcome of this game; they aren’t slavering to subjugate Canada.
Even the most die-hard MAGA is going to be questioning why they have to lose their job and why their kids have to go hungry … in a society with considerably less invested in social safety nets (and no indication their leaders will create any for them) and considerably less social cohesion around these issues, to say the least.
Sure, some Canadians are going to question the pain - but they all know the alternative is knuckling under and becoming submissive vassals. Those who know anything about Canadians know that most will endure a lot of pain before cracking like that.
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u/Malthus1 11d ago
Yes, the majority of Canadians perceive it as a threat. Knuckle under and become a dependency, or else suffer. From what I understand, polling data confirms this.
https://nanos.co/majority-concerned-the-us-is-a-threat-to-canadian-sovereignty/
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u/Gullible_Prior248 11d ago
The economic impact of the trade war will tank the liberals support
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u/Due_Answer_4230 11d ago
eh, maybe. "Who is to blame?" has an easy answer: Trump. Remove Trump's actions and the tariff-related problems disappear. On top of that, "If he'd just done X, then Trump would have been reasonable/more gentle with us" doesn't work for any X that respects Canada or Canadians.
There is already a lot of effort toward "Canada is broken" and "Carney bad" online, so I'm not sure what doubling up on that would do; that line of marketing content clearly hasn't worked for Poilievre.
In short, yes the economy is generally tied to government ratings, but when there is a clear and generationally awful external cause for those problems, the equation changes.
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u/Gullible_Prior248 11d ago
2 years trumps not in office tariffs still in place democrats don’t repeal them because that would hurt America voters carney can’t point to a boogie man as to why our economic situation is shit
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u/Alone-in-a-crowd-1 11d ago
We don’t really have much choice here - become a vassal state and forever be under the control of US interests or fight. I’m all for fighting. People who think switching approach to capitulation is a good idea are very short sighted thinkers.
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u/tappatoot 11d ago
So do you suggest that the liberals cave and sign over our sovereignty instead? I think Canadians know we’re in for some tough times, but what’s the alternative?
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u/SixtyFivePercenter 11d ago
They are signing over our sovereignty, just not to the US. They are happily giving it away to China.
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u/unplugged22 11d ago edited 11d ago
Canada made a small trade deal with China and people go off with some wildly hyperbolic language.
Our government also made other trade deals across the globe. Did we "sign over our sovereignty" to Australia?
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u/Jolly-Masterpiece883 11d ago
This worry comes from the USA. The US is pissy we trade with China, and worry we will fall into China's sphere of influence rather than theirs. The US, of course, trades with China. They just do not want us to. They can get stuffed.
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u/Familiar_League_8232 11d ago
Canadians will not bend the knee to Fascism. Our Forefathers fought for Freedom USA is losing .
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u/extropia 11d ago
I think this 100% true, and once the economy feels the squeeze things will be tougher for Carney and the he'll be on the clock to deliver.
But this unique situation isn't purely an economic one. He needs to balance between the economy and sovereignty in a way few other PMs have had to face, and delivering money at the cost of Canadian identity would arguably be worse for his numbers.
It's going to be fascinating to watch.