Canada’s infrastructure problem: America

On a recent episode of PPF’s podcast WONK, top U.S. political scientist Ian Bremmer explained to host Amanda Lang why he thinks Canada’s long-standing focus on the U.S. has undermined its sovereignty. Canada’s infrastructure has been built around north-south ties rather than nation-building east-west ones.

That was never a concern in a world where the U.S. was a friendly and reliable trade partner. U.S. President Donald Trump changed the equation, prompting Canada’s scramble for nation-building projects — among them new Canadian energy and trade corridors and ports.

Here’s part of their conversation on WONK:

Ian Bremmer: Canada since the 80s has built infrastructure that implies that Canada is not a country. You look at these provinces — and there’s a lot of power devolved to provinces. … And if you look at where the pipelines are built, how the supply chain works, how the energy infrastructure works, you wouldn’t know that Canada was a country. You’d think, it’s all of these like individual relationships with the big, powerful United States. And so the idea that Canada is going to suddenly undo that with the snap of a finger is clearly, it ain’t happening.

But, you know, we now have in Canada — and I’m biased, Mark [Carney] is a very close friend — but we have in Canada, I think the most geopolitically capable and consequential prime minister in decades. And he has very good relations with the Europeans and with others around the world. And he’s much more willing to make decisions that would de-risk long-term Canada from the U.S. in ways that were inconceivable and unthinkable for previous prime ministers.

So I do think that there are real decision points that are being made on defense, on trade, on standards and the like, but I also understand that at the end of the day, the U.S. is Canada’s most important trade partner, interlocutor, beneficiary, threat, all of those things. And none of that’s going to change in two and three and five years’ time. These are all very, at best, very long-term incremental moves.

Amanda Lang: I feel like you’re trying to pick a fight with me a little bit when you say Canada is not a country.

Bremmer: When did I say that?

Lang: You said if you looked at its structure you might be tempted to think Canada is not a country.

Bremmer: Only in the sense that that’s where all of the infrastructure has been built, all the decisions. Where’s the east-west? It’s all north-south.

Lang: Well, we have very robust federal policies that actually knit us together in a way that America could learn from… It’s funny, somebody asked me not long ago, an American, a really wealthy American, what do you think of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’? And I didn’t want to tell them what I thought because I didn’t want to pick a fight. But what I wanted to say was, I just wish you guys cared more about each other.

Bremmer: Completely.

Lang: You know, that bill wouldn’t live if you cared about each other. And I think Canadians do care about each other. And I think that’s just because there’s a foundation of policy like the health-care system, our taxation system that knits us together.

Bremmer: Canada’s rule of law is much stronger than America’s. Absolutely it is. Canada’s social contract is much stronger than America’s. Canadians’ sense of common values and purpose is much stronger than that of my own country. I’m ashamed to say that, right? I think that’s unfortunate how much America has lost that, how tribal the U.S. has become. And Canada’s become more tribal too, but nothing close to the United States.

My point was that when the Americans launch a trade war against Canada, and when they basically say that U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement that you thought was set in stone actually isn’t, and we will change it at our whim, that it’s very challenging for Canada to react effectively to that because Canada’s actual infrastructure has not been built out as if you’re one sovereign unit. It’s been built out to be dependent on and to take advantage of the fact that you happen to be closest to the most powerful country economically in the world. Your economic policies in building out strategic infrastructure has not been that of a sovereign. And I think that that’s a really important point.

Lang: And can we reverse it? Because to your point, we do have leadership now that’s at least talking about policies that would create a One Canadian Economy and trying to diversify away from that U.S. partner. There’s a reality — geography is immutable, we’re going to trade with the U.S. But is there a different future do think for Canada that we should be looking at?

Bremmer: There is, but it’s gonna take a long time, it’s gonna cost a lot of money, and it’s incremental. That’s like asking the Europeans, can you create your own defense? And the answer is, sure you can. It’s gonna be very expensive and it’s gonna take decades.

So the idea that this is suddenly gonna change under one administration is crazy, right? What you can do is you can steer the boat in a different direction, but the boat’s still in the same part of the ocean, and then you start moving it slowly.

That’s the issue. And Mark (Carney) is fully aware of that. Like, I mean, it’s not like this is news to him somehow. He’s become prime minister quite improbably in a very, very challenging and uniquely challenging geopolitical environment for a country that hasn’t experienced a challenging geopolitical environment in a very long time.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Or read a full transcript below:

Lang: Our guest today is an expert on global risk and that’s timely since the risk the world faces today feel not just numerous, but in some cases existential. Ian Bremmer is founder of Eurasia Group. He’s also the founder of GZERO Media and the author of 11 books. Ian, thanks for being with us.

You know, we’ve covered a lot of subjects on this podcast this season about the risks the world faces from the threat to the global trade system to the question of how AI is gonna reshape our lives to great power conflict. And I wanna put you on the spot and start by asking what you think is the biggest risk? What’s the thing you think we should be paying the most attention to?

Bremmer: What’s the time frame?

Lang: Well, I guess sort of immediate next year or so.

Bremmer: Next year, it’s the United States, the world’s most powerful country, driving so much more geopolitical uncertainty. Longer term, two, three, five years, it’s probably implications of AI on geopolitics, on the global economy, on society, how it works on all of us. So those are my two big buckets, I suppose.

Lang: And I mean, it’s incredibly like you that you would want parameters like that. And I guess I would turn it back to you and say, should we be thinking about the immediate risks right in front of us, the way we do and the way our political leaders do, or should this be a time when we think about those longer term issues? Because AI feels like something that’s happening fast, that has of course incredibly long term implications that we don’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to.

Bremmer: The thing about AI is I’ve never in my career experienced an issue where the people that are inside it have such a radically different near-term worldview from everybody else. So I think it really does behoove everyone out there to spend a lot more time getting up to speed on how fast this is moving, what it means, its impact on society, how much it’s changing. So because, I mean, the U.S. stuff is, in a sense, over-covered. So much so that people have a hard time separating the signal from the noise. There’s so much crap around the U.S. that doesn’t actually matter. When what we need to focus on is, you know, which of the institutions are actually getting stressed to the point of breaking, how much the trade relationship is changing, you know, especially for Canada, that’s really relevant.

But there’s a lot of what comes up on the U.S. that doesn’t actually really matter. And people spend far too much time on it. I got an email yesterday morning with someone, you know, very breathless, around the fact that the Wall Street Journal wasn’t going to be allowed in the press pool. This is the end of free speech in the United States? People get very excited on the back of one big headline. It was a complete nothingburger, right? And this happens all the time.

Lang: I mean, in that vein, I guess I have to ask you, you know, there’s so much attention being focused on the Epstein files and the conspiracy and the divisions in the MAGA camp. Do think all of that is overblown and really in some ways a distraction from things we should be focused on?

Bremmer: It’s overblown in the sense that it has no global impact. It’s not overblown in the sense that it is dividing MAGA. And Elon Musk, who was the most powerful and influential of Trump advisors for the first few months, is now certainly not that. And he is also fueling the fire on Epstein.

And so I mean this weekend this past weekend Trump and Pam Bondi and actually most importantly Tulsi Gabbard have been trying to distract. And one of the most important distractions is announcing the prosecution of Obama and many of his advisors. And I think that’s an overreach. But more importantly, I think it’s gonna hurt Trump. Remember, all of the convictions against Trump actually improved his popularity. So I think going after Obama and using the levers of the state to say this man is a criminal and should be convicted will actually improve the Obama’s popularity and those that support him in the United States.

So in that regard, as we look ahead to how Trump is doing and what 2026 or 2028 landscape would look like, I think Epstein is relevant, but it doesn’t have policy relevance.

Lang: When we think about 26 and 28, you know, it’s funny as a Canadian, if you get anywhere near Americans, some kinds of Americans, they want to apologize profusely. And I always say, don’t apologize. But what I do say is, you know, if you want to fix it, go fix it in 26 and 28. Don’t sit around talking about it, go get busy and do whatever you want to do.

But there has been some suggestion, and maybe you think this is kind of tinfoil hat category, but because it sort of came a little bit from Elon Musk, that those races may well be, I don’t want to say fixed, but that the technology is easily corruptible, that there’s gerrymandering of the constituencies and that really free and fair elections in America are under threat. Do you believe that?

Bremmer: They haven’t been, right? I mean the elections are run at the state level and there’s been no fraud. There’s really been no vote fixing. You’re right that constituencies have been gerrymandered, which certainly makes it a lot harder for individual parties that are on the receiving end of that to do better in congressional counts, but that’s very different than looking at a national race. Look, it is clear to me that if Trump had the ability to ensure a political outcome that he wanted, he would do so. So he has an authoritarian impulse in that regard, but there are checks and balances. So for those that are saying the U.S. is descending into dictatorship, the answer to that is clearly not.

What the U.S. is, is it’s the most dysfunctional of the advanced industrial democracies. It is less representative. It is more kleptocratic. It is more determined by money.

Now, that is starting to change. And the way it’s starting to change is the politicization of the so-called power ministries. And here I’m thinking about the DOJ, the Department of Justice, the IRS, the FBI. When Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is someone that clearly is acting as a political appointee and is not first and foremost upholding rule of law, that is a new precedent that is being set that has a chilling effect on what it means to be in or out of power. And I do think it is plausible if that continues, those sorts of decisions continue to determine that if you’re not loyal, that you can be investigated, you can be audited, you can be prosecuted, then it is plausible that by the time we get to 2028 that instead of the election being a coin flip, which it is, and it’s determined by the charismatic nature of an individual candidate and how the economy is doing and other key issues, we could be in an environment where the incumbent leader has a 60-40 or a 70-30 hurdle.In other words, the U.S. could end up looking more like Hungary or Turkey.

I use those two examples because Hungary, at this point, I believe that Viktor Orban is going to lose elections next year, despite all of the control that he personally has to really crowd out opposition. So Hungary is not a dictatorship, but it is not a fully functional representative democracy. And I think that that’s the question. I know that’s not a very exciting headline. But that’s kind of what you’re looking at when you think about how the U.S. might head as we move towards 2028.

Lang: Maybe this is the same in Hungary, but I’m going to suggest there’s a key difference that goes to the heart of what I think is really corrupt in America right now. And that is that big business, wealthy, a few wealthy people really, really are grasping the reins of power. Thanks to Citizen United, thanks to the super PACs, thanks to the fact that money really can control politics. Yes, Pam Bondi is a political appointment, but how long before that’s really just the head of Meta’s appointment, you know, in an indirect way?

Bremmer: I mean, you were talking about elections, and that’s how I answered your previous question. Now, if you want to talk about the structure of the U.S. government and how representative it is, this brings us back to why the Epstein issue is relevant. And it’s because many Americans believe, and I’m one of them, that there is a two-tier system of justice in America. That if you have access to power and resources, you have a different experience of rule of law in the United States than if you do not.

Trump won his election last November on the back of being more aligned with the American public on core issues than the Democrats were, Biden, Kamala, or frankly any of them. That includes fair trade, not free trade.

It includes ending the wars. It includes securing the border. It does not include draining the swamp. Trump had said that he was going to drain the swamp. He has stopped saying that. And he stopped saying that because he’s actually part of the swamp. In fact, he’s actually expanding the swamp. His big, beautiful bill, which is a massive fiscal overreach in a country that’s already highly indebted is a huge giveaway to the wealthiest and more powerful in the United States. I will make a lot more money because of Trump, which I don’t need. And I think it is not what he was elected to do.

I also think that Epstein, who, you know, this was an issue that was being driven by Trump and his supporters for very long time. And now that it turns out that there are pieces of the Epstein files that are embarrassing to Trump for reasons that we don’t actually fully have evidence around. But now they’ve decided that we don’t want you to pay attention to it anymore. Now look, I mean, if it’s just about loyalty to Trump, then you should give up on it because I mean, the reason you cared about Epstein is because he told you to.

And so now that he’s telling you not to, you should move on. But a lot of Americans voted for Trump not because they were loyal to him, but rather because they believed that the two-tier system of justice was wrong, that the U.S. was increasingly not a representative democracy, and they wanted someone that was prepared to address that and take the fight to the so-called deep state, all the people that had access to power. And now they’re seeing that Trump is not doing that.

And they’re angry about that. And I think that’s why Zohran Mamdani is likely to be mayor of my city in the coming year. Everyone under 30 in this city is voting for him. I think that’s why Bernie Sanders and younger Democrats like him on the progressive, call it reactionary, even revolutionary left, are set to perform much better in the United States because Trump does not address their issues. That’s kind of where we are.

Lang: Would you agree with me that if there’s one thing that would be a good thing to change about America and change the future, it would be to get money out of politics. And that would be some kind of reversal of Citizens United, some kind of end of the stranglehold of big business and big billionaires on politicians in your country?

Bremmer: Sure. It’s the thing that’s most broken in the U.S. political system. And it’s both about the transactional nature of Trump. Trump can be bought off. TikTok, according to Congress, should be banned. And Trump has illegally kicked the can on that on several occasions because he has personally made bank from individuals connected to TikTok that have paid him.

That is an abomination in a democracy. And we have seen many examples of that: the Trump coin, the Melania coin, but we’ve also seen many examples of individual leaders happy to pay one, five, 10 million, far more than that, to sit on a stage in the inauguration behind Trump. I mean, you when you look at all of those men, some of the wealthiest men on the planet that were standing behind Trump, and you can look at their net worths in the hundreds of billions in some cases, and then you can look at how much money they are making from the big, beautiful bill, how much money they are making from subsidies that American taxpayers are actually paying.

And then you can look at other Americans around the country that aren’t gonna have access to adequate health care. You can look at older Americans that in 10 years time will not have the ability to have their social security paid out. And a country as powerful and wealthy as the United States, this is an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment, but it’s not Trump’s fault. This has been coming for decades.

Biden actually got a lot more money from far larger number of billionaires, as did Kamala Harris than Trump. And in fact, if you look at who voted for Harris, it was largely the wealthy. And Trump got a lot more votes from the working and middle classes. So this is a structural issue that’s been coming in the United States for decades, and Democrats and Republicans are complicit. So therefore, as an American who votes, as a citizen, I am complicit. Like, we need to take collective responsibility for this thing. There has been far too many powerful, influential Americans that have said, it’s all just fine because we’re doing fine and we’re wealthy and so what? And, you know, I mean, we get a lot of this right now about like how the Americans are supporting Israel. Look what’s happening in Gaza. There is complicity there, right? There’s complicity in the kleptocracy and the fact that the average American is not benefiting the way they should from the U.S. system.

Lang: Okay, well, I want to bring it back to Canada because even if there is too much attention, undue attention being paid to some of these twitches of what’s happening inside America, for Canada, this has been a bit existential and we are in the middle of trying to nail down some kind of new trading relationship. We have the signal from our prime minister, which seems very rational, that it’s likely to look more like a trade union and that we’re likely to have some form of tariff. We just don’t know what. What’s your advice to Canada?

Bremmer: One is it’s not existential. So, you know, and I’m not saying that to be annoying. I’m just like, existential is what’s happening in Gaza. Existential is what’s happening in Ukraine. I have not seen any Canadians facing questions of survival on the basis of what Trump has said and done. I mean, what he has said and done is overtly antagonistic towards America’s closest ally. And it has been, in my view, self-defeating. It’s going to hurt both countries in the long term. And it’s going to cause a lot more damage to Canada than the U.S., of course, because Canada relies on the U.S. a lot more. And certainly the potential for Canada to enter into recession if they mishandle this is real.

So I’m not trying to understate it, but I react to, you know, the term existential risk in ways that seem, you know, kind of nuts to me.

It is also true that Canada since the eighties has built infrastructure that implies that Canada is not a country. You look at these provinces — and there’s a lot of power devolved to provinces and provinces are kind of the deep state in Canada, right? The monopolies that a lot of these capitals have. And if you look at where the pipelines are built, how the supply chain works, how the energy infrastructure works, you wouldn’t know that Canada was a country. You’d think, it’s all of these like individual relationships with the big, powerful United States. And so the idea that Canada is going to suddenly undo that with the snap of a finger is clearly, it ain’t happening.

But, you know, we now have in Canada — and I’m biased, Mark (Carney) is a very close friend — but we have in Canada, I think the most geopolitically capable and consequential prime minister in decades. And he has very good relations with the Europeans and with others around the world. And he’s much more willing to make decisions that would de-risk long-term Canada from the U.S. in ways that were inconceivable and unthinkable for previous prime ministers.

So I do think that there are real decision points that are being made on defense, on trade, on standards and the like, but I also understand that at the end of the day, the U.S. is Canada’s most important trade partner, interlocutor, beneficiary, threat, all of those things. And none of that’s going to change in two and three and five years’ time. These are all very, at best, very long-term incremental moves.

Lang: I feel like you’re trying to pick a fight with me a little bit when you say Canada is not a country.

Bremmer: When did I say that?

Lang: You said if you looked at its structure you might be tempted to think Canada is not a country.

Bremmer: Only in the sense that that’s where all of the infrastructure has been built, all the decisions. Where’s the east-west? It’s all north-south.

Lang: Well, we have very robust federal policies that actually knit us together in a way that America could learn from. It’s funny, somebody asked me not long ago, an American, a really wealthy American, what do you think of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’? And I didn’t want to tell them what I thought because I didn’t want to pick a fight. But what I wanted to say was, I just wish you guys cared more about each other.

You know, that bill wouldn’t live if you cared about each other. And I think Canadians do care about each other. And I think that’s just because there’s a foundation of policy like the health-care system, our taxation system that knits us together.

Bremmer: Canada’s rule of law is much stronger than America’s. Absolutely it is. Canada’s social contract is much stronger than America’s. Canadians’ sense of common values and purpose is much stronger than that of my own country. I’m ashamed to say that, right? I think that’s unfortunate how much America has lost that, how tribal the U.S. has become. And Canada’s become more tribal too, but nothing close to the United States.

My point was that when the Americans launch a trade war against Canada, and when they basically say that U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement that you thought was set in stone actually isn’t, and we will change it at our whim, that it’s very challenging for Canada to react effectively to that because Canada’s actual infrastructure has not been built out as if you’re one sovereign unit. It’s been built out to be dependent on and to take advantage of the fact that you happen to be closest to the most powerful country economically in the world. Your economic policies in building out strategic infrastructure has not been that of a sovereign. And I think that that’s a really important point.

Lang: And can we reverse it? Because to your point, we do have leadership now that’s at least talking about policies that would create a One Canadian Economy and trying to diversify away from that U.S. partner. There’s a reality — geography is immutable, we’re going to trade with the U.S. But is there a different future do think for Canada that we should be looking at?

Bremmer: There is, but it’s gonna take a long time, it’s gonna cost a lot of money, and it’s incremental. That’s like asking the Europeans, can you create your own defense? And the answer is, sure you can. It’s gonna be very expensive and it’s gonna take decades.

So the idea that this is suddenly gonna change under one administration is crazy, right? What you can do is you can steer the boat in a different direction, but the boat’s still in the same part of the ocean, and then you start moving it slowly.

That’s the issue. And Mark (Carney) is fully aware of that. Like, I mean, it’s not like this is news to him somehow. He’s become prime minister quite improbably in a very, very challenging and uniquely challenging geopolitical environment for a country that hasn’t experienced a challenging geopolitical environment in a very long time.

Lang: One of the risks that we haven’t talked about is the climate risk. And it feels as though we have all put this on the back burner, but boy, it’s boiling back there. And I’m wondering what your take is on the price we’ll pay for delaying action.

Bremmer: The Chinese haven’t put it on the back burner. mean, they are driving a global shift to build out renewable capacity, build out nuclear capacity. They’re leading the world in electric vehicles and batteries, not to mention supply chain that’s really important. They’re the second largest economy in the world, and it is a top priority.

So, I mean, that by itself is important. Now, the United States is clearly in different position and we’re not seeing the subsidies that we had in the Biden administration, but Texas today is the largest U.S. producer of renewable energy. Texas, red Texas. And that is in part because of subsidies, but it’s mostly because of a relatively light touch regulation and strong support for entrepreneurship. And the reality is these technologies at scale are now sufficiently cheap and efficient, and they’re only getting more so.

So I think that we’re already over the hump on this. Again, I recognize that it is, we’re not continuing to put our foot on the accelerator equally across the world, but I have no doubt in my mind that we are heading towards a post carbon energy future. And even though AI is largely being powered in the data centers, largely being powered by fossil fuels, AI’s explosion is also going to create incredible efficiencies and speed up the move to post carbon. So I’m actually quite excited about what that technology space looks like.

Lang: Are you equally excited about how those efficiencies will put people out of work? I was looking at some data this morning that’s there’s already something like 80,000 jobs just so far this year displaced by AI, but the run rate on it, of course, the expectation is that it will be millions and millions of jobs in the end. How worried are we about that?

Bremmer: You know, it’s funny, if I answer your question literally, I’m very excited about it because I think that the values that society has, that people around the world must spend most of their waking hours for the majority of their lives doing things that they’re not passionate about so that they can survive, I don’t think that’s healthy at all. I don’t think it’s human or humane.

So I’m very excited that AI has the promise that in less than a generation, we can end that, despite the fact that that’s never been true in human history, right? In modern human history. What I’m not excited about is the fact that we are clearly not prepared as a society to govern effectively that transition and that people are going to suffer. They are going to be displaced. They are going to be angry as a consequence. They’re not gonna be re-skilled adequately. They’re not gonna be taken care of adequately.

And this is gonna come a lot faster than hollowing out middle classes and working classes from free trade and labor arbitrage a lot faster than the robotics revolution over the past decades and with far greater consequence. So I think there’s a lot of danger in the coming five years from that.

Lang: We are all kind of aware of how fast this is moving. And I just want to finish with, because this is what you do for a living, of course, is talk to governments and business leaders about how to think about these risks. You put it into time frame buckets. Are we in danger of just being too slow to adopt the policies we need for something like this new technology, including our adaptation to climate change? Things are going to happen really fast. Are we going to be fast enough?

Bremmer: Absolutely we’re not going to be fast enough.

Capitalism is fundamentally subverted when the people driving this revolution don’t take responsibility for losses. There are all sorts of negative externalities that come from these incredible new developments. The last Industrial Revolution created all of this upside and profit, but also pumped carbon in the atmosphere.

And all of these industry leaders were capitalists in taking credit for and profit from those upsides. And then as soon as we talked about losses, they became socialists. And I think it’s unacceptable that we have that much socialism in our CEOs. I think that when we talk about AI CEOs, they need to stop being socialists when they are putting people out of work.

They need to take accountability for that. That is part of their responsibility. And if they refuse to take that responsibility, governments need to make them become more capitalist. That’s what it amounts to. And instead we have monopolists and oligarchs and people that are trying to capture the regulatory environment to write rules that benefit them and screw the average person. That’s not acceptable. And that is unfortunately going to be a big part of the AI revolution.

Lang: I gotta leave it there, Ian. We could go on. It’s good to talk to you. Thanks for your time.

Bremmer: Good talk to you, Amanda.