CANADA Calls USA's BLUFF: MONEY POURS into Canada as Investors Abandon Trump

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Look, you can listen to what Donald Trump has been telling the world about Canada. That we're weak, that we're dependent, that we're nasty, that we're basically begging to be absorbed. Or you can listen to the money. And money doesn't lie the way the Trump administration does. Money is pouring into Canada right now at a pace this country hasn't seen in nearly 20 years. [00:00:23] Speaker 2: The country Trump keeps threatening is being treated by investors as a place that they want to put their money. And let's face it, the timing is hard to ignore. Trump has spent more than a year trying to make Canada look vulnerable. Meanwhile, investors have been looking at Canada and apparently saying, we'll take more of that, please. [00:00:43] Speaker 1: So let's run the numbers because this is where the rubber meets the road. Foreign direct investment into Canada hit $96.8 billion last year. The highest we've seen since 2007. And per person, through the first three quarters, Canada led the entire G7. Not close, not catching up, led. Statistics Canada also said direct investment coming from countries outside the United States rose by more than $13 billion in 2025, reaching $45.6 billion. That is the world voting with its money. This is a global shift, people. [00:01:23] Speaker 2: And then let's take a look at the mirror image because this one is delicious. Canadian companies pulled way back on investing in America last year. And almost all of that pullback was spending that used to go south. In mergers and acquisitions alone, Canadian money in the U.S. turned into a net divestment of $11 billion. So we didn't just stop buying, we started selling. [00:01:48] Speaker 1: And that is a stark contrast from how it used to be. For decades, if you were a Canadian company that wanted to grow, the answer was always the same. Go south. Bigger market. More customers. Familiar rules. It was the default setting of an entire economy. And Trump just spent a year proving that default setting is a trap. [00:02:07] Speaker 2: When your biggest customer can rewrite the rules overnight, slap on tariffs over a political grudge, and openly talk about absorbing your country, well, businesses start asking a very adult question. Why is so much of my future in the hands of one unhinged leader? So Canada finally gave them a better answer. Build here. Finance here. Shit from both coasts. Develop our minerals, energy, and manufacturing so Canadian companies have more than one customer waiting at the end of the line. [00:02:39] Speaker 1: Now, here's where the numbers genuinely get wild. In April, foreign investors bought $46.9 billion of Canadian securities. That's just in one month. And it was overwhelmingly bonds, including an unprecedented $27.7 billion in federal government bonds. Plain English? Well, investors looked at the Canadian government and said, we trust you with our money more than we trust almost anyone else. [00:03:05] Speaker 2: And Dave, that wasn't a one-month flash that faded by morning. Through the first five months of the year, foreign investors bought almost $112 billion of Canadian securities. That's the fifth straight month of buying. So, while Trump spent the whole year claiming nobody wants Canadian assets, the world, well, their money kept lining up for a seat at our bank. [00:03:30] Speaker 1: Then, flip the ledger. Because this is the part that makes the whole narrative, well, frankly, embarrassing. From January through April, Canadians cut their holdings of American government bonds by $20.8 billion. A year earlier, we were buying them. Now, we're letting them go. The country that used to be America's loyal piggy bank is quietly rearranging our own wallet. [00:03:53] Speaker 2: So, you tell me which picture is real. The one where Canada is weak, desperate, and begging for scraps? Or the one where the world's investors pour money in while Canadians pull money out of the USA? [00:04:05] Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about the thing that really gets under Trump's skin. The stock market. Prime Minister Carney was sworn in on March 14, 2025. The TSX closed that day around $24,500. This week, it closed above $35,800. That's roughly a 46% rise since Carney became Prime Minister. And just to be clear, no Prime Minister controls the stock market. Carney didn't hit some magic button hit. [00:04:34] Speaker 2: But you can't spend a whole year screaming that Carney is destroying investor confidence while investors keep driving Canadian stocks to record highs. Reuters reported that TSX has now beaten the S&P 500 in both 2025 and 2026. That's a real trend, Dave. Not just a one-off. [00:04:54] Speaker 1: And it makes sense when you look at what is actually in the Canadian market. The banks, the gold, the mining, the energy, the critical minerals, the infrastructure. All the physical stuff the world suddenly realized it can't live without. Investors spent the last 20 years obsessed with digital growth and technology. Sure, that's still important, obviously. But now they're worried about who controls the copper, the uranium, the fertilizer, and the shipping routes. [00:05:23] Speaker 2: And Canada has a warehouse full of what that scared world needs. And the irony is, Trump is the one who reminded us that we should stop selling so much of it through one door. [00:05:34] Speaker 1: Listen, we all know Trump's economic strategy has been built around the idea that access to the American market is a weapon. Well, that strategy works much better when everybody believes that there's nowhere else to go. Prime Minister Carney's response has been to spend the last year making that less true. More trade with Europe and Asia, more infrastructure inside Canada, more processing at home, and a much stronger push to attract the private capital needed to build it. [00:06:08] Speaker 2: And investors appear to be responding to that direction. They're not betting that Canada suddenly becomes bigger than the United States. You know, we're only 40 million people compared to there's 300 and some odd million. But they are betting that Canada becomes more valuable as the world looks for reliable places to put money. They want to build supply chains and buy resources in a safe place not run by a wannabe dictator. [00:06:32] Speaker 1: Heck, even the inflation numbers tell the story. Canada came in at 2.8% in June. The United States, 3.5%. We covered all that in another video in detail. There'll be a link to it down below. And the Euro, too. It was also around 2.8% in June. So, I mean, Canada is not somehow running circles around the rest of the world. But compared with the United States, that gap is huge. Especially while U.S. businesses are still trying to figure out how Trump's tariffs and trade policies feed into their own costs. [00:07:04] Speaker 2: And then there's the currency. The U.S. and Japan did something they almost never do. A coordinated intervention to support the yen. The first American intervention on the yen since 2011. Now, that doesn't mean the U.S. dollar collapses tomorrow. But it does tell you how weird the financial environment has gotten when the world's reserve currency issuer has to step in to prop up another currency mid-tariff war. [00:07:30] Speaker 1: Because that's the thing about credibility. It's quiet. You don't watch it drain in real time. But the world's money notices. Investors watch tariffs, debt, the political chaos. And then they compare countries. And right now, Canada is looking like the place to invest. A year ago, nobody would have ever believed that sentence. [00:07:51] Speaker 2: And now's the part that turns this from a good news story into an actual power play. Potash. It's the fertilizer American farmers need to grow their crops. And the United States is unbelievably dependent on it. Cannabis supplies about 79% of American potash imports. The American net import reliance, around 92%. So there's no domestic substitutes sitting in a warehouse somewhere. [00:08:19] Speaker 1: That's the leverage that nobody in the Trump administration wants to talk about. You can't build a potash mine overnight. It takes years. And U.S. farmers need fertilizer whether Trump thinks Canada is nasty or not. Doug Ford has said energy, potash and critical minerals have to be on the table if this fight gets worse. And he's not bluffing because the numbers, they're actually on his side. [00:08:44] Speaker 2: Now, to be fair, we shouldn't pretend shutting off potash tomorrow wouldn't hurt Canada. Canadian producers would definitely take a hit too. And Saskatchewan has made it very clear that Ontario doesn't get to volunteer Saskatchewan's exports for a trade war. You listening, Mr. Ford? [00:09:05] Speaker 1: But look at what Trump just admitted. His 50% tariffs that are supposed to take place on August 19th, they hit a lot of Canadian goods. But what was exempted? Energy, potash, critical minerals. The exact things America needs most. You can call Canada Week all day, but the exemptions tell you what the people running the show actually believe. Terrorists are theater and exemptions are the truth. Trump keeps acting like we have no leverage, and then his own trade list hands us the proof that we do. [00:09:41] Speaker 2: For decades, Canada treated sitting next to the richest market on Earth like it was a whole strategy. Why look further when the biggest customer is right there? It was easy, and it kind of worked. Until it didn't, and someone like Trump went into office. Trump has forced Canada to learn very abruptly that proximity is useful, but dependence, it comes at a huge price. [00:10:02] Speaker 1: And that's the shift here. You still sell to the American customer. You just made sure they're no longer the only one that can make or break you. Diversification isn't an academic debate anymore. It's actually risk management. It's what any sane country does when its biggest ally starts talking about annexing it, right? [00:10:21] Speaker 2: Carney's bet is that Canada can turn that lesson into an advantage. Europe wants secure minerals. We can supply them. Asia wants energy. We're building the ports to get there. Investors want commodities, infrastructure, and stability. Canada can offer all of it. Listen, capital is arriving. [00:10:44] Speaker 1: Canadian markets are rising. Foreign investors are buying Canadian government debt. Non-U.S. direct investment grew. And Canadian companies have been pulling back investment in the United States. [00:10:56] Speaker 2: Trump wants tariffs to make the world more dependent on America. Well, with Canada, he's done the exact opposite. The U.S. and Canada spent generations building the most valuable relationship on earth, really. Now, Trump is the one that threw it all away and is teaching us that putting a price on relying on one market is just too much. [00:11:17] Speaker 1: So, here's the question that we want to leave you with today. If Trump's whole goal was to make Canada weaker and more dependent on Washington, what does it mean when the lasting result is a Canada with more investors, more customers, and a lot less fear of saying no? [00:11:34] Speaker 2: And if this is the Canada you want to keep building, hit like, give it a hype, and share it with someone who needs to hear that Canada is actually winning because there's a lot of messy noise out there right now. [00:11:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, and while you're down there, check out the pinned comment as well because it's got links to our sub stack, our Facebook group, and the merch store where today we're releasing our Canada is Nasty line. So, you'll want to check out it. [00:11:58] Speaker 2: Thanks for watching, everyone, and we'll see you tomorrow. [00:12:00] Speaker 1: Ciao for now.