Shadowing Practice: More Tariff Turmoil: AP reports Canada will announce RETALIATORY tariffs today - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It's 9.30.
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Let's get down to business.
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The Associated Press reports that Canada will announce its own retaliatory tariffs against the United States today.
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Why?
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Relations got even messier yesterday when Trump told Canadian leaders to fall in line and threatened to impose even more tariffs, this time on the auto industry.
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Now Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he is ready to return to the table
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when the White House has the right attitude.
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Joining me now is Scott Lincecone, Vice President of General Economics at the Cato Institute and Bharat Ramamurti,
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former National Economic Council Deputy Director and author of The Bully Pulpit on Substack.
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OK, Scott, both sides, both countries have a tremendous amount to lose in this wildly unnecessary trade war.
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How do you see it playing out?
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Well, there's the good news and bad.
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The good is that the latest tariff salvo from the United States
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and eventually from Canada are pretty small when you're talking about a bilateral goods trading relationship, about a trillion dollars.
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You're only talking about a 40 billion dollars on both sides.
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That's that's the good news.
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So it's relatively contained right now.
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The bad news is that we all know from how trade wars play out
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that these things have a way of escalating and spiraling in very unintended ways.
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And that's before you throw in a guy like Donald Trump or up north, a guy like Doug Ford that loved to exacerbate these types of tensions.
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And you've already seen Trump threaten more retaliation.
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Fighting the United States is very popular politically in Canada.
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And I think there's the real risk
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that what starts out as a relatively small and contained fight becomes something much bigger in the fall,
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imperiling a really important North American supply chain and economic integration that's good for both countries.
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Bharat, what do you think?
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Yeah, I agree with Scott.
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You know, to put this in context, Canada as our second largest trading partner.
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We're doing about $900 billion a year in trade with Canada.
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And that's about double what we do with China, just to give some context to that.
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And the interesting thing is that the balance of that between imports and exports is about 50-50.
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So in other words, we import as much from Canada as we export to them.
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And so, as Scott said, because of the nature of that relationship, when Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs,
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they have the capacity to do quite a bit of damage to American exporters.
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So as Scott said, we're not at that phase of the proceeding right now, but we could easily get there given the rhetoric on both sides here.
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And that's going to be very bad, not only for American consumers, we're going to be paying higher prices for things we import from Canada, including energy, to wine, to hockey sticks,
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but be very bad for American exporters, especially in the upper Midwest.
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You know, we export a lot of auto parts and autos to China, we export a lot of machinery to Canada, I'm sorry.
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And all of that is going to hurt our manufacturing base.
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So the irony of these tariffs, which are being pursued in theory to help our manufacturers, is that this retaliatory process is actually going to end up hurting them.
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All right.
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Let's talk about the Iran war and this economic D-Day that was supposed to take place yesterday.
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The White House is delaying imposing what would be the biggest blow economically to Iran sanctioning its trade partners.
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And Scott Besson was asked about it yesterday after he gave his speech.
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And I want to share that.
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You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion and the U.S didn't give a timeline to Germany.
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So why not impose the sanctions today?
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Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior.
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Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?
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We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period,
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but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious.
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so does that mean that
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if he followed through with the plan it would blow up the global economic financial system
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and what's your take here scott uh well i i hope
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not uh my take is a lot of this is you know we got to wait for the details uh
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and i think the biggest detail of all is china uh the extent to
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which the united states actually goes after uh chinese banks chinese companies We're doing business with Iran.
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The extent to which the United States tries to sanction smuggling, which is a big part of Iran's economy and the way Iran evades the sanctions.
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That's all going to matter because, you know, the U.S and China are working on their own big deal right now.
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You have a big summit coming between Trump and Xi Jinping this fall.
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And if the United States goes full bore against China with these sanctions, then all that collapses.
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You have a U.S.-China trade war and it gets very messy there.
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So you've got to wait to see really what the United States is proposing.
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What do you think, Barack?
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Yeah, I'd put it even more strongly than that.
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I mean, look, Iran's number one export is oil and 90 percent of its oil sales are to China.
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And so we're entirely dependent on China pulling back on oil purchases from Iran to actually impose significant economic damage to Iran.
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And as Scott said, a lot of
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that comes down to the willingness of the United States to impose penalties on Chinese actors, including very large financial institutions in China,
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for facilitating the purchase of Iranian oil.
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If we're not willing to do that, then a lot of this Iran trade can continue to happen and the Iranian economy will be hurt, but relatively OK.
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If we're really going to talk about D-Day, it's going to mean going after Chinese financial institutions and large Chinese actors and risking retaliation from China.
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And do we want to do that on the brink of this summit?
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But also, more significantly, that's the underpinning of a lot of global economic trade, the financial flows in the global economic system.
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we really risk blowing that up if we take that additional step to impose a pain on Iran.
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Real-Life Trade Tensions: A Dialogue to Practice English
Imagine tuning into a live news discussion about global trade—this is exactly the scenario in the video, where experts break down Canada's planned retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. and the risks of a spiraling trade war. This conversation is perfect for IELTS speaking practice because it uses natural, real-world language, from casual phrases like "get down to business" to formal terms like "bilateral goods trading relationship." By engaging with this dialogue, you’ll learn to follow complex topics and speak about current events confidently.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Memorize
- Retaliatory tariffs: Taxes on imports in response to another country’s tariffs. Example: "Canada will announce retaliatory tariffs today."
- Spiraling out of control: Escalating quickly in a bad way. Example: "Trade wars often spiral out of control."
- Level set: Establish a clear understanding. Example: "We need to level set on the facts."
- Imperiling supply chains: Putting supply chains at risk. Example: "Tariffs are imperiling North American supply chains."
- 50-50 balance: Equal split. Example: "U.S.-Canada trade has a 50-50 balance of imports and exports."
Your Shadowing Challenge: Improve Pronunciation & Fluency
Ready to try shadowspeak (also called shadowing)? This technique helps you mimic native speakers’ rhythm, intonation, and pronunciation—key for improving English pronunciation. Here’s how: Play a 10-second clip of the video, pause, and repeat it immediately, trying to match the speakers’ speed and tone. Focus on phrases like "wildly unnecessary trade war" and "exacerbate these types of tensions." Do this 3 times with the same clip, then move to a new one. This is a proven way to learn English with videos and build confidence in speaking. You’ve got this—consistency is key!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being pursued · was asked · will be hurt |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | tariffs, which are · smuggling, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.