SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says his country will lift many of the retaliatory tariffs placed on U.S. goods starting September 1. Relations between the two countries have been severely strained by President Trump's decision to slap high tariffs on Canadian goods and repeated threats to make Canada the 51st state, even if he has no legal authority to do so. Now a movement known as Elbows Up is calling on Canadians to reassess relations with the U.S., showing that the nation is strong, independent and not for sale. Donna Noade Reardon is the mayor of St. John, New Brunswick, just northeast of Maine. She joins us now. Mayor Reardon, thanks for being with us.
DONNA NOADE REARDON: My pleasure. Thank you.
SIMON: I think of elbows up as a hockey term, right?
REARDON: Exactly.
SIMON: What's it mean now?
REARDON: It means, like, let's stick together. Let's be supportive of each other. Let's not back down on, you know, some of the things that are important to us as a country. So that's what it sort of means to Canadians today, right now.
SIMON: You have said, I gather, that it's time for Canada to break up with the U.S. and move on. But we're neighbors. We share so much.
REARDON: I agree. We share so much. We have shared an amazing relationship since the second world war. We have a border that we are both comfortable crossing, and we're never hassled or harassed. We've got, you know, people here in Canada that have relatives just on the other side of the border. I'm only an hour to the U.S. border - to Calais, Maine. So we've had a very reciprocal relationship for a long time.
SIMON: But.
REARDON: But.
SIMON: Yeah. What's happened now?
REARDON: Well, you have a new president down there who's sort of changing the rules of engagement for us. And it's all about, you know, tariffs, and we feel like we're being punished. And we don't really understand or know why we're being punished, and we don't know what the punishment is. From one day to the next, it has changed, and it's changing again. I hear if, you know, retaliatory tariffs are removed, then maybe we can talk. And we put retaliatory tariffs on because we couldn't talk before it, you know? So it creates so much uncertainty for Canadians. A lot of Canadians have chosen to stay home and try to explore our own country, spend our money here.
SIMON: What difference have the tariffs made in St. John?
REARDON: It's created a lot of instability. And with St. John, we have the highest gross domestic product per capita. Now, we're not large, but we have a gross domestic product of 81,000 dollars per capita here in St. John. And in New Brunswick, there are three major cities. Moncton and Fredericton would be the other two, and their GDP is, like, 2,000 and 4,000 per capita each. So we are apparently the highest-impacted city in the country. We have oil refinery here, largest oil refinery in the country. We have pulp and paper here. We have aquaculture here. We have a port here. Now, a lot of the ports partners would be east of here, so would be, you know, across the Atlantic Ocean. So those relationships have already been established. So for us, like, we're saying, like, maybe we need to look to strengthen those relationships.
SIMON: How do you feel personally when President Trump says that Canada should be the 51st state?
REARDON: That's - it's not my cup of tea. Listen, I love being a partner with the U.S. But, you know, I don't - we don't want to be part of the U.S.
SIMON: Do you have any particular hopes for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement? It's due for review next year.
REARDON: It's been an interesting way. It's been a gift for Canada because we have had trade barriers between our provinces, you know, that we've never even thought about because we've had so much interaction with the U.S. that we've never really looked at this border system that we have from province to province to province. And what this did was it forced all of the premiers to work together and to come up with some solutions. So if we could continue with that and they could continue to break down the barriers between our provinces, and we could get back on track with the U.S., it would be amazing.
SIMON: The mayor of St. John, New Brunswick, Donna Noade Reardon. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
REARDON: Thank you, Scott. My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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