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The Canada China Trade Problem Behind the Tariff Fight: Jim Pfaff on The Bobby Gunther Walsh Show | Aug 24, 2026

Published: August 24, 2026
Network: WAEB (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The tariff standoff between the United States and Canada is getting treated as a skirmish. Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff brought it to The Bobby Gunther Walsh Show on WAEB on August 24, 2026 as something else entirely: a Canada China trade story with a defense agreement underneath it. Mark Carney put out a statement over the weekend saying the Trump administration’s negotiating terms carried too many restrictions to be acceptable. At the same time, Pfaff said, Canada’s parliament is fighting over a memorandum of understanding signed with China on a defense agreement — and Carney’s government will not make the terms public. From there the interview turned to a New York judge who vacated Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visa restrictions on 75 countries, and closed on the Freedom 250 street race in Washington, D.C.

Topics Covered

• More Than a Tiff: What the Tariff Fight Is Actually About
• Canada China Trade Ties and the MOU Nobody Can Read
• The Cold War Had a Line Between Good and Evil
• A New York Judge vs. Rubio’s 75-Country Visa Restrictions
• The Freedom 250 and 20 Years of Penske Lobbying
• Key Takeaways

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More Than a Tiff: What the Tariff Fight Is Actually About

The host opened by saying he knew the tariff fight with Canada was out there but had not spent time on it that morning — Pfaff had flagged it as the story getting less attention than it deserves. Pfaff started not with tariffs but with an election: Canada’s, where Pierre Poilievre was going to squash Justin Trudeau and instead lost to Mark Carney, who Pfaff says is just as bad as Trudeau. That result, and Carney’s weekend statement rejecting the administration’s terms as too restrictive, is the surface. The reason it matters is geography.

“the only way that the United States invaded by a foreign power is if our neighbors decided to make alliances with countries who are dangerous to us”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff granted President Trump’s underlying complaint on the merits. Canada has some very stupid protectionisms that the United States has allowed for decades. It also does not pay for its own defense: the United States is essentially providing it, and even in relative terms, recognizing Canada is a smaller country, its military and America’s are not in the same category. That is the context for Trump’s line about statehood, which Pfaff read as an argument rather than a taunt — Canada has all the benefits of being a state of the union and none of the responsibilities, no taxes, nothing.

“Canada really is subservient to the United States, and now they’re trying to decide under first the Trudeau government, now the Carney government, to be similarly subservient to China.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff’s point about the deals Carney is seeking with China is a dependency argument, not a rhetorical one: those deals make Canada just as reliant on China as it is on the United States. They are trying to do it, he said, because they have no power on their own at all.

Canada China Trade Ties and the MOU Nobody Can Read

The Canada China trade relationship did not start with Carney. Trudeau worked hard to build stronger trade ties with China, and Trudeau said plainly that he admired China for the way it was able to run the country. Carney has never said anything like that, Pfaff noted — but the direction of travel is the same, and now there is a defense dimension. Canada’s parliament is in a dispute over an MOU signed with China on a defense agreement, and Carney’s government is not making the terms of that MOU public.

“China’s making inroads with Mexico and Canada in a very real way. They’re very slow and methodical in their approach, and this is a really risky thing that’s happening.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff was careful about what he was and was not saying. He is not saying what Donald Trump is doing is wrong. He is saying there are consequences attached to the Canada China trade question that have to be considered in the process of pressing Canada on tariffs. Trump has taken on Cuba. He has taken on Venezuela. He has taken on the Panama Canal and control the United States never should have given away. Meanwhile, in Pfaff’s account, China has started fires — the same patient approach we have covered before in our reporting on China and voter registration data. The host raised the building Chinese buyers picked up in Washington, D.C. about a block from the White House. Pfaff’s answer was that in one sense there is nothing new about that sort of thing — Russia did it in various places during the Cold War.

The Cold War Had a Line Between Good and Evil

What is new, Pfaff said, is what happens to Americans who align with the foreign power. During the Cold War, anyone in our own government who aligned with the Soviet Union would be found to have committed treason and would go to jail. He reached back to the Alger Hiss case, which he credited Richard Nixon with prosecuting, as the marker. There were muddy waters then too, he granted, and someone determined to be picky can always find them — but roughly, the country saw good and evil.

“They love what China is able to do to their country.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That line was about globalists, and Pfaff named the mechanism behind the admiration: there is government-controlled so-called capitalism in China, where the government effectively runs the companies and does not allow them to do whatever they want. The host supplied the name they were both reaching for — Klaus Schwab, who stepped down from the World Economic Forum and had said he admired China. Pfaff said the United States is not quite there, but that model is what a lot of people want: what the Biden administration wanted, and what radical leftists in the Democrat Party want, up to and including DSA members who want corporations taken physically from their owners.

The domestic version does not require ownership. As the host put it, in China they want to own the businesses or control them and it does not matter which; in the United States all they have to do is control them, which is happening with pharma and with healthcare, and which was done with Obamacare. Then Pfaff moved from policy to personnel.

“we’ve got people in our own government who are connected with China”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His example was General Mark Milley, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs called his counterpart in China to say not to worry, they were going to take care of Trump. Pfaff’s verdict: that is literally treason. The reason it was not treated that way, in his telling, is the trade relationship itself, which the host laid out directly:

“you couldn’t do it with Russia because Russia was our enemy. We had no trade. But because of this trade deal, it really does muddy the waters because China’s not our enemy. We need them. They’re trading partners.”
— Bobby Gunther Walsh, The Bobby Gunther Walsh Show

That is where the subterfuge gets through, and Pfaff’s conclusion is that we do not yet fully prosecute traitorous behavior.

A New York Judge vs. Rubio’s 75-Country Visa Restrictions

The second topic was a New York judge who vacated visa restrictions Secretary of State Marco Rubio had put in place on 75 countries. The stated reasoning in the restrictions was specific: these were countries whose nationals were most likely to take welfare from the United States. The judge ruled Rubio had no authority to impose them.

“This was just another attempt by a judge to set executive policy, overriding power, utilizing the bench to override powers that the president has.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff’s answer to the authority question has two parts. Rubio’s authority runs through President Trump, who gave the direction. And the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the president to make these restrictions — Congress can set many of them, and the president is able to make these decisions constitutionally as well. The statute, he said, is pretty loose in what it provides in that regard, and it makes clear that the president under extreme circumstances can make these judgments.

Asked whether an appeal and a stay were coming, Pfaff said they can appeal and they need to, and that this needs to be determined by the Supreme Court. He expects the Court to act positively here. The host raised birthright citizenship as a caution — the Court did not go the administration’s way on that one, which we walked through in our analysis of the birthright citizenship arguments. Pfaff drew a hard line between the two: the birthright citizenship question is totally different from this one, because here there are very clear authorities available to the president.

“But yet we still have these courts that want to run our immigration, and it’s absolutely absurd.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff went further than process. Judges bypass the clear law and they bypass the clear authorities the president holds, and he said he does not know what word to put on it other than treasonous. The harm is already being done, and the harm they refuse to let the country stop is being perpetuated on American pocketbooks. He does not claim to have all the answers on fixing the judicial system. He does have one instruction: get the appeals going to the right places, and keep asserting these cases at a Supreme Court that still works well for us on these issues.

“We’ve got to stop this onslaught on our sovereignty that our judges are bringing upon us on a regular basis.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Freedom 250 and 20 Years of Penske Lobbying

The last topic was racing, and both men had standing. The host is a race fan who runs dirt modifieds at Grandview and noted that Mario Andretti lives in Nazareth, in the Lehigh Valley, and that Team Andretti took two places on the podium at the Freedom 250. Pfaff was born in Indianapolis and used to drive past Mario Andretti’s brother’s shop almost every day on the way to work. His wife is the cousin of Steve Kinser, the winningest World of Outlaws racer; her father and Kinser’s father started that racing team. Her uncle Johnny Davis is in the Indiana Racing Hall of Fame.

On the race itself, Pfaff credited Roger Penske. Listening to the pre-race coverage, he learned Penske had been talking to people on Capitol Hill for more than 20 years trying to get something like this done, and it happened when he talked to Donald Trump and Trump said yes. The race started oddly with a few yellows, but it turned into real competition on the streets of Washington, D.C. Organizers called it a one-off; Pfaff hopes they pick it back up and make it a regular thing.

“It really highlights the patriotism that Donald Trump is building in this country.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff tied that back to the through-line of the whole interview. The country is at a pinch point in its history, where everything good about it gets thrown off to the side. There are faults and sins in America’s record, and they have been more than highlighted. But no country on the face of the earth has been anything like the United States: no country has ever had this prosperity, and the inventions and ideas that have benefited human society have almost entirely come from here. That, in Pfaff’s framing, is what is at stake in the Canada China trade question, in the visa ruling, and in who gets to run American policy.

Key Takeaways

1. The tariff fight is a security question – The only way the United States is invaded by a foreign power, Pfaff said, is if our neighbors make alliances with countries dangerous to us. Canada is doing trade with China and beginning defense agreements with China while America provides its defense.
2. There is an undisclosed China defense MOU – Canada’s parliament is fighting over a memorandum of understanding signed with China on a defense agreement, and Carney’s government has not made the terms public.
3. Canada China trade creates a second dependency – The deals Carney is seeking make Canada as reliant on China as it is on the United States. Trudeau said he admired how China runs its country; Carney has not said it, but the track is the same.
4. Trade is what muddies the treason line – Cold War alignment with the Soviet Union meant prosecution, as in the Alger Hiss case. Because China is a trading partner rather than a declared enemy — the host’s point, that trade muddies the waters — behavior like Mark Milley’s call to his Chinese counterpart goes unprosecuted, and Pfaff’s conclusion is that traitorous behavior is not yet fully prosecuted.
5. The visa ruling is judicial policymaking – A New York judge vacated Rubio’s restrictions on 75 countries. Pfaff says the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president that authority under extreme circumstances, the appeal needs to happen, and the Supreme Court needs to decide it.
6. The Freedom 250 took 20 years to get – Roger Penske lobbied Capitol Hill for more than two decades before Donald Trump said yes. Pfaff wants the one-off race made permanent.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 24, 2026 on NewsRadio 790 WAEB’s Bobby Gunther Walsh Show.