podcast

Articles

Podcasts

Videos

Find a branch or ATM

Contact our Thought Leadership team—we value your insights!

Have questions or feedback?

Manage your meeting

Need to meet?

Explore the latest insights, reports, and timely topics affecting economic growth at home and around the world.

CIBC Thought Leadership

Connect with us:

This transcript has been generated using machine learning technology. While this technology was trained with CIBC terminology, it may contain errors.
Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I&#8217;m your host Lisa Raitt and in this podcast I&#8217;m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business, with some guests along the way. Welcome back to The Raitt Stuff. Well, back by popular demand, I have with me our internal expert. She&#8217;s the Managing Director of Strategic Policy and Advisory here in the Office of the CEO, Amber Batool. Welcome back to The Raitt Stuff.
Amber Batool: Thank you, Lisa. It&#8217;s great to be back.
Lisa Raitt: Well, we&#8217;ve been chatting so much in the office about everything that&#8217;s happened since Davos, quite frankly. And the House of Commons here in Canada has gone back to work, meaning that they&#8217;re back in session. I thought it&#8217;d be fun for us to compare and contrast what&#8217;s happening in Canada, North America versus what&#8217;s happening in the UK and Europe. But first, I just wanted to give a bit of an overview of where we are in Canada, because so much has happened in the past week. As a lot of you know, the prime minister went to Davos and he gave a speech that was very very well received. Now there is some criticism coming back on it. The question of whether or not it was poking the United States in the eye too hard or whether or not he should have said some of the things he did. The reality is that speech is given and now it&#8217;s time for us to assess what happens next in the House of Commons. The opposition has really gone down the path of questioning the government on affordability. It really is about what&#8217;s happening to Canadian families and whether or not the cost of living is something so exorbitant for the average Canadian that they should blame the federal government for it. On the other side, the federal government is saying, we have lots of legislation that we&#8217;re gonna put through. They actually gave you a break on GST that&#8217;s gonna be coming out in June if the legislation passes through the House of Commons. And they&#8217;re also gathering up all of the province and the territorial premiers in Ottawa for a meeting to talk about, internal trade and how we bring those barriers down. And I&#8217;m sure the Prime Minister at the same time is giving an update to the premiers on what&#8217;s happening vis-a-vis the United States. Obviously, we&#8217;re very concerned in Canada. We want to make sure that we&#8217;re getting back to the table when it comes to the United States because it is our largest trading partner, but at the same time, the prime minister is going around the world and setting up new relationships or reinvigorating old relationships and getting them more on a trade footing. So he&#8217;s been to China, he&#8217;s sent Tim Hodgson, the minister of natural resources to India. And there&#8217;s other stops that are set up for him coming into the spring. So he&#8217;s well traveled and he is trying to fight this in two aspects. One is to set up new trade deals and the other one is to manage the trade deal here with the United States and what&#8217;s happening. So that&#8217;s in a nutshell, Amber, from what&#8217;s happening here. You and I joked with one another, it&#8217;s like everything everywhere all at once, just like the movie, but can you give our listeners just a quick update as to what&#8217;s happening in the UK which is separate from Europe of course.
Amber Batool: Absolutely. There is no doubt that these are very serious times. I often get asked, when are things going to get back to normal? And I don&#8217;t think they do. I think we&#8217;ve opened a bit of a Pandora&#8217;s box and so many issues. It&#8217;s almost impossible to go back. let&#8217;s talk about the UK first. Alas, when it comes to geopolitics, I feel like Prime Minister Keir Starmer seems to lurch from one disaster to another. He, like you&#8217;ve mentioned with Prime Minister Carney, is trying to cut trade deals. This week he is in China. I think that&#8217;s the first time a UK Prime Minister has visited in almost a decade. He has dithered on how to deal with the US administration. There have been many attempts at application. You saw that with the royal visit and other things, but the public mood is really turning. And when President Trump minimized the role of the UK and NATO in wars, I think the public and perhaps more importantly, the entire British press were united. They were absolutely incandescent with rage at the minimization of the 457 British service members that died. And that did prompt the president to issue some warmer words about the UK military. But look, I think the challenges he faces are not unique to him. And I think it kind of guides how leaders are responding to geopolitical risks. He&#8217;s facing leadership challenges within his own party. He has a resurgent reform party, which is seeing almost weekly defections to it from very senior conservative former ministers. He&#8217;s dealing with issues, as you&#8217;ve mentioned as well, but relating to immigration, populism and affordability. And I feel that&#8217;s something he has in common with, for example, President Macron. He is polling as France&#8217;s least popular president in the past 50 years. And when you think of some of his competition, well, and then Chancellor Merz in Germany faces critical domestic challenges this year, primarily driven by a stagnating economy and very high energy costs. And so when people often ask me, why isn&#8217;t the UK and Europe stronger in their response to the US and the new kind of geopolitical geometry, I think the answer has to be number one, decoupling from the US is very long and painful. And also they are all approaching this from a place of significant domestic weakness. And that has to hamper the way they respond to the US.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. Amber, you know, I&#8217;ve been thinking about how the call of the dance is really being led by the United States. It seems like we&#8217;re all reacting to something new that Donald Trump says. What&#8217;s your sense in the UK, though, of what are they trying to do? What kind of plan are they trying to actually execute on? Are they thinking about their own domestic issues or are they just waiting for yet another Donald Trump kind of missive to come over the bow?
Amber Batool: A little bit of both. Look, let me widen this out to Europe as well. And I personally think, you when it comes to the news cycle, and to paraphrase Warren Buffett, we have to exercise a bit of logic and a bit of restraint. I had mentioned to you that, you know, when I worked under the Blair administration, we introduced something called the number 10 grid. And every single government department had to write down regardless of, you know, seniority and who the minister was their announcements on this grid and you had to have a slot before you could go public. And there was this iron discipline because there was this thought that every announcement, speech or policy had to be given the right oxygen.
Lisa Raitt: Yep. It was all of your choreographed. We did the same thing in the Harper government, for sure.
Amber Batool: Right, exactly. Whereas I feel now there&#8217;s just an astonishing amount of information being pumped out day and night. And so when it comes to Europe, look, I&#8217;d love to say that they have, you know, steely resolve and a plan, but not really. Look, they&#8217;re under attack militarily from Russia, economically from China, and then politically from the US. And to add to that, they&#8217;re not one cohesive body. They have a lot of diverging interests. But let me take a couple of areas where I feel they are united. Firstly, the war in Ukraine. This morning, the New York Times had a study in it that said the number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or missing in the last four years of war is nearly at two million, which is really grim. So the Europeans are absolutely desperate to keep the NATO coalition together. They have agreed to some of President Trump&#8217;s demands, such as the 5% GDP target. They want to kind of move a bit more softly when it comes to how they talk to the president on these issues, because they know it would be absolutely catastrophic to lose the military and more importantly, I feel, intelligence sharing support that frankly only the US can offer. So that&#8217;s one. Second, I feel like they&#8217;re becoming more coordinated on big issues like energy and trade diversification. On energy, they just signed something called the Hamburg Declaration, which sounds very grand. The deal covers an unprecedented fleet of joint offshore wind projects between European countries, including Germany, France, Norway and Denmark. And there&#8217;s also talk of an interconnected offshore grid. And then with trade diversification, they&#8217;re all beating a path to India, China and beyond. And this week, the EU and India just signed a deal which needs to be approved by their respective institutions, which the European Commission president called the mother of all trade deals. And the deal cuts duties on, I think it&#8217;s nearly 97% of EU exports to India. And then the EU will grant preferential access to 99% of Indian exports. So, you know, it&#8217;s this kind of middle power coalescing that we&#8217;re seeing. And I feel like those are the areas that currently Europe is trying to take a more united stand on.
Lisa Raitt: And Donald Trump noticed that deal between Europe and India because he said that may be the mother of all deals, but I&#8217;m daddy.
Amber Batool: I don&#8217;t know what to say in response to that.
Lisa Raitt: So that&#8217;s, I know, there&#8217;s always that, there&#8217;s always that. Keir Starmer said something interesting though the other day, we&#8217;ve said middle power. And of course that was the theme in the the Carney speech in Davos. Keir Starmer said something interesting. He said, no, I&#8217;m going to view this through a UK lens. This is all going to be about what&#8217;s happening in the United Kingdom and how we react around the world. Inferring, it&#8217;s not going to be about middle powers coming together. Was he doing, was he saying that for the domestic audience, do you think?
Amber Batool: It&#8217;s an interesting question. I&#8217;m not sure. I think he still feels that the route to go down, because of this kind of interconnectedness that I speak of, is that being closer to America is really what the UK can do best. You know, we&#8217;ve talked about this special relationship for decades But I think we, I just don&#8217;t see us going back to, the halcyon days of kind of Thatcher and Reagan, or even Blair and Bush. I think the relationship is fractured. I do think it&#8217;s going to be very difficult. I feel President Trump is purposefully volatile and mixed in his messaging. And I think for us to try and respond to that as any country is very challenging. I think the calculation in number 10 is that it&#8217;s better to kind of, you know, dig down and try and stay friends with the US and then try and do some of the broader deals with China and India, I just don&#8217;t know where that will take him.
Lisa Raitt: That&#8217;s very interesting. Tell us a little bit about the political dynamics then at play in the UK.
Amber Batool: So Prime Minister Stammer is very weak, there&#8217;s no doubt about it. He came in after an incredibly fractured Conservative party. You saw we had one Prime Minister after another, one who didn&#8217;t manage to survive against a head of lettuce famously. So public expectations were incredibly low in terms of what they expected from politicians, but incredibly high in what they thought would be the change, which would be&#8230; a very serious politician back to kind of normal business and someone who would move the needle on things like immigration, affordability, and kind of sovereignty, frankly. Stammer has had an impossible time. He is deeply unpopular. He is seeing a lot of issues in his own party. We have potentially, you know, one of the mayors of Manchester who used to be a Minister in Tony Blair&#8217;s government becoming a challenger to him. He&#8217;s batted that off for the time being, but that&#8217;s not going away. And then you have Nigel Farage who leads the Reform Party. And the Reform Party used to be on one issue party. It was essentially about immigration and Brexit. And they were seen as a fringe for a number of years. But really he&#8217;s managed to kind of capture the popular imagination in recent years. He has moved on from Brexit to being all about immigration. and, UK First, he is very close or likes to tell us he&#8217;s very close to President Trump. And he has seen defections from the Conservative Party to reform, including the former Home Secretary. And that is seen as an unprecedented and really dangerous challenge, not just to Prime Minister Stammer, but the sort of party system that we thought we had in the UK. So really difficult times ahead for him. And, interesting times in terms of does a connection with President Trump push you forward as a domestic challenger or is it something that holds you back? And I feel like a lot of people in Europe and more widely, they&#8217;ll watch very carefully to see how that ends up.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, in a contrast in Canada, trying to find our path as well in terms of making sure that we&#8217;re not annoying the United States and still standing up for ourselves. Amber, what&#8217;s the conclusion of all this? What&#8217;s the takeaway for folks listening today?
Amber Batool: I think if I were still advising prime ministers and others, I would think about how we get beyond the noise to looking at issues of consequence. There&#8217;s something that T.S. Eliot talks about between the idea and reality falls the shadow. And that&#8217;s really the state we&#8217;re in. We&#8217;re in this kind of paralyzing force of perhaps inaction or failing to connect with purpose. And so if I were in the shoes of policymakers, I would be looking at what&#8217;s important. Number one, I absolutely think defense and sovereignty have to be everyone&#8217;s number one concern. The US has given us an unwelcome wake-up call, and I think everyone needs to think about their defense and protecting their sovereignty. November 2025, the US actually published their national security strategy. It&#8217;s a really bracing read, Lisa. It tells you in plain sight what the plan is. And it&#8217;s less than 40 pages and you and I know of people who have authored countless government documents that in itself is very telling. And, they talk about a really important things to them. And it&#8217;s interesting to note, for example, they don&#8217;t mention Greenland, but they mentioned intellectual property twice. They are talking about different things at a different level. We need to catch on to that. Secondly, energy, metals and minerals, electrification. The markets are very bullish in energy. I think we need to harness that. I think in Canada especially, we have so much natural advantage and I think that should be a top file for policymakers. And then AI and technology. And I think we need to understand the ecosystem, support entrepreneurs and understand the shifting landscape, even when it comes to things like data centers and being&#8230; proactive about the guardrails, but also clear-eyed about the opportunity. So I think those are the key things I would be thinking about. And then, in conclusion, we started off talking about how horrible things are just now, and I mentioned Pandora&#8217;s box. The myth goes that after Pandora opened and releases all human misery, only hope remains trapped inside the box. And it&#8217;s supposed to be a consolation for humanity. I think now we are where we are. Our consolation is we can be hopeful that we might reach the right conclusions with the right policies. But really, now is the time for action.
Lisa Raitt: Thank you so much Amber for joining me today. I know that we&#8217;ll do this again because the politicians are giving us nothing but content for us to talk about.
Amber Batool: I know it&#8217;s like being awake during surgery. Thank you, you too.
Lisa Raitt: Thanks so much Amber, have a great day.
Amber Batool: Thank you, you too.
Lisa Raitt: Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at lisa.raitt@cibc.com. Your interactions actually will make this better. I&#8217;m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff.
Disclaimer: The materials disclosed on this podcast are for informational purposes only and subject to our Code of Conduct as well as CIRO rules. The information and data contained herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable, without independent verification by CIBC Capital Markets and, to the extent that such information and data is based on sources outside CIBC Capital Markets, we do not represent or warrant that any such information or data is accurate, adequate or complete. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, CIBC World Markets Inc. (and/or any affiliate thereof) shall not assume any responsibility or liability of any nature in connection with any of the contents of this communication. This communication is tailored for a particular audience and accordingly, this message is intended for such specific audience only. Any dissemination, re-distribution or other use of this message or the market commentary contained herein by any recipient is unauthorized. This communication should not be construed as a research report. The services, securities and investments discussed in this report may not be available to, nor suitable for, all investors. Nothing in this communication constitutes a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any specific investments discussed herein. Speakers on this podcast do not have any actual, implied or apparent authority to act on behalf of any issuer mentioned in this podcast. The commentary and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the individual speaker(s), except where the author expressly states them to be the opinions of CIBC World Markets Inc. The speaker(s) may provide short-term trading views or ideas on issuers, securities, commodities, currencies or other financial instruments but investors should not expect continuing analysis, views or discussion relating to those instruments discussed herein. Any information provided herein is not intended to represent an adequate basis for investors to make an informed investment decision and is subject to change without notice. CIBC Capital Markets is a trademark brand name under which Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (“CIBC”), its subsidiaries and affiliates provide products and services to our customers around the world. For more information about these legal entities, as well as the products and services offered by CIBC Capital Markets, please visit www.cibccm.com.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’: Geopolitics in 2026

Lisa Raitt

Vice-Chair, Global Investment Banking

CIBC Capital Markets

Amber Batool

Executive Director, Investment Banking

CIBC Capital Markets

For the full catalog, visit