Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We will begin with the 25% tariffs now hitting Canada and Mexico

and the 20% levied against China in Trump's assault on our friends and neighbors

as he rewards our worst enemy, Russia.

Canada's Prime Minister today addressed the American people saying, quote, we don't want

this, but your government has chosen to do this. Trudeau then went on to say that Trump, quote,

wants to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us.

Joining us is Lucan Way, a distinguished professor of democracy in the Department of Political

Science at the University of Toronto, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

His books include competitive authoritarianism, hybrid regimes after the Cold War,

and Revolution and Dictatorship, the violent origins of durable

authoritarianism, co-authored with Stephen Levitsky.

Then we'll look into the price working in middle-class Americans will pay because of the tariffs,

as well as the extra price they will pay as Canada, Mexico and China retaliate.

Joining us is Dean Baker, senior economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,

a progressive economic think tank based in Washington, D.C.

He's the author of Rigged How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy

was structured to make the rich richer.

And he writes the popular economics blog, Beat the

the Press, where his latest article we will discuss is Trump set to whack US working class with

historic $3,000 tax hike. Then finally, ahead of tonight's lies laden state of the union address,

...