Failure or Success in the Time of Trump | Jim Balsillie | EP 530

Jordan Peterson sits down with retired co-founder and co-CEO of Research in Motion, known predominantly for the BlackBerry. They discuss how Balsillie helped transition the world into the smartphone age, Canada’s faltering economic performance (well before Trump’s trade war), why America is taking these actions now, and the ideas of Mark Carney (Trudeau on steroids).

Mr. Balsillie is the retired chairman and co-CEO of Research in Motion (BlackBerry), a technology company he scaled from an idea to $20 billion in sales globally. His private investment office includes global and domestic technology investments.

He is the co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York and founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators based in Toronto, the Digital Governance Council in Ottawa, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, as well as the Centre for Digital Rights, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the Arctic Research Foundation, and Canadian SHIELD Institute. He currently chairs the boards of CCI, CIGI, Innovation Asset Collective, and Digital Governance Council. He is also a member of the Board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Advisory Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre; an Honorary Captain (Navy) of the Royal Canadian Navy, and an advisor to Canada School of Public Service.

This episode was filmed on March 7th, 2025.

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For Jim Balsillie:

Read the article "We're All Economic Nationalist's Now" for a better understanding of how the U.S. and Canada trade

| Chapters |

(0:00) Coming up

(0:39) Intro

(6:50) The man behind BlackBerry — and quite a bit more — Jim Balsillie

(11:29) Canada’s economic situation now, examining the past 30 years

(15:40) When the “shift” occurred: the Orange Book and the secret revolution

(18:04) Moving from open to closed knowledge; what are intangible assets?

(20:25) The goods virtualized but Canada stayed analog

(24:40) Stronger IP enforcement fueled monopolies

(26:48) Canada is “cemented in last place” for performance on GDP growth per capita

(29:16) 10 years from now if nothing changes: "Puerto Rico with a passport”

(34:38) The lie of Google’s “smart cities” and the danger of giving big tech control

(44:00) There are no other reasons that Canada is failing, “Our economic structure is close to Russia’s right now”

(49:37) The manufactured myth of the “resource curse”

(51:49) Comparative advantage, strategic behavior, and Trump’s endgame

(1:00:09) “Trump’s behavior is unpresidential, unprovoked, unkind, it’s almost certainly illegal”

(1:06:01) The potential paradoxical effect

(1:07:51) Balsillie chooses Canada

(1:09:22) “Trump has made a strategic mistake … like the Russians with the Ukrainians”

(1:13:22) The dawn of transformation for Canada’s politics: Mark Carney

(1:17:56) Mark Carney is trying to position himself as an outsider - he isn’t

(1:23:20) A closed economy model will not work for Canada, nor will the green agenda

(1:25:50) Trudeau was a follower of bad ideas, Carney is an architect - “it will fail”

(1:34:29) Poilievre is imminent

(1:39:10) “It’s definitely not 1970 anymore,” the policies Canada need to compete with America

(1:46:30) There are many great Canadians working towards a brighter future

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Ep. 0530