Trump Called Them “Replaceable” — 72 Hours Later U S Projects Collapse in $8B Disaster

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]The lights are still on at the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas. The security guards still make their rounds. The administrative offices are still staffed. But on the construction site where a $2.3 billion expansion was scheduled to be completed in four months, the heavy equipment sits silent.

[00:00:17]Not because of equipment failure, not because of weather, not because of funding issues. The equipment sits silent because the 47 Canadian pipe fitters and welders who operated it crossed back into Canada 72 hours ago.

[00:00:30]And the project manager, a man who has built energy infrastructure across three continents over 28 years, said something to his board of directors yesterday that stopped the entire meeting cold. He said, "We have no path to completion.

[00:00:44]Not delayed completion, not overbudget completion. We have no path. The expertise we need left the country and it does not exist in sufficient numbers anywhere in the United States to replace what we lost. That is the sound of an eight billion dollar miscalculation and it started with a single press conference in a Houston hotel ballroom.

[00:01:04]The date was March 14th. The occasion was a roundt discussion with American energy and construction executives. The topic was domestic infrastructure investment. A Bloomberg reporter asked a straightforward question about the bilateral skilled labor agreements between the United States and Canada.

[00:01:21]Agreements that have allowed Canadian trades people to work on American industrial projects since 1989.

[00:01:28]Agreements that American companies have relied on to staff projects that the domestic workforce is simply too small to complete. The president's answer did not stay on policy for long. He said Canadian workers. You know, everyone talks about Canadian workers like they're something special. They're not special. They're fine. They're okay. But let me tell you something. Our workers are better. Much better. The best workers in the world are right here in America. Canadian workers, they're a little overrated. If you want to know the truth, very overrated. They come down here, they work on our projects, and they act like we should be thanking them. We shouldn't be thanking them.

[00:02:05]They should be thanking us. We're giving them jobs. good paying jobs on American soil using American money. And if Canada wants to make an issue out of that, fine. We'll replace every single one of them. Every single one. We can do that by the end of the week. Easily, he continued. And the language shifted from dismissive to something sharper. I hear from these construction companies. Oh, we need the Canadian workers. They have special skills. Special skills? Give me a break. They're welders. They're crane operators. We have thousands of those right here. Thousands. The difference is Canadian workers, they charge more and the companies like that because it makes the projects look more important. It's a scam, frankly. And I'm looking at ending these agreements because American workers, real American workers, can do these jobs just as well, probably better, and for less money. We don't need Canada for this. We don't need Canada for anything really. They need us. And the sooner everyone understands that, the better. Overrated, replaceable, a scam, easily replaced by the end of the week. These were not the words of someone who has ever watched a certified pressure welder work in sub-zero temperatures. These were not the words of someone who understands that there are fewer than 1,200 people in all of North America certified to perform certain specialized industrial welding procedures. These were not the words of someone who has ever needed a crane operator to set a 60tonon turbine component with millimeter precision while working 30 stories above a power plant. These were the words of someone who thought skilled labor was interchangeable. Within two hours, the Canadian response began. It did not begin with a statement. It began with a phone call. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the leader of Canada's building trades unions. The call lasted 7 minutes. When it ended, the union leader made four more calls. Within 90 minutes, every major Canadian trade union with members working on American projects had been briefed. At 6:47 p.m.

[00:04:08]Eastern time, Mark Carney appeared before cameras in Ottawa. There was no opening statement, no diplomatic preamble. He went straight to the measures. First, effective immediately, the government of Canada is issuing a travel advisory recommending that all Canadian skilled trades people currently working in the United States on industrial projects return to Canada within 30 days. This advisory is issued on the grounds that the working environment has been rendered hostile and disrespectful by statements made by the president of the United States.

[00:04:41]Second, Canada is immediately suspending all bilateral skilled labor mobility agreements with the United States effective 72 hours from now. Third, we are announcing a trades repatriation incentive, a $25,000 payment for any Canadian trades person who returns from an American project and commits to domestic Canadian work for a minimum of two years. This program will be funded entirely through tariff revenue collected on American imports. Fourth, we are opening expedited work visa channels for Canadian trades people to accept positions in the United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, Japan, and the Gulf States, all of which have contacted us in the past six months requesting access to Canadian certified labor. Fifth, and let me be very clear about this. If the president of the United States believes that Canadian skilled trades people are replaceable, we invite him to prove it. We will not argue. We will simply step back and watch what happens when the people he called overrated are no longer there.

[00:05:46]Then Carney said something that would be replayed on every construction site in North America for the next month.

[00:05:52]Canadian trades people are not overrated. They hold some of the most rigorous certifications in the world.

[00:05:58]They are not replaceable because the training pipeline to create workers at their level takes between seven and 12 years. And the United States currently does not have that pipeline at sufficient scale. And they are certainly not grateful for the privilege of building someone else's country while being publicly insulted for doing so.

[00:06:18]They are professionals and they will be treated as professionals or they will work somewhere else. There are dozens of countries that would be delighted to have them. The choice is yours. The 72-hour countdown began in Baytown, Texas, on a prochemical plant expansion.

[00:06:34]The shift supervisor noticed it first.

[00:06:36]Three Canadian welders who were scheduled for a 6 a.m. shift on Thursday morning didn't show up. By 8:00 a.m., he had text messages from all three.

[00:06:45]Polite, professional, apologetic. They were heading home. By Friday, 11 more Canadian workers from the same project had left. These were not general laborers. These were journeymen with an average of 14 years of experience each, holding certifications in high-pressure stainless steel welding for chemical processing systems, a specialization that requires 8,000 hours of training, and a pass rate on certification testing of less than 40%. The project manager called six welding contractors in Texas and Louisiana trying to find replacements. Every single one told him the same thing. They had been looking for welders with those certifications for three years. They had a combined waiting list of 19 companies. There were no available welders. There had not been any available welders. The only reason the Baytown project had the welders it needed was because they were Canadian.

[00:07:38]The project manager called the company's executive vice president and said, "We just lost 40% of our critical path workforce, and I cannot replace them.

[00:07:47]The completion date we gave the board last month is no longer valid. I don't have a new completion date because I don't know when or if I can find the skills we just lost. Estimated cost of the delay, according to internal documents, $127 million. In Pennsylvania at the Suscuana nuclear facility, a planned refueling and maintenance outage was scheduled to begin on March 21st.

[00:08:11]The outage had been planned for 18 months. It required a team of 14 specialized technicians to perform maintenance and inspection on reactor pressure vessel internals. Work that must be done in a highly radioactive environment underwater using remotely operated tooling following procedures so precise that a single error could result in regulatory shutdown of the entire facility. 12 of those 14 technicians were Canadian. They held certifications from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission that are recognized by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission under a bilateral agreement that has been in place since 1997. On March 16th, all 12 submitted their resignations, effective immediately. The utilities chief nuclear officer was informed at 9:30 a.m. By 11:00 a.m., he was on a conference call with the NRC explaining that the refueling outage would have to be postponed indefinitely. By 200 p.m., the utility had contacted three other nuclear service contractors trying to find replacement technicians. All three contractors said the same thing. The specialists they need are booked on other refueling outages for the next 14 months. There is no available capacity.

[00:09:23]The waiting list is 11 facilities deep.

[00:09:25]The cost of the postponement, including replacement power purchases, extended operational costs, and regulatory penalties for delayed inspections, was projected at $91 million for the first six months for one team. 12 people. In Denver, a high-rise residential tower under construction lost its entire structural steel crew. Eight Canadian iron workers who had worked together as a unit for six years walked off the site on March 17th. The project superintendent, an American who had been in Colorado construction for 22 years, told a local TV station, "That crew set steel faster and safer than any crew I've ever seen. I've been trying to recruit an American crew with that level of coordination for four years. I've interviewed 40 candidates. I haven't found eight guys who work together the way those eight did. You don't build that in a hiring process. That takes years." and it walked off my site because someone in Washington called them replaceable. The tower's completion has been pushed back by an estimated nine months. The developer is facing 14 million in penalty payments to buyers whose movein dates can no longer be met.

[00:10:35]In North Dakota, on the backend pipeline expansion, a project that was already 11 months behind schedule lost 23 Canadian workers in a single day. The project could not afford to lose 23 hours, let alone 23 of its most experienced workers. The construction manager sent an email to the project owner that included a single sentence in bold text.

[00:10:58]Without a path to replace the certifications we just lost, I cannot responsibly tell you this project will be completed in 2025. The North Dakota Public Service Commission was notified one week later that the pipeline, which was supposed to be operational by September, now has an estimated completion date of unknown. In Louisiana, at the Cameron LNG export terminal, the story was even more surgical in its devastation. A team of 31 Canadian crane operators, riggers and milrightes, had been on site for 26 months. They were seven weeks from final commissioning, seven weeks from the terminal going operational, seven weeks from the facility beginning to generate revenue. All 31 left within 48 hours of Carney's announcement. The terminal operator issued a statement to investors on March 23rd, acknowledging that the project had entered an indefinite delay period pending acquisition of replacement specialized labor. The company's stock dropped 11% in two days.

[00:11:59]The estimated cost of the delay, according to a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is $380 million for every quarter the terminal remains nonoperational.

[00:12:11]380 million per quarter because 31 workers left. The pattern was the same in every case. Not general workers, not easily replaced laborers, highly certified, highly experienced specialists in fields where the American workforce has been in structural decline for 30 years. The numbers told a story that no amount of political spin could obscure. The United States currently has a shortage of approximately 650,000 skilled construction workers. The average age of a certified welder in the United States is 57 years old.

[00:12:43]Enrollment in construction trade apprenticeship programs has declined by 34% over the past 20 years. For every four skilled trades people who retire in the United States, fewer than two enter the workforce to replace them. This is not a labor market fluctuation. This is a demographic collapse that has been building for four decades. Ever since American education policy began systematically steering young people away from the skilled trades and toward four-year university degrees, sending the message to an entire generation that working with your hands was somehow less valuable than working at a desk.

[00:13:20]Canadian workers did not fill that gap by taking American jobs. They filled it because American companies could not find American workers to do the work that needed to be done. And Canadian certification standards, particularly the Red Seal program, are among the most rigorous in the world. Red Seal certification requires between 6,000 and 10,000 hours of on the-job training under supervision combined with technical classroom instruction and a comprehensive examination. In several specialized fields, including pressure welding and nuclear facility maintenance, Canadian certification protocols exceed American standards in both training hours and testing requirements. These were not, as the president suggested, workers who were fine or okay. These were among the most highly trained, skilled trades people in the Western Hemisphere. And American companies recruited them specifically, deliberately, and at significant expense because the domestic supply of those skills does not exist at the scale required. Then the human stories began to surface, and the human stories changed everything. A welder in Texas named Daniel had been working on American pipelines for nine years. He was 34 years old. He had bought a house in Midland. His wife was American. His daughter was born in Texas. He had trained six American apprentice welders over those nine years, three of whom were now journeymen working beside him.

[00:14:44]When the advisory came through, Daniel spent three days trying to decide what to do. His crew foreman, a Texan who had supervised pipeline construction for 26 years, called him at home and said, "I don't want you to leave. I need you here, but I get it if you go." Daniel told a Houston Chronicle reporter, "I didn't want to leave. Texas is home. My daughter is American, but the president of the United States went on television and said I'm replaceable and overrated, and I should be grateful. I've been here 9 years. I own a home. I coach my daughter's soccer team. I've trained the guys who are going to have to finish this work without me." And the man in charge of this country said I'm replaceable. I'm not angry. Angry, you fight. I'm hurt. And when you're hurt, you go home. He left on March 19th. His foreman told the Chronicle, "We just lost the best welder on this entire project, and I have no idea how to replace him." Not because there aren't good welders in America. There are, but because every good welder in America is already working, and there aren't enough of them. In New York, an iron worker named Robert had been in the city for eight years. He had an apartment in Brooklyn. He was a regular at a Puerto Rican restaurant on his block, where the owner knew his order before he sat down.

[00:15:59]When Robert told the owner he was leaving, the owner printed a photo of Robert and taped it to the wall behind the register with a handwritten note.

[00:16:07]One of the best. We'll miss you, brother. Robert told the New York Times, "I love this city. Every building I see with steel I set, I feel pride, but pride has limits. I'm not replaceable.

[00:16:18]I'm skilled. There's a difference.

[00:16:21]Replaceable is a part. skilled as a person. I won't work where the president calls me apart. The political response came from an unexpected direction. Not from Democrats, not from progressives, from unions, from the trades, from the base. Four major American trade unions issued a joint statement that broke 40 years of political precedent. American labor unions publicly defending foreign workers and condemning an American president. The statement signed by the United Association of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, the International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers, the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, and the International Union of Operating Engineers read, "The president's characterization of Canadian skilled trades people as replaceable and overrated is an insult not only to our Canadian brothers and sisters, but to every skilled worker in North America.

[00:17:16]When any president diminishes the value of training, certification, and expertise, he diminishes all of us.

[00:17:23]Skill is not defined by nationality.

[00:17:25]Craftsmanship does not recognize borders. We stand with our Canadian counterparts, and we demand that the bilateral labor agreements that allow the free movement of qualified trades people be restored immediately. These were unions whose members had voted overwhelmingly for this president. These were the workers who had filled his rallies, and they were now publicly breaking with him, not over policy, but because he had disrespected their profession. Three Republican governors from states with major energy and infrastructure projects wrote to the White House demanding immediate restoration of the labor agreements.

[00:18:01]One, a governor who had supported the president in every previous trade dispute told the Wall Street Journal, "My state has nine billion dollars in active construction projects that depend on access to Canadian skilled labor."

[00:18:14]The president's comments have put every one of those projects at risk. I need those workers back. Calling them replaceable doesn't make it true. It makes us look like we don't understand our own labor market. The economic analysis came next. The Associated Builders and Contractors, a national construction industry trade association, released a report on March 28th projecting that the total cost of the Canadian worker departure across all affected projects and sectors would exceed $8 billion within the first year if the bilateral agreements were not restored. 8 billion because a president spent three minutes insulting skilled workers. But the deeper damage was not measured in dollars. It was measured invisibility. Before the president spoke, most Americans had no idea that tens of thousands of Canadian trades people were working on American infrastructure. They were invisible.

[00:19:08]They went to work. They did their jobs.

[00:19:10]They went home. Nobody outside the construction industry knew or cared. The insult made them visible, and their absence made them indispensable. Every halted project became a proof point.

[00:19:21]Every cost overrun became an invoice.

[00:19:24]Every delayed timeline became a measurement of exactly how replaceable these workers actually were, which is to say not at all. The president said Canadian workers were overrated. The 8 billion installed projects proved they were undervalued. He said they were replaceable. Four weeks later, the projects they left still have no replacements. He said he could replace them by the end of the week. The job sites are still waiting. He said American workers could do the jobs just as well. American project managers are standing on half staff sites saying, "We cannot complete this work without them."

[00:19:58]He called them a scam. "The construction industry is now calling his comments the most expensive unforced error in modern infrastructure history." He tried to diminish their value. Instead, their absence proved it. Project by project, sight by sight, 8 billion in counting.

[00:20:14]The president insulted the people who build American infrastructure and American infrastructure stopped being built. Please hit the bell icon and subscribe to my channel for daily updates.