{"id":38360,"date":"2026-05-09T11:13:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T11:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/38360\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T11:13:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T11:13:20","slug":"the-trade-deal-with-china-is-not-a-leash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/38360\/","title":{"rendered":"The trade deal with China is not a leash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Jan. 16.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> travelled to China in January as part of his effort to broaden Canada\u2019s trade partnerships and build what he called a \u201cmore resilient economy\u201d in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s damaging economic warfare.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney came home from Beijing with a \u201cnew strategic partnership\u201d that committed the two countries to work together in what the Chinese government said would be<\/a> a \u201cspirit of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit.\u201d <\/p>\n

The pact included an agreement-in-principle that will let China export 49,000 electric vehicles to Canada at a most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. In exchange, China is supposed to lower tariffs on canola and other Canadian agri-food products, giving relief to farmers and fishers across the country.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it didn\u2019t take long for Beijing to violate the spirit of the partnership and turn it into a test of whether it can use the deal to coerce Ottawa into aligning its policies on Taiwan with those of the Communist Party of China.<\/p>\n

On April 30, China\u2019s ambassador to Canada suggested that the strategic partnership would be damaged if Ottawa sends more military vessels through the Taiwan Strait<\/a>, which Beijing wrongly claims as domestic waters, or if Canadian parliamentarians continue to meet with their counterparts in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The only acceptable response from the Carney government is for it to reassert the right of MPs to visit Taiwan as they see fit, and to make the point that Canada continues to view international waters as just that.<\/p>\n

Anything less will be a failure to stand up to a bully that is now wielding the new strategic partnership as the same sort of economic cudgel that, ironically, Canada was seeking to escape from by seeking out new trade terms with China. (As we said at the time, any rapprochement with China must be only the start of a trade diversification push.)<\/p>\n

In short, China has shown itself to be no more reliable a trade partner than Mr. Trump, who regularly threatens partners with stiff tariffs or other punishments, such as the withdrawal of military support or troops, when they fail to bow down low enough before his foreign policy ambitions, or dare to point out his inconsistencies and obvious failures. <\/p>\n

Just last week, the U.S. said it would pull 5,000 troops out of Germany this year in what is widely interpreted as a response to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s statement that Mr. Trump had been \u201chumiliated\u201d by Iran and lacked a coherent exit strategy from the war he started.<\/p>\n

Back in January, Mr. Trump threatened 25 per cent tariffs on European and Nordic countries that didn\u2019t support his outrageous plan to acquire Greenland.<\/p>\n

And now China is pulling the same stunt, using the new strategic partnership to try to force Ottawa into accepting the unacceptable.<\/p>\n

This will be a test of Mr. Carney\u2019s thesis that middle powers like Canada can and must seek new trade alliances that free it from a past reliance on the American market, a reliance that under Mr. Trump is neither wise nor workable. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a moment for evasion such as shrugging that MPs are not controlled by the government, and that it would be a violation of Canada\u2019s Westminster parliamentary system to tell them where they can and can\u2019t turn up. Mr. Carney cannot just say, \u201cSorry, I can\u2019t stop them,\u201d because it suggests he would if he could.<\/p>\n

No, he needs to demonstrate that Canada will insist on its sovereign right to set its own rules, and the clearest way of making that point is by ensuring MPs visit Taiwan this year.<\/p>\n

The same applies to the Taiwan Strait. Canada must continue, in concert with its allies, to reject Beijing\u2019s illegal assertion it has sovereignty over the strait, a key shipping lane. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea \u2013 of which China is a signatory \u2013 makes that clear.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney is famous for saying, \u201cCanada must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.\u201d That is in many ways an admirable and welcome sentiment, but it does present its own difficulties.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s breach of the new strategic partnership is a prime example of this. Canada cannot become a doormat for regimes that offer it trade relief in exchange for obeisance. It must instead show Beijing and the world that its values, its military alliances and its sovereignty are not on the negotiating table, and never will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-38360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-travel","51":"tag-trudeau","52":"tag-us-news","53":"tag-world-news","54":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}