News Analysis
For much of the past year, Canada and the United States have been stuck in a familiar cycle: trade tensions and competing narratives about who’s to blame. What used to look like one of the world’s closest alliances now looks strained, and increasingly unpredictable.
Under these conditions, Ottawa has moved in a direction that would have been hard to imagine not long ago: cutting a trade arrangement with Beijing, even after Prime Minister Mark Carney said only months prior that China is Canada’s “biggest security threat.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 24 threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods if Ottawa proceeded with a trade deal with China, arguing it would let Beijing use Canada as a “drop-off port” to evade U.S. duties and undermine U.S. economic interests….