Commentary
The recent confrontation between the United States and China should be studied carefully in Ottawa. It was not merely a trade dispute. It was a warning about what happens when a Western country allows a strategic rival to accumulate leverage while failing to build leverage of its own.
In 2025, Washington imposed sweeping tariffs on China. Beijing responded almost immediately, not only with tariffs of its own, but with export controls on rare earth elements. These are not obscure commodities. They are essential to smartphones, electric vehicles, advanced manufacturing, missiles, aircraft, satellites, and virtually every modern defence system. China dominates global rare earth processing. That gave Beijing a weapon far more powerful than a tariff schedule. The lesson is blunt. Economic dependence becomes strategic vulnerability when it is concentrated in the hands of an adversary….