Since the start of the year, President Donald Trump’s campaign to upend global and domestic politics has been in overdrive. The U.S. military action in Venezuela on Jan. 3, which ended with the seizure and rendition of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife to New York, was just the beginning. In Minneapolis, the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer has led to mass protests and increased tension between state officials and the Trump administration. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was placed under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, exacerbating concerns about the central bank’s independence once he leaves office.
And over the weekend, Trump pledged to place new tariffs on eight European countries for their opposition to the U.S. acquiring Greenland. With both German and French officials calling for forceful retaliatory measures and the European Union announcing an emergency leaders’ summit to discuss the bloc’s response, a new trade war between Europe and the U.S. is now possible. Beyond that, Trump’s fixation on Greenland, which shows no sign of abating, risks the future of the NATO alliance.
And yet against the backdrop of all that, a short but momentous state visit by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Beijing might be the most important harbinger of long-term changes in relations between the U.S. and its liberal democratic allies around the world. During what was the first state visit to China by a Canadian prime minister in nearly a decade, the two sides announced a new strategic partnership, and Carney said that China is a “more predictable” partner than the United States.
Whether this signals a new world order, to use Carney’s phrase, or a bargaining chip vis-à-vis Trump in upcoming negotiations to update the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA, remains to be seen. But Carney’s gambit with China is a game-changer for North America, with implications for relations between Beijing and the broader Washington-less West. His words and actions signaled a symbolic shift for the long term as well as a pragmatic adjustment of industrial policy for the immediate future. Both are repudiations of Trumpism.
Carney’s embrace of Beijing, after nearly a decade of frosty bilateral relations, is also a rejection of the logic of decoupling that undergirds Trump’s trade policy and a measured endorsement of the globalization that preceded it. Carney spoke about welcoming Chinese investment into the Canadian automotive industry and new deals on energy, and he downplayed previous fears—that he himself articulated last year—of Chinese intervention into Canada’s domestic politics and other national security concerns. Carney’s openness to China is motivated by his vision for Canada’s future as a global energy and critical minerals power, with new ports and trading links to both Europe and Asia to make it far less dependent on the U.S. market.
China has Trump to thank for repairing its global reputation and burnishing its credentials as the stable global superpower.
Importantly, Carney and Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that Ottawa would reduce its tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, in return for China reducing its own high tariffs on Canadian canola oil. Canada will allow up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs into its domestic market this year, with gradual increases over the next five years raising that to 70,000. While this represents just 3 percent of Canada’s annual auto sales overall, it is another slap in the face to U.S. policy under both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, who had attempted to freeze Chinese EVs out of North America entirely.
But the broader significance of Carney’s pragmatic moves go beyond just a small increase in the number of Chinese cars on Canadian streets. This opening follows similar policy changes by the EU, which recently signaled that it was open to revisiting its punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs—currently just over 35 percent for the highest rate—in exchange for Chinese manufacturers adopting voluntary price floors and import quotas. Chinese investment in the EU auto industry may lead to further relaxation of these policies.
That Canada and the EU—as well as the U.K., which had already eschewed tariffs on Chinese EVs—are now opening their markets to Chinese producers suggests some coordination to counter Trump. Indeed, they are part of a broader response to Trump’s rejection of the clean energy transition and his embrace of fossil fuels, including coal. These U.S. allies’ openness to Chinese EVs, which compete on cost and quality with global brands from Europe and America, will further isolate the United States in the clean tech competition and penalize its legacy automakers. Canada has no national brands to protect, but General Motors and Ford, in particular, are market leaders in Canada, meaning that Carney’s opening to China will hurt them.
While Canadian jobs also depend on American car manufacturers’ supply chains, Trump’s threats to further undermine the USCMA, which is up for renegotiation this year, could upend the integrated North American automotive industry that has emerged since NAFTA went into effect in the 1990s. That means Canada has an incentive to find new partners to employ its workers and new brands for its consumers to buy. This now includes Chinese brands.
Other Western leaders are slated to make visits to Beijing this year, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. It is likely that we will continue to see symbolic announcements that more fully embrace China as a legitimate global power and an essential economic partner, alongside pragmatic decisions to welcome Chinese investment and downplay national security or human rights concerns. China has Trump to thank for repairing its global reputation and burnishing its credentials as the stable global superpower. And when the history of this time of upheaval and transition is written, the events of this past month will figure prominently.
Mary Gallagher is the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.