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For most of its history, the United States has been blessed by geography. Since the country’s founding nearly 250 years ago, both Europe and Asia have often been beset by war and upheaval. America was fortunate to have oceans between them while also having neighbors, Canada and Mexico, which were weaker and incapable of posing a serious threat. Mexico’s instability has posed problems of its own, but the U.S. could always count on Canada. Until now.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has embraced China, America’s foremost geopolitical adversary. And he’s done so with undisguised relish.
Indeed, Carney has offered up the Great White North on a silver platter, proposing to cut Canada’s 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and inking several other trade and energy agreements. For good measure, Carney also traveled to Beijing. In a meeting with Chinese officials, the prime minister hailed his pivot to China as coinciding with the dawn of a “new world order.”
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Carney’s outreach to China is part of an effort by his government to diversify trading partners and comes on the heels of a monthslong trade dispute between Ottawa and Washington. The Trump administration has accused Canada of imposing tariffs that discriminate against American goods and workers. When he was campaigning to be Canada’s prime minister in early 2025, Carney, an economist and former governor of the Bank of England, presented himself as a master negotiator capable of going toe-to-toe with Trump and reducing tariffs that he imposed. At the time, Carney even said China represented the “biggest security threat” confronting Canada. But that was then, and this is now.
Carney’s government hasn’t been able to adjudicate his country’s trade disputes with the U.S. It’s an open question whether he even tried. And he has made a grievous error in cozying up to China. No doubt, Carney is hoping that warming ties with Beijing will provide him with leverage in his negotiations with the U.S. He is also clearly seeking to diversify trade flows and partnerships.
More broadly, the premier’s strategy isn’t unusual, in and of itself. During periods of great power rivalry, middle powers often seek to play great powers off each other. This happened during the last Cold War, and it is clearly happening now. In this limited sense, Carney’s outreach to Beijing, while outrageous, isn’t abnormal. But it is most certainly foolish.
By claiming that he sees the “world as it is” and “not as we wish to see it,” Carney seeks to position his recent move as being pragmatic and driven by old-world realpolitik. But the opposite is true. This isn’t some master move on the geopolitical chessboard. Rather, it’s a fumble of epic proportions. As the famed 19th-century diplomat Talleyrand allegedly said, “It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.”
Indeed, the very terms of the agreement are lopsided. For years, China has been hoping to secure a foothold for their EVs in both Europe and North America, thereby gutting domestic manufacturers. Canada has wholesale given it away, setting a dangerous precedent and prompting outrage from politicians such as Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who rightly worried about China’s EVs destroying the Canadian auto industry, killing jobs, and driving down wages.
In exchange, Canada merely gets short-term relief for canola and select fisheries. In essence, Carney gave away the farm for modest concessions that are either open-ended or brief. And the long-term costs are sure to be high.
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Carney, and many in Canada, might be upset at the Trump administration and its tariffs, but the U.S. is a far better bet than China. Not only is the U.S. more reliable and its goods held to a higher standard, but it also does not pose a danger to Canada. By contrast, China very much does. And the EVs themselves prove it.
China’s electric vehicles pose a security threat. Ford has even called them “spy cars.” He’s right. The EVs could give the Chinese Communist Party access to crucial data, including everything from personal photos, text messages, to banking information. They may even be capable of recording conversations and transmitting them back to Beijing. If this sounds far-fetched, it’s not.
Reflecting these concerns, in late 2025, the Israeli military began phasing out its use of Chinese-made EVs, recalling no fewer than 700 vehicles given to colonels and other high-ranking officers and prohibiting their presence on bases. Similarly, security officials in the United Kingdom have also expressed concern about espionage. Chinese EVs used by its Ministry of Defense reportedly contain stickers warning not to connect official devices to the cars and to avoid having sensitive discussions while riding in them. If top defense agencies of allied nations have concerns, it stands to reason that civilians in free societies should too.
Indeed, the EVs themselves neatly embody the dangers posed by CCP statecraft. Beijing, leveraging its ability to produce cheaper goods, comes into markets and virtually destroys domestic production while making the host country dependent on their manufacturing — and often while using technology that the CCP has stolen. Ultimately, many of the products are found to be inferior in quality or to pose significant risks. But too often this danger is exposed too late.
These are the forces that Carney has unleashed on his country. Recent years have revealed the danger of relying on Chinese manufacturing and industrial power. Simply put: China is not reliable. Unfortunately, Carney — and, it must be said, too many others — have yet to imbibe the lesson. In his recent speech at the World Economic Forum, the premier decried a “world of fortresses” and called for building “something better, stronger, and more just.” This is not that.
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Unfortunately, in some respects, Carney’s decision is the culmination of a trend. China has routinely violated Canadian law and customs. The CCP has maintained dozens of so-called “police stations” inside Canada to harass and intimidate critics and dissidents, including Chinese Canadians. Indeed, Chinese spying on Canadian soil is extensive, showcasing a level of boldness that is nothing short of astonishing.
For example, in 2024, Canada’s domestic spy agency revealed its conclusion that Beijing had interfered in the last two elections. “We know that [China] clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 elections,” the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service told an investigatory commission.
Equally infamously, in 2018, China took two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spohr, hostage. Beijing detained the two men, one a former diplomat and the other a businessman, in retaliation for America’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant with close ties to the CCP’s intelligence apparatuses. They weren’t released until 2021.
China’s reward for interfering with Canada’s elections and kidnapping its citizens? Appeasement, apparently. It’s not a good look on Carney’s end. Nor is it a good strategy.
The U.S. is far and away Canada’s largest trading partner. By contrast, Beijing only accounts for 12% of trade of Ottawa’s trade by some estimates. That is a tremendous disparity, and it shows just how reckless and shortsighted Carney’s gambit is.
Moreover, Canada is extremely dependent on the U.S. for its security needs. And Ottawa has been a less-than-ideal ally in that regard. For years, Canada’s defense spending has fallen significantly short of NATO’s 2% of GDP guideline.
Carney has turned his back on Canada’s foremost security partner, the U.S., trading it in for an autocratic police state purely over a trade dispute. It is not brilliant diplomacy. Rather, it comes across more like a desperate tantrum, and one that is sure to reap terrible consequences.
For the U.S., Carney’s embrace of China has significant implications. This is inescapable. The two countries share a massive border and are bound together by years of security, economic, and trade agreements. Canada, after all, is part of the exclusive “Five Eyes,” an intelligence-sharing pact that also includes Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. It is more than a fair question for U.S. officials to ask if things can remain as they once were.
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It has been many years since the U.S. had to worry about its enemies using Canada as a foothold. But it now must contend with a northern ally who was a little too quick to turn to its foremost geopolitical foe and who seemed a little too eager to hail a “new world order” while still needing American military and economic might.
A line has been crossed. An uncomfortable truth has emerged: Things have fundamentally changed in the U.S.-Canada relationship. And it is most certainly not for the best.
