A new “golden age” is coming to America, Donald Trump promises, and if his first days in office are any indication, it has some remarkable features.
The gold includes, as a precedent for the legal system for the next four years, his pardoning of jailed felons who assaulted police officers on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
The golden way features the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and from the World Health Organization. It includes empire-building from an authoritarian-minded President, along the lines of the Monroe Doctrine.
But we haven’t got to trade yet. Mr. Trump’s golden age includes – and how’s this for a 24-karat piece? – a planned economic attack on Canada. It’s an attack featuring 25-per-cent tariffs, an attack on a great neighbour, ally and friend that is unprovoked.
The U.S. economy is on the upswing, in good shape, hardly in need of radical surgery. This doesn’t seem to matter. If Mr. Trump goes through with his tariff threats on Canada, on Mexico, on China, and on the European Union, he risks setting off a devastating global trade war.
For his planned offensive against Canada he has given various flimsy reasons. He’s cited the hardly burdensome trade deficit that his renegotiated North American free-trade agreement – which he called the greatest deal ever – was supposed to see to. He’s cited fentanyl originating in China and coming into the U.S. from Canada, as well as ne’er-do-wells pouring across the 49th parallel. Ottawa has been addressing the latter problems, which in any case were entirely marginal compared with what’s happening at America’s southern border.
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Mr. Trump’s reactionary nationalism leaves Canada with no choice but to retaliate. Resistance includes increasing access to other markets, and on this front there is some good news from the world’s other megapower.
China, our second-largest trading partner, indicated a desire earlier this month to deepen trade relations with Canada. A top embassy official subsequently told me in an interview that Beijing wants to mend relations across the board. It wants to get back to the type of co-operation that existed before the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request in 2018 and Beijing’s jailing of two Canadians in suspected retaliation. Trade fell by billions of dollars. Then there came the revelations of Chinese meddling in Canadian elections, which damaged relations further.
For the Middle Kingdom’s turn, the likely explanation is the re-election of Mr. Trump and his tariff threats, and Beijing’s need, like Canada’s, to find ways to offset them.
In an interview, Chinese minister-counsellor Li Zhengzhou talked of the previous long-standing positive relations with Canada and how the Chinese people still have a good impression of Canadians. That foundation needs be restored, he said. The “setbacks,” as he called them, had to be overcome. “For the Chinese side, we want to wipe this discord clean.”
Mr. Li was accompanied by two other officials from the embassy who nodded accordingly. “The correct perception,” he added, “is we should be friends, not foes. We should be partners, not zero-sum rivals.”
The outreach doesn’t mean China has lessened its anger with regard to Ms. Meng’s arrest or that Beijing is now prepared to acknowledge any interference in Canadian political affairs, as the continuing Hogue inquiry into the matter has found.
“Our government has made our position clear. We have never interfered in other countries’ affairs and we have no interest in doing it,” Mr. Li said with a straight face. He did point out that there’s a difference between wanting to have “influence” and interference.
There are other issues, such as human rights, Arctic sovereignty, Beijing’s assistance to Russia in the Ukraine war, and the authoritarian turn of China under President Xi Jinping, which stand in the way of a restoration of relations to what they were a half-dozen years ago.
On trade, such differences can be overlooked. They’ve been overlooked in the past, and in circumstances like today’s, they need be overlooked again.
Working against the likelihood of a broader accommodation with China is the probability of the Conservatives taking power this year. A good bet is that the Tories’ foreign minister will be Michael Chong, the current shadow foreign minister. Mr. Chong is understandably no fan of China’s. He was one of the MPs targeted in the Chinese political-interference campaign.
But the paramount issue of the day is trade. Volumes with China need to be restored and increased. With the hostile new U.S. administration spurning Canada, it’s important for China to be opening the doors.