The TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump’s sustained trolling and hostility towards Canada has driven the country into China’s arms. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney concluded a four-day visit to Beijing this week announcing towards the end of the trip that Ottawa is “recalibrating Canada’s relationship with China — strategically, pragmatically, and decisively — to the benefit of the people of both our nations.” Amid a raft of agreements signed during the visit – a trade swap that cocks a snook at Washington: Canada will slash its 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) to a mere 6.1 per cent for an initial quota of 49,000 vehicles. This will allow Chinese brands to sell EVs for under $35,000—a direct snub to Tesla and the US goal of a China-free North American supply chain.

In return, China will drop its “anti-discrimination” tariffs on Canadian canola seeds from 84 per cent to 15 per cent, reopening a $4 billion lifeline for struggling Canadian farmers who had been casualties of the US-China trade war, even as American farmers continue to reap losses stemming from Trump’s tariff wars resulting in losing the Chinese market.

While Canada is not definitively switching sides, the optics and substance of the Beijing engagement point to a deliberate hedging strategy: repairing a frayed relationship with China at a moment when trust in Washington is eroding. “Our relationship with China is now more predictable than our relationship with the US,” Carney noted pointedly. “You see results coming from this.” Carney, his office said in a post on X, “worked to forge a new Canada-China partnership that builds on the best of our past, reflects the world as it is today” – an implicit reference to the havoc the MAGA supremo has caused. For much of the past decade, Canada’s China policy was defined by rupture. The 2018 detention of a Huawei executive in Vancouver, at Washington’s request, followed by Beijing’s retaliatory detention of two Canadians, froze political dialogue. Trade restrictions, diplomatic snubs, and public acrimony followed. Ottawa aligned closely with Washington, often at significant cost to its own economic and diplomatic interests.That alignment has grown increasingly unrewarding. Over the past year, Trump’s rhetoric toward Canada has hardened into open condescension: threats over trade, dismissive language on defense spending, and public pressure campaigns about making Canada the 51st state that Canadian officials privately describe as humiliating. In Ottawa, the sense has grown that loyalty to Washington no longer guarantees respect, consultation, or policy reciprocity. Carney’s China sojourn has now sent a message that Canada is ready to reopen channels that Washington had preferred remain closed.The discussions focused less on grand ideology and more on pragmatic repair. Canada and China signaled progress on restoring regular economic and financial dialogues, resuming stalled climate and green-finance cooperation, and easing barriers to trade in agriculture, critical minerals, and clean technology. People-to-people exchanges, frozen during years of diplomatic frost, were also placed back on the agenda. China will also allow visa-free entry for Canadian visitors. Trump, meanwhile, tried to make light of the development, oblivious to the damage American hubris is causing across the world. “It’s OK. That’s what he should be doing. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that,” he told reporters. But many US analysts, even Republicans, are unnerved about the implications. “Canada cozying up to China to welcome more investment puts all of North America at serious risk,” Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said. Chinese officials, for their part, were quick to frame the engagement as “mutual respect” after years of “external interference”—a gibe at US pressure on Canada to maintain a hard line. Ottawa’s messaging was more careful, emphasizing diversification, strategic autonomy, and the need to manage differences while cooperating where interests align. But the subtext was unmistakable: Canada is seeking insurance against an increasingly unpredictable United States.The development comes at a particularly sensitive moment for NATO, of which Canada is a founding member. Alliance unity has already been strained by US behavior toward Greenland, where renewed American assertions of strategic control—sometimes expressed with startling bluntness—have unsettled Denmark and raised quiet alarms across Europe. For smaller and mid-sized allies and partners, including India, the lesson is sobering: The US is no longer a reliable partner. If Washington can publicly humiliate NATO partners like Canada and Denmark, who put their troops on line for American expeditions, it can do so to anyone.