Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is in China for a four-day visit in an attempt to shore up Canada’s trade relationship with the People’s Republic. This is the first visit of a Canadian Prime Minister to China since 2017. In 2018, Canada arrested the daughter of Huawei’s CEO Meng Wanzhou, and kept her in detention until 2021, largely under pressure from the U.S. government, which was claiming that Huawei equipment was a “backdoor” to Chinese espionage. Since then the relationship diplomatically has been in something of a “deep freeze.” China nevertheless remained Canada’s second-biggest trade partner.
With the Trump tariffs eating into Canadian prosperity, and increasing uncertainty about the U.S. after the outrageous invasion of Venezuela and Trump’s threats to “annex” Greenland, Canada—which Trump mooted could become the 51st state of the Union—is no doubt looking more seriously at improving its relationship with its second-biggest trading partner after the U.S.
