Like the old Soviet Union, Japan, and Brazil, China seemed to have discovered a different growth model. But that growth has waned
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This week the prime minister announced tariffs of 100 per cent on electric vehicles and 25 per cent on steel and aluminum imports from China, aligning Canada with growing anti-China sentiment in the United States. In doing so, the Trudeau government is implicitly admitting its attempts to reorient Canada’s trade from the U.S. to China were a mistake.
In its early years, the government wanted to deepen trade and investment ties with China. To that end, we contributed an undisclosed amount to the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), an institution designed by China to replace the American-led World Bank’s financing of investments in emerging markets. That didn’t buy much favour with Beijing, however; in 2020 it abruptly rejected Canada’s naïve attempt to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal. In his book Right Here, Right Now, former prime minister Stephen Harper suggested that might not be a bad thing: “Canada is simply not in a position to get a good deal bargaining one-on-one with the People’s Republic.” In 2023, the government abruptly suspended its participation in the AIIB when a Canadian representative resigned after having found it was “dominated” by members of the Chinese Communist Party (a discovery on a par with Captain Renault being “shocked” to find there was gambling at Rick’s Café in Casablanca).
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The attempt........