Writer Arthur Lam was part of the Canadian trade delegation that travelled to Beijing in 2017.Fred Dufour/The Associated Press

Arthur Lam is a founding partner of Nexus Strategic Consultants. He was a former senior adviser in the federal trade and industry ministers’ offices.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is travelling to China this week with a delegation of business leaders and government officials. This Asia pivot will only mask, not resolve, our economy’s fundamental weaknesses.

We have been here before. In 2017, I was in Beijing as part of the Canadian delegation, trying to launch trade negotiations when the North American Free Trade Agreement was at risk. Whether by luck or what I suspect to be the shrewdness of the Chinese government, we were left at the altar.

Since then, the world has changed.

In the America-first era, everything, for U.S. President Donald Trump, is about China. Competing with it. Containing it. Removing its influence from the Western Hemisphere. Washington will be watching how Ottawa conducts its business with Beijing closely. The space between what America wants us not to do with China and what

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