Prime Minister Mark Carney and a Canadian delegation sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a Chinese delegation during a meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Oct. 31, 2025.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is a director of the China Strategic Risks Institute and a senior fellow of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

When Prime Minister Mark Carney visits Beijing next week his prime objective will be to improve trade ties to offset challenges from the United States.

But do we really want to pivot from our newly erratic trading partner to our even more erratic trading partner? And is that our only choice?

For years China has been touted as Canada’s second largest-trading partner, so it is tempting to see it as our best hope for a market to replace the U.S. But China is a distant second. Its market represents only 3.8 per cent of our exports, compared to 76.4 per cent for our exports to the U.S.

The European Union, on the other hand, buys 8 per cent of Canada’s exports. While China is the second-largest partner if we count only individual........

© The Globe and Mail