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[US President Donald Trump] has repeatedly made it clear that he wants vehicles built in the United States, not in Canada, even if that means unraveling long standing trade agreements like CUSMA. To Trump, Canadian auto plants are not partners in an integrated supply chain. They are competitors siphoning away American manufacturing strength.
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[China’s Xi Jinping’] position is quieter but far more consequential.
China’s global auto strategy is not about Canada specifically. It is about scale, dominance, and dependency. Beijing has poured enormous state resources into turning its automakers into export juggernauts, not just in electric vehicles but across the entire automotive spectrum. The goal is not simply to sell cars abroad. China may not say it as it thinks like—like Trump—but Beijing’s ultimate goal is to reshape who builds them at all.
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Trump’s approach is blunt force economics. Build here or lose access. His message to automakers is simple. If you want to sell to Americans, invest in American factories. Canada becomes collateral damage in a political argument framed as economic nationalism.
China’s approach is more strategic and arguably more dangerous. By flooding markets with low-cost vehicles backed by state support, it erodes domestic manufacturing ecosystems over time. Once factories close and supply chains weaken, rebuilding them becomes nearly impossible. Consumers may celebrate cheaper cars in the short term, but the long-term cost is industrial dependency.
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That is where Trump and Xi converge, intentionally or not.
Both paths lead to a future where Canada builds fewer cars. One shifts production south. The other crowds it out entirely. In either case, Canada is left choosing between integration and irrelevance. This is not just an economic debate. It is about sovereignty, employment, and technological leadership.
More than vehicles of transportation, cars are now rolling computers, data collectors, and energy platforms. Losing the ability to build them means losing influence over critical infrastructure.
The question facing Canada, and by extension North America, is not whether Chinese cars are good or affordable. Many are. The real question is whether hollowing out domestic manufacturing is a price worth paying for cheaper sheet metal and software.
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Trump says he wants the jobs. Xi wants the market. Neither wants Canada in the driver’s seat.
As an addition a personal opinion: I don’t mind to engage in trade with China, but I argue that Mr. Carney’s Canada-China deal, if not corrected or even deepened, will reap benefits only for one side. And this side is not Canada.
According to the current deal, Canada delivers commodities (canola) to China, but China delivers high-end products (EVs) to Canada. Deals like this will erode the Canadian industrial base further. At its peak almost one generation ago, in 1999, Canada produced more than 3 million cars. Today it produces 1.3 million.
Furthermore, this trade deal will increase Canada’s trade deficit with China which already stands at around 40 billion US dollars, according to Comtrade.
While China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner (behind the U.S.), less then 4% of Canada’s exports go to China (U.S. counts for almost 77%), and 12% of Canadian imports come from China. On the other hand, only 2% of China’s imports come from and only 1.3% of China’s exports go to Canada.
This means Canada plays an even much smaller role for China than China does for Canada, making Ottawa extremely vulnerable for future political and economic coercion, which is definitely a major part in Beijing’s playbook as we have seen in the past.
This is why Canada’s future lies elsewhere, namely in trade and economic ties with countries of shared democratic values such as those in Europe, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Korea and Japan.
These democratic countries play a minimal role for Canada both in exports and imports, which means there is a huge potential for the future.
[Edit typo.]
You can’t replace China or the US with other countries. They are massive economies there is no one to replace them with. Do you need them not not necessarily but be prepared for your economy to shrink.
This really hand-waves away how big a deal it was for Canola growers and seafood producers to have the tariffs dropped. It cost us comparatively little. What amounts to less than 1% of domestic new car market, and with the opportunity to have those EVs made in whole or part here in the future.
that’s a really long winded way to say you have no clue how economics work and don’t understand what democracy is
I do have to give it to you, you know how to demonstrate in very few words how little you know. I guess this makes you an expert on the topic.
But hey, no self-respecting Tankie would ever let a well-reasoned opinion slide by without spouting divisive vitriol. Honestly, do you post anything in Lemmy that isn’t anti-western democracy or pro-china propaganda? That’s certainly the only slop you post in Canadian communities.
I’d be so insulted by that if I didn’t already know from prior interactions what an utter ignoramus you are. Keep on seething there dronie, you’re going to be doing a lot of that going forward.
So, that’s a no, then? It’s literally just Chinese propaganda and weak “lol so mad” trolling the whole way down?
lmfao if you really think I need to justify myself to some random troll on the internet then you’re even dumber than I thought, and that’s really saying something, now why don’t you glide on out of here like a good dronie
What I think is that you’re not capable of it. You don’t have to do anything.
calling what goes on inside that head of yours thinking is very generous
Yeah, it must feel good to wake up in the morning as a tankie and know the ultimate truth about everything and how to explain it to us simpletons.
Yup, feels great to be a tankie and wach dronies having to deal with the whole neoliberal nightmare they constructed collapse in real time. Meanwhile, there’s no educating racists like you.