News broke early Friday that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had struck a deal with China.
We’ll allow China to import up to 49,000 electric vehicles this year at 6.1 per cent tariff rate, instead of the 100 per cent rate previously in place. In exchange, China will drop or reduce tariffs on a range of food products, including canola, lobsters, and peas.
Should we have made this deal with China?
In the “no” column, we have to consider that China is a dictatorship that restricts free speech, imprisons dissidents, discriminates against minorities, has attempted to interfere in our elections, tries to intimidate Chinese-Canadians, and essentially took two Canadians hostage – Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig – after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on an American warrant.
On moral grounds making a deal with China should have been avoided.
But we exist in the context of the current situation in the United States.
At present, the U.S. is still by far the better government in terms of human rights, free speech, and an independent judiciary.
But it’s also run by President Donald Trump and his senior followers, who seem bound and determined to turn their country into an autocracy. (That they’ve largely failed is due to a mixture of resistance and incompetence.)
If China’s stance towards Canada has been bad, Trump’s is worse. He’s slammed us with tariffs and threatened annexation. His ambassador is the opposite of diplomatic, hectoring Canadian business leaders, swearing at Ontario’s trade representative, and calling Canadians “nasty and mean” for refusing to buy American goods or vacation south of the border.
On the day the deal with China was announced, Trump himself was sanguine but his trade representative suggested darkly that “in the long run, they’re not going to like having made that deal.”
The deal comes amid a backdrop of one of Trump’s other obsessions, seizing or “buying” Greenland, as he flung more threats to tariff anyone who opposes his plans.
So when Carney was asked to compare relations between Canada, the U.S., and China, he characterized China as “more predictable.”
That’s deeply depressing, but it’s undeniably true.
The United States, despite its current leadership, is a more democratic nation than China. But it’s also unreliable and erratic. It’s being led by a vindictive narcissist who has surrounded himself with an army of toadies, grifters, and creepy bigots.
So what are we to do?
Carney has done a fair number of things I think are the wrong moves since he was elected, including paving the way for another oil pipeline to the B.C. coast.
But on this, who can fault him?
He’s a banker and an administrator. Canadians elected him, in large part, because he seemed bland but competent. It’s no surprise that what he wants is economic certainty.
China is a dictatorship, but its leaders are at least in contact with reality. The same cannot be said for the Republican leadership in the United States, who increasingly live in a world all their own.
Hopefully, someday we’ll have the luxury of only trading with democracies, but not yet.