{"id":197200,"date":"2026-01-17T10:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T10:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/canada-china-cut-tariffs-and-announce-new-partnership-as-trump-brings-old-foes-together-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T10:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T10:27:12","slug":"canada-china-cut-tariffs-and-announce-new-partnership-as-trump-brings-old-foes-together-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/canada-china-cut-tariffs-and-announce-new-partnership-as-trump-brings-old-foes-together-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada, China cut tariffs and announce new partnership as Trump brings old foes together – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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BEIJING \u2014 With U.S. ties <\/strong>at their lowest point in modern history, Canada is turning to one of the only countries with which it had even worse relations: China<\/a>.
Canada is forging a \u201cnew strategic partnership\u201d with China, its second-biggest trading partner, Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> said Friday during what he called a \u201chistoric\u201d trip to Beijing. <\/strong>That includes a break with the United States on tariffs, which have hit both the Canadian and Chinese economies.
Carney, the first Canadian prime minister to visit China since 2017, met with President Xi Jinping <\/a>at the Great Hall of the People. He is one of a series of world leaders shaken by President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s geopolitical disruptions who are traveling to Beijing as it seeks to exploit U.S. unpredictability to bolster its global influence.
For Canada, the Trump administration has been especially head-spinning.
\u201cThe United States used to be a friend and ally,\u201d Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, told NBC News in an interview. Now, \u201cwe are treated as an enemy.\u201d
Carney\u2019s trip follows <\/strong>years of frosty relations over Beijing\u2019s lengthy detention of two Canadians<\/a> regarded as hostages as well as allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics<\/a>.
Those tensions slowed investment and left Canada \u201ceven more dependent on our largest trading partner,\u201d Carney said, referring to the U.S., which is now the object of extraordinary Canadian anger<\/a> and boycotts<\/a> after a year of insults and threats by Trump.
As part of an effort to \u201crecalibrate\u201d the relationship, Carney said Canada had agreed to cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products.
It\u2019s a major shift for Canada, a major auto producer that in 2024 followed the U.S. in imposing the 100% tariff<\/a>.
Carney said Canadians would also be allowed to travel to China visa-free.
During their meeting earlier Friday, Xi told Carney that China was willing to strengthen coordination \u201cto jointly address global challenges.\u201d
Carney, who called China his country\u2019s biggest security threat while campaigning for office last year, said Friday that the global security landscape \u201ccontinues to change.\u201d
\u201cIn a world that\u2019s more dangerous and divided, we face many threats,\u201d he said.
Though Canada\u2019s relationship with the U.S. is much deeper and broader, Carney said, ties with China were now \u201cmore predictable.\u201d
Canada-China relations went into a \u201cdeep freeze\u201d in 2018 when China arrested the two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig<\/a> and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, said Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto.
Their detention came days after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou<\/a>, an executive at the Chinese tech giant Huawei, at the request of U.S. officials seeking her extradition on fraud charges. Kovrig and Spavor, who were accused of spying<\/a>, spent almost three years in Chinese detention before being released in 2021<\/a>, hours after Meng made a deal with the Justice Department.
\u201cEven after the two Michaels were released, people did not warm up to China at all,\u201d Ong said.
Then Trump returned to the White House last January.
Within days, he imposed a 25% tariff<\/a> on most Canadian goods and started talking about making Canada, a nation of 40 million people, the 51st U.S. state<\/a>.
U.S.-Canada trade talks have been on hold since October, when Trump cut them off in anger over an anti-tariff ad<\/a> produced by the Ontario government.
Canadian public opinion on China is becoming more positive<\/a> even as goodwill toward the U.S. plummets<\/a>, according to polling by the Pew Research Center<\/a>. Last year, 34% of Canadian survey respondents had a favorable opinion of China, up from 21% in 2024 before Trump took office.
An equal proportion of respondents had a favorable opinion of America, down from 54%.
Though the same pattern can be seen<\/a> in a number of countries around the world, in Canada \u201cthe flip is especially obvious,\u201d Ong said.
Canadian officials say they are seeking to grow non-U.S. trade by at least 50% over the next 10 years.
\u201cFurther trade engagement with China should first and foremost be seen as diversification away from the United States,\u201d Ong said.
About 75% of Canada\u2019s manufactured goods exports go to the U.S., according to government figures. China is the second-largest market at about 4%.
Though Canada is seeking to increase exports to a number of countries \u2014 including India<\/a>, where Carney has also been trying to improve strained relations<\/a> \u2014 a major priority is China, where imports of Canadian goods fell more than 10% last year, according to Chinese customs data released Wednesday.
The two countries made a major step forward in October when the leaders met on the sidelines of a regional summit in South Korea<\/a>, where Xi invited Carney to Beijing.
The speed with which Carney went to China \u201creflects a sense of urgency,\u201d said Saint-Jacques, the former ambassador. \u201cHe knows that Canada is in a tough spot.\u201d
Showing the U.S. that Canada has other options for its exports, he said, could put Carney in a stronger position as the U.S., Canada and Mexico begin a \u201cjoint review\u201d of their free trade agreement, known as the USMCA. Trump this week dismissed the agreement, which he praised when it was announced during his first term, as \u201cirrelevant.\u201d
At the same time, \u201cCanadians know also that China is a very difficult partner,\u201d Saint-Jacques said. \u201cWe know very well how they can contravene international rules.\u201d
Saint-Jacques said that in his meeting with Xi, Carney would \u201cemphasize the need to put pressure on Putin to accept a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine,\u201d in addition to discussing China\u2019s relationship with North Korea<\/a> and expressing support for the Beijing-claimed island of Taiwan<\/a>.
Like the U.S., Canada has no official ties with Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, but supports it in the face of Chinese pressure.
Carney said Friday that he had raised human rights issues such as last month\u2019s conviction of Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai<\/a>.
But he added: \u201cWe take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.\u201d
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.<\/em>
Janis Mackey Frayer is a Beijing-based correspondent for NBC News.
Jennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeBEIJING \u2014 With U.S. ties at their lowest point in modern history, Canada is turning to one of the only countries with which it had even worse relations: China.Canada is forging a \u201cnew strategic partnership\u201d with China, its second-biggest trading partner, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-197200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}