Trump earlier had ranted against bridge and also warned that China would ‘terminate’ hockey in Canada Mark Carney said he had held a “positive” conversation with Donald Trump after the US leader threatened to block a new key bridge between their two countries, reminding the president that Canada paid for the structure – and that the US shares ownership. Late on Monday, Trump posted a lengthy message on social media, falsely claiming that the $4.6bn Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, had “virtually no US content”.…
Tag: Canada
China overturns death sentence of Canadian in sign of diplomatic thaw
China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as prime minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer Zhang Dongshuo, reached in Beijing on Saturday, confirmed the decision was announced on Friday by China’s highest court. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived after the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians…
Trump Says His Unpredictable Style Gives Him Leverage. But It Has a Cost.
President Trump, who considers himself a master deal maker, has never made any secret of his belief that the secret to winning at negotiation is to keep the other side off balance. But a year into his second term, his act is starting to wear on both allies and adversaries, some of whom are starting to view him as so mercurial and unreliable that they appear willing to consider waiting him out or turning away from him rather than enduring the abrupt starts, stops and humiliations that can accompany engaging…
Trump-led abuses amid ‘democratic recession’ put human rights in peril, HRW report says
The world is in a “democratic recession” with almost three-quarters of the global population now living under autocratic rulers – levels not seen since the 1980s, according to a new report. The system underpinning human rights was “in peril”, said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), with a growing authoritarian wave becoming “the challenge of a generation”, he said. Speaking before the launch of the human rights watchdog’s annual country-by-country assessment, published on Wednesday, Bolopion said 2025 had been a “tipping point” for rights and freedoms in…
Canada has no intention of pursuing free trade with China, says Carney
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Sunday his country had no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China, responding to Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if the US’s northern neighbour went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing. Carney said his recent agreement with China merely cut tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with them. The prime minister said that, under the free trade agreement with the US and Mexico, there were commitments not to pursue…
Trump’s wrecking ball pushes US allies closer to China
If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s. “It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on…
Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariff over possible deal with China
Donald Trump on Saturday said he would impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if the North American country makes a trade deal with China. Beside that tariff threat, another Trump foreign policy maneuver to make news on Saturday involved the president announcing the US had taken the oil that was on recently seized Venezuelan tankers. The US president wrote on social media that if the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products…
Mark Carney in China positions Canada for ‘the world as it is, not as we wish it’
Mark Carney’s trip to Beijing this week secured what he described as a “preliminary but landmark” trade deal and a recognition – welcomed by Beijing – that countries are operating in a “new world order”. Carney’s visit is the first time in nearly a decade that a Canadian prime minister has been welcomed in Beijing. It comes after years of a deep freeze in the relationship between Ottawa and Beijing that Carney wants to thaw, in order to reduce his country’s precarious reliance on the United States. Guy Saint-Jacques, a…
Canada PM hails new partnership with China in wake of ‘new global realities’
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China as he held talks in Beijing with president Xi Jinping on Friday, the first visit there by a Canadian leader in eight years. Addressing Xi in the Great Hall of the People, Carney said that “together we can build on the best of what this relationship has been in the past to create a new one adapted to new global realities”. Engagement and cooperation would be “the foundation of our new strategic partnership”, he said. “Agriculture, energy, finance,…
Carney heads to Beijing as Trump’s America First agenda forces Canada into trade rethink
During the final stretch of Canada’s spring election campaign, Mark Carney told a debate audience that China was the country’s “biggest geopolitical risk”. He pointed to its attempts to meddle in elections and its recent efforts to disrupt Canada’s Arctic claims. When Carney’s government plane touches down in Beijing this week, it will be the first time a Canadian prime minister has been welcomed in nearly a decade. The trip, undertaken amid the rupturing of global economic and political alliances, reflects a desire by Ottawa to mend a broken relationship…