US will retaliate if Canada seals trade deal with China

President Donald Trump said the United States would give a significant response if Canada complies with the trade deal it negotiated with China.

“If they make a deal with China, yes, we’ll do something very significant,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“We don’t want China to take over Canada. And if they make the deal he wants to make, China will take over Canada.”

Trump announced last week that he would impose 100 percent tariffs on Canada if Canada reached a trade agreement with China.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last month struck a trade deal with Beijing that lowered tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and Canadian canola oil.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Beijing this week to repair relations that have been strained for years, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is also expected to arrive there next month.

While there has been a major shift in the world order since Trump took office again, America’s closest partners are exploring opportunities with China following clashes with Trump over tariffs and demands to take over Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.

At the risk of offending Trump, they are resetting relations with a country long seen as the nemesis of many Western allies and the United States’ biggest economic rival.

“We’re dealing with broad, strategically open eyes,” Carney said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, shortly after returning from Beijing. “We are actively taking the world as it is, not waiting for the world to be the way we want it to be.”

Some leaders, politicians and experts bemoan a shift that could tip the balance in Beijing’s favor and against Washington’s; Others say China is as formidable as the United States because they both apply pressure for their own interests. In both cases, the way countries align themselves with the world’s two superpowers is changing.

with AP