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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.
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Yeah the world’s 10th largest economy with one of the world’s most highly skilled workforces, abundant renewable energy, and some of the most natural resources in the world should focus on just giving its resources away for the cheapest price possible and don’t even try to do anything else by itself. Come on, gaslight us some more, trade partners. Keep telling us we can’t do anything without your help, fuckers. I’m not sick of it at all and I’m sure other Canadians aren’t either.
Whatever dystopian landscape results from giving the consumers a break should happen. The consumers deserve a break at least once! Enough of this “the world will burn if we help the masses” bullshit.
Enough of this “the world will burn if we help the masses” bullshit.
That is almost always coming from the people threatening to burn the world if they don’t get their way.
And, of course, them getting their way will also burn the world, but just a bit slower.
You can help the masses via importing cheaply made EVs, or you can help the masses by employing them to build EVs they can afford.
Only one of those options really gives them a break in the long run.
I’m looking for a short term, one time only offer. Just a break for once. Save the “ethical ways to proceed” for our systems, not the consumer.
The people are the system. The prices are the product of systemic choices. Your Short Term break will end up costing you a fortune down the road when they’ve cornered the market and either Enshittification or price gouging ends up costing you your shirt in 10 years.
I don’t want to pay any more than you do, but “Screw tomorrow, today we feast” kind of mentality is how we got here in the first place. If we don’t think our way through this, we’re going to end up shooting ourselves in the face.
I mostly agree with you but just once I would like the “people’s system” to help the people and not the government or the corporations. “Screw tomorrow, today we feast” always falls to the government or corporations. The people (masses; citizenry) need a win.
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.]
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.
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.
