Why Canada must engage China to ease Trump’s trade pressure. And why it may not happen

Name: US pauses tariffs on Canada and Mexico
Uploaded: 2025-02-20T01:00:18.000Z
Duration: 2 min 4 s
Description: US pauses tariffs on Canada and Mexico

Canadian professor Paul Evans says it is essential for his country to have ‘more activities’ with Chinese partners

Reading Time:2 minutes

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Canada is grappling with various other challenges from the administration of US President Donald Trump, one of the most controversial being his persistent assertion that Canada could become the “51st state” of the US. Photo: TNS

Zhao Ziwen

Published: 9:00am, 20 Feb 2025

Canada will have to engage China if it wants to ease mounting pressure from the Trump administration, according to a Canadian professor of international relations.

“If we are going to diversify trade, if we are going to try to shape international institutions so that they can have a functional effect, we have to have China as part of that picture,” Paul Evans, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, said in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Speaking at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World, Evans acknowledged that the argument may not “necessarily convince all the Canadians”, but said it was essential to have “more activities with China”.

Evans’ address came nearly three weeks after Trump signed an executive order imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods going into the United States.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared retaliatory tariffs against the US and the order was put on hold for 30 days.

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US pauses tariffs on Canada and Mexico

Canada is grappling with various other challenges from the administration of US President Donald Trump, one of the most controversial being his persistent assertion that Canada could become the “51st state” of the US.