Why US and Canadian conservatives backed Trump’s China trip but slammed Carney’s

When Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Beijing in January, US conservative podcaster Alex Jones accused him of bowing to China’s leadership. In Canada, the opposition Conservative Party was no less scathing in its criticism. Party leader Pierre Poilievre questioned how Carney went “from saying China was Canada’s ‘biggest security threat’ before the election to announcing a ‘strategic partnership’ with Beijing after the election”. But when Donald Trump visited China earlier this month, the tone was different. The US president was portrayed by conservatives on both sides of the border as standing up to China. In place of criticism, various US interest groups offered Trump suggestions on how to extract more concessions from China. A week before Trump’s trip, Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in Trump’s first administration, was telling a conservative conference in Ottawa that Carney should not have gone to China. Western leaders like Carney and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who “hedge with China” were, according to Pompeo, falling into a trap set to make them dependent on Beijing. Converging in the praise of Trump’s visit and the criticism of Carney’s are two strands of conservative political tendencies that exist in Canada and the United States, according to Jia Wang, a senior fellow at the China Institute at the University of Alberta who tracks the “triangle” of US-Canada-China relations. One is the Conservative Party of Canada’s perception of its role as an opposition that should challenge anything done by Carney’s Liberal Party. “They will say whatever to please their conservative base,” said Wang. “And they always see China in a very negative light.” The other strand is America’s right-leaning Republican Party base, which supports Trump’s trade wars, with 85 per cent firmly behind him despite falling poll numbers, according to Wang. The Republican base is so beholden to Trump that “whatever he does, people still find justification for it”, Wang said. Beyond making taunts about Canada becoming the 51st US state, Trump launched a trade war that hit Canada’s automotive sector, with carmakers Stellantis and Honda halting work on new plants or pausing expansion plans in the country. Trump’s tariffs on sectors such as steel, aluminium and timber forced Canada to seek other trading partners, the government said. One of the main successes of Carney’s trip was getting China to cut tariffs on Canada’s canola seed exports from 85 per cent to 15 per cent. The biggest growers of canola are the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, with the latter two governed by Conservatives. What appears to have drawn more headlines is Canada’s decision to allow the import of 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles with a 6.1 per cent tariff. Ottawa had imposed 100 per cent tariffs in lockstep with the Joe Biden administration in 2024, and China retaliated with higher tariffs on agricultural exports. Trump has accused Canada of making itself a staging post for cheap Chinese cars to flood the US market, and vowed to block them at the border. Ontario’s Conservative Premier Doug Ford chimed in with his own criticism, alleging that allowing Chinese automobiles into Canada was both a threat to Canadian jobs and a privacy risk. Canadian conservatives who criticised Carney on China have justified Trump’s trip as a vital strategic move. “Trump is going to China as the leader of the world’s biggest economy, and will negotiate from a position of strength,” said Sarah Newman, a 68-year-old resident of Brantford, Ontario, who votes conservative. “Canada, on the other hand, is merely a middle power that has opened its market to a rival it can’t contain.” Trump faces none of the accusations of being a sell-out to China that Carney received from conservatives on both sides of the border. In Trump’s entourage to China were leaders of corporate America, including the likes of Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Democrats expressed concern about the trip, with lawmakers from the party warning Trump in a letter against making concessions that could give China more leverage. Conservatives in the US and Canada share similar anxieties about losing ground to so-called “newcomers”, making them band together on issues such as immigration and China, according to Felix Ofulue, an Ontario-based political communications researcher who follows conservative messaging. “The reaction from conservatives on China was largely tribal,” he said, adding that this stance allowed them to support Trump’s China visit while condemning Carney’s without perceiving a contradiction. “Given his past position on China as a security threat, it was shocking to many conservatives to see Carney seek a strategic partnership with China,” Ofulue said. The same conservatives, against the background of the war in Iran and wider geopolitical rivalry with China, have “cast Trump’s China visit as deal-making diplomacy worthy of praise”. Canada’s Liberal Party supporters are, however, pointing out the contradictions. They accuse the Conservatives of disparaging the best efforts of Carney while seeing nothing wrong with Trump’s actions. “Didn’t Trump say China would ‘take over’ Canada and we would become a ‘drop-off port’ for Chinese goods?” asked Mike Angelle from Alberta, a supporter of the liberal-aligned Forever Canadian movement. “We can’t have a small trade deal with China, but he’s allowed to have Musk and others join him in Beijing.”

Why US and Canadian conservatives backed Trump’s China trip but slammed Carney’s

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The North American right cast Trump’s Beijing visit as ‘deal-making diplomacy’ while attacking the Canadian leader for ‘hedging with China’

The North American right cast Trump’s Beijing visit as ‘deal-making diplomacy’ while attacking the Canadian leader for ‘hedging with China’