In late August PM Trudeau announced plans to impose tariffs on certain Chinese imports to Canada. These include a whopping 100% tariff on Chinese-made electrical vehicles (EVs), as well as 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, to take effect in October.
Interestingly, the tariffs were announced immediately after the ruling Liberals received a secret briefing from Jake Sullivan, the U.S. National Security Advisor, at their Cabinet retreat in Nova Scotia. Sullivan demanded that Canada follow suit in imposing such tariffs, in line with U.S. and EU tariffs imposed earlier this year. And the Trudeau Liberals meekly obliged Washington’s instructions.
These aggressive actions were certain to bring a response from the People’s Republic and sure enough, Beijing announced this week its intention to impose retaliatory tariffs on Canadian exports of canola oil to China, landing a multi-billion dollar body blow to Canadian farmers.
This economic war is adversely affecting the Canadian economy and further undermining Canada-China relations as a whole. Trudeau’s justification for these tariffs is duplicitous and hypocritical. During his press conference, Trudeau argued that this protectionist action was necessary because of China’s “unfair trade practices” and its government’s subsidies to China’s EV industry are excessive, creating “over-capacity” in the global EV market. This ignores the obvious fact that the Canadian state is itself pouring billions of public funds in subsidies to U.S. and other western and South Korean automotive monopolies.
More than that, these tariffs set back both national and global efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate carbon emissions from internal combustion engines (ICEs), one of the primary factors driving climate change. It runs directly against Canada’s professed goal of ‘green transition’, especially the objective of 100% zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2035. Instead of targetting China, the Canadian federal government should focus on measures to reduce carbon emissions, such as high-speed passenger trains between major cities, and a publicly-owned fleet of EV buses to connect smaller cities and towns across the country.
The sad reality is that the new tariff measures do not protect Canadian production and Canadian jobs; instead, they constitute a further bail-out to domestic and international finance capital, at the expense of our environment.
Worst of all, the Trudeau government’s actions further inflame the ‘cold war’ initiated by U.S. and other Western powers against China, escalating military tensions which could push humanity closer to a calamitous world war.
The Communist Party of Canada calls on the Trudeau government to immediately rescind these counter-productive tariffs, and move to improve Canada-China relations for the mutual benefit of both our peoples and the cause of world peace.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada