What was Justin Trudeau up to trying to deal with Chinese leadership?

DShifts in global patterns of trade and politics have Canada’s Prime minister performing in Asia.

Justin Trudeau’s dance is not the kind of naughty pirouette his father, the prime minister used to do. The younger Trudeau’s performance resembles a tight rope walker high in the air with each foot on a different rope and each rope pulling sideways.

On one rope Trudeau feels the magnetic pull of a free trade deal with China’s vast population, its growing income and its desire for North American goods and services.

The right trade agreement could shift a large part of Canadian trade over 10 years to China from the United States. Currently 70 per cent of Canadian exports flow south to the United States.

The United States takes so much of our products that a scratch on Uncle Sam leaves a cut on Canada. Our dependence on the United States extends way back in history.

Canadian fur traders used to stock up with trade supplies at Fort Benton, Montana. Indeed, when the first Mounties came west in 1874, they took a U.S. train to Manitoba.

Trade, language and cultural links bonded the two countries, although each nation has a different national character from the small c conservative somewhat humble Canucks to the aggressive boasting Americans.

We have lived side by side for generations by tolerating our differences or sweeping them under the imaginary border. Until now.

The rise of a bellicose bullying president in the U.S.A. appears to have pushed the prime minister to seek an alternate market in case the unpredictable protectionist U.S. leader decides to dump the Canadian trade partnership.

The Chinese tight rope pulls to one side just as the U.S. tight rope pulls to the other.

Will a Chinese trade deal or the threat of one, cause the bullying American leadership to pull hard away from our trade talks?

Will the Chinese yield to demands for labour stan- dards and gender equity? Hardly-likely. Canadians walk double tight ropes of their own, concerning Chinese trade and investment: happy with more trade, unhappy with investment and management by the Chinese, whose human rights record is blighted.

The Conservative Opposition in Parliament has blasted Trudeau for attempting a trade agreement. Yet the opposition overlooks the human rights abuses by our neighbour to the South, ignores the mayhem and murder occurring daily, that is inspired by current leadership.

Trudeau has much to lose and gain from a Chinese trade deal. Such a deal could incur the wrath of U.S. leaders. Such a deal could see Chinese human rights violations coming to Canada.

Should Trudeau fail to get a Chinese deal, he will blossom politically. His supporters will praise him for not yielding to human rights abusers and for trying to shift trade from the U.S.

In the meantime, unpredictable U.S. leadership will hopefully have been muzzled, or be on the way out, leaving opportunity to negotiate U.S. trade with saner leaders.

Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net