Little to show after Trudeau’s Beijing blitz
Challenging visit wraps up with side deals, but no sign of big-ticket negotiations
SASKATOON— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plunged into the comforts of campaign mode as he returned Thursday from a challenging visit to China that had started with sky-high expectations, only to end in failure to get much-wanted trade talks off the ground.
As he disembarked from his government Airbus in the Saskatchewan evening to help out in a local byelection, Trudeau had little to show from his blitz of high-level meetings in Beijing and a two-day sojourn to hobnob with some of the world’s wealthiest business leaders in the southeast Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou.
The Liberal government fell short of its stated goal of steering Canada to become the first Group of Seven country to launch formal trade talks with China.
The trade horizon from Ottawa now appears clouded, as progress toward the Trans Pacific Partnership falters, and a North American Free Trade Agreement remains endangered by the protectionist impulses of the U.S. president.
China, thought by some to be the next best hope to diversify Canada’s trading destinations after its free trade agreement with the European Union, now seems an elusive and obstinate partner.
Trudeau, to be sure, hailed the trip’s “substantial progress” in deepening Canada’s relationship with China, a key goal of the Liberal administration’s foreign policy, which includes a push to double bilateral trade of $85 billion last year.
In a news conference at the end of the trip, the prime minister enumerated the side deals that his Canadian delegation inked while in Beijing this week. These included a pact to cooperate on the implementation of the Paris Agreement to curb global warming, some two-way tourism boosterism, and deals to ease restrictions on the sale of Canadian pork and beef to China.
“We’ve had a very constructive and positive visit, strengthening our relationship with China, and we’re going to continue to work on that because it’s something that matters to Canadians and to Chinese citizens and to our governments,” Trudeau said Thursday before leaving Guangzhou for home.
There was no sign of anything beyond those side deals, despite expectations that snowballed in the days before the foray across the Pacific, when officials from Trudeau’s office framed the main purpose of the trip as a way to ramp up trade and investment with the authoritarian powerhouse, and Canada’s industry minister told Global News that launching trade talks with China was the government’s “objective.”
Paul Evans, a keen observer of Chinese politics and a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, called the trip “successful in the minimalist sense,” in that Trudeau fulfilled his agreement with China to hold annual meetings with Premier Li Keqiang, the country’s No. 2 leader and his counterpart in the Communist Party hierarchy.
Yet it was at that meeting on Monday where prospects for the expected launch of trade talks first appeared in doubt. Trudeau and his coterie of ministers and officials were welcomed at the Great Hall of the People, as Canadian flags flew next to China’s on the boulevard lining Tiananmen Square and its imposing mural of Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong outside.
Even as the prime minister entered the welcoming hall, where uniformed soldiers stood stock-still with rifles and fixed bayonets, tensions rumbled as Chinese staffers inexplicably blocked a Canadian photographer from taking pictures of Li and Trudeau. As the leaders moved to an adjacent room for closed discussions, arguments broke out between Canadian and Chinese officials over how many people, including Trudeau’s own personal photographer, would be allowed in the room to observe the meeting briefly.
Their discussions ran longer than expected, and the Chinese cancelled a joint plan to answer questions from reporters. Li delivered a statement to reveal that the countries would merely continue the exploratory talks on how to frame potential trade negotiations, discussions that have been going on for months.
Hopes for a breakthrough flickered the next night immediately after Trudeau held a private dinner with China’s powerful President Xi Jinping, when International Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne broke from Trudeau’s entourage to remain in Beijing and continue talks on launching trade talks.
They’d amounted to nothing when Trudeau left Thursday, after attending the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, an elite business summit where he delivered a keynote speech pitching Canada as an investment destination and extolled the virtues of international trade in the face of a tide of nationalist populism.
His prescription for such politics, which he painted as the antithesis to economic growth in the 21st century, is his vision of “progressive” trade, which has wound its way through the European trade deal to the NAFTA negotiating table and surfaced in the discussions on potential talks with China. The idea, as Trudeau explained it, is that free trade deals need to include sections on labour standards, environmental regulations and gender rights in order to have legitimacy and keep the benefits of growth from being confined to the rich.
Asked Thursday whether this strategy is scuppering potential trade deals with China and on NAFTA, Trudeau did not directly answer, but defended the vision as “the only way” new trade deals are going to be accepted.