They're also staring down a demographic crash, soon (10 - 15% drop with 25% of the remaining polution over 65).
They are basically at their peak right now.
That is Trump's big lie, but it has no basis in reality. This was the cornerstone of Trump's whole pressure agenda on China, and it imploded quickly when the Chinese indicated "We don't care about the American market, trade is only 5% of our GDP, and we have lots of trading partners."
> They're also staring down a demographic crash, soon (10 - 15% drop with 25% of the remaining polution over 65).
Investments in AI and automation make that iffy, investments that, beyond AI, the USA is not making.
> They are basically at their peak right now.
That is the core of Trump's big lie on China, and again, has no basis in reality.
I wonder how much economic power matters when you have to shut down half the construction and manufacturing of a nation because there aren't enough fasteners to go around.
I feel nothing but disappointment from how far the quality of American rhetoric has fallen.
In Canada? Oh yes, many serious liberals are advocating ending with usa and becoming an ally with china. About a month ago: https://globalnews.ca/news/11490896/canada-strategic-partner...
Which resulted in the USA suspending all trade talks with Canada the next day.
But over the last decade, the liberals also have ordered various anti-china divestments: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...
not to mention: https://electrek.co/2025/10/27/canada-rumored-immently-remov...
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
I’d be immensely happy if the Chinese EV tarries were scrapped. Given how the us has been behaving, why should we support us automakers.
I very much doubt that is true. Unless the Canadian government get's their information only from "truth" social.
How do you get China in that list? Canada would most likely be challenged over their stake in the Arctic and Russia is plainly the greatest threat in that regard, not China. Russia has invested a great deal into arctic exploration and exploitation and pretty clearly sees the region as free real estate up for the taking. America too has a large stake in the Arctic, but has developed comparably fewer arctic capabilities than Russia. For Canada to have any chance of repelling a Russian invasion of their arctic territory would require America to help them, which under present American leadership would be a piss poor position for Canada to be in (not only because Trump has suggested annexing Canada himself, but also because he's said similar about Greenland, underscoring America's own desire to take that same arctic territory.)
Now, I don't doubt that China would also like the Arctic for themselves, but from Canada's perspective, the relative threat of China must be less than that of Russia and America.
Now, however unlikely you think Russia is to actually start some kinetic shit in the Arctic, I think you're crazy to rate their threat lower than China. China being richer, more disciplined and less dumb only makes the relative threat to Canada even smaller. Russia, being relatively dumb, undisciplined, poor and increasingly reliant on oil exports to prop up their economy makes the probability of Russia daring to start shit higher, not lower.
Edit: Some of you obviously don't take this seriously, so here's a question for any of you. If Russia announces they are going to be drilling oil in arctic waters that are nominally Canada's, and declares their annexation of this territory a fiat accompli, what is Canada's move? Demand help from their NATO allies, which may or may not include America? What if America declines and demands the mineral rights to Canadian territory in exchange for chasing Russia off Canada's sea floor? Canada sure as hell can't fight Russia under the ice cap themselves. Without a credible military response of their, Canada must count on having reliable and powerful allies. Russia's desire and motive are clear, they want the arctic oil. China is dangerous in their own way, the PLAN is very dangerous, but if they're going to start shit it will be over Taiwan and if it involves anybody else it will probably be the USN and maybe the JSDF, not Canada. The real threat the PRC poses to Canada is subversion of the Canadian political system, buying and bribing their way through getting anything they want from Canada. And that's not the kind of threat you can counter with military spending.
Canada is already a substantial component of NATO anti-submarine warfare. Canada is involved in patrolling and has sea and air resources to do just that, and is in the process to acquire more ships for that role.
Canada has about 18 maritime patrol aircraft, while USA has about 60, mostly in the coast guard, and that depends on tasking (some are listed as search and rescue which isn't the same) and the capability to drastically increase that amount by refitting/sacrificing our huge fleet of transport aircraft.
You may have consumed some propaganda. Canada's military forces are well respected everywhere they have ever been deployed. In WW2 they were considered horrifically brutal to german soldiers and treated as a serious threat. In the GWOT, their technical competence and marksmanship was admired. They have a formidable air force, that would be effective at blunting Russian aerial incursions. Canada has spent more effort and resources building up Arctic capability than the US has.
Canada's biggest military difficulties have been weirdly inefficient procurement. They waffle back and forth on stuff that needs commitments.
> If Russia announces they are going to be drilling oil in arctic waters that are nominally Canada's, and declares their annexation of this territory a fiat accompli, what is Canada's move?
Russia does not have the power projection necessary to accomplish this. Canada alone could prevent this. How do they protect their drilling infrastructure on Canada's border when they cannot protect their infrastructure all over their country? How do they protect their oil in shipment from Canadian raids? Russia is so low on some capabilities that they cannot defend against air attack. Russia barely had power projection to do those things when it was the USSR and was actively managing and manning a real fleet. Their blue water navy is in shambles. Their flagship on the black sea was killed by (supposedly) two anti-ship missiles despite having a multilayered Anti-missile defense system that should have been perfectly effective against such a threat. Such systems were always considered worthy in the cold war. That means either those systems don't work as advertised, those systems have a serious and known vulnerability that makes them useless, or the flagship of a Russian fleet was in an active war zone with most of it's systems degraded or nonfunctional. That's pretty horrifying.
The biggest lesson people should take from the Russia Ukraine thing is that things don't have to make sense. Sometimes hundreds of thousands die because a few people in a few places were utter morons and did irrational things and everyone just awkwardly stood by and let it happen.
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
(Only picking this particular nit because, as a Victorian, we constantly live in the shadow of our bigger brother, so I need to shout us out when I can. And I fly out of the flying club that the plane was hijacked from, so it's a story that's particularly close to my heart.)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/25/donald...
China ransacked and then sank Nortel.