Now that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party have joined the chorus calling for more action against Chinese imports, a key decision facing Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland this month just got a little easier.
Cross-party consensus on the wisdom of lining up with the Biden administration’s incoming tariffs on made-in-China electric vehicles provides the government with more political cover. But there’s still a risk of incoming flak.
To understand how complicated this gets, consider how then-president Donald Trump’s earlier campaign against Chinese state-sponsored overproduction played out for the United States and its trading partners in what was then NAFTA, now the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). That policy debate got very confusing for voters who like to slot politicians on a predictable left-right axis.
U.S. Republicans — previously champions of global trade liberalization and low taxes — suddenly had a president whose throngs of supporters embraced tariffs as the ultimate …