Glass Houses: Is Washington Deeper Into China Than Ottawa?

OPINION

Ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney flew to Beijing in January and came home with a deal on electric vehicles and canola, Canadians have been told we are “getting into bed with China.” The charge has come from U.S. cabinet members, commentators and, on some days, the President himself.

It is worth looking at the record of the country making the accusation. By almost every measure of scale, and by every measure of political courtship, the United States is far more entangled with Beijing than Canada is. Washington is not watching this relationship from across the room. It is at the head of the table.

The money says Washington

In raw dollars, America’s ties to China dwarf Canada’s on trade, investment and debt. Figures are for 2025 unless noted.

Measure	United States	Canada
Goods trade with China	US$414.6 billion	C$125.6 billion (about US$90 billion)
Services trade with China	US$80.0 billion	C$12.2 billion (2024)
Direct investment in mainland China	US$122.9 billion (2024)	US$11.3 billion (2023)
China’s holdings of the country’s government debt	US$633 billion (June 2026)	No comparable figure

America’s goods trade with China is roughly four and a half times Canada’s. American companies have more than ten times as much money sunk into mainland China. And Beijing holds more than US$600 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, making it one of Washington’s largest foreign creditors.

That last point deserves emphasis. Canada sells China canola and buys its consumer goods. The United States borrows from it.

Four summits in one year

Carney made one trip to Beijing. Trump and Xi Jinping are on track to meet four times in 2026.

Trump visited Beijing in May. Last week he returned the favour with a state visit in Washington, personally greeting Xi at Joint Base Andrews, a first for a foreign leader during his presidency. More than 100 guests, mostly from government and business, attended the state dinner. The two leaders are scheduled to meet again at APEC in China in November and at the G20 in Miami in December.

These are not courtesy calls. The May summit produced:

A new Board of Trade to oversee bilateral trade in non-sensitive goods.
A new Board of Investment to handle investment issues between the two countries.
A Chinese commitment to buy at least US$17 billion in additional American farm products, on top of an existing pledge of 25 million tonnes of soybeans a year.
An order for 200 Boeing aircraft.

Washington is building permanent machinery to manage and grow its economic relationship with Beijing. Canada has a tariff truce on a handful of products, some of which expires at the end of this year.

AI chips and car factories

The sharpest contrast is in technology. Canada agreed to import a capped number of Chinese cars. The United States has agreed to sell China advanced AI chips and has invited Chinese automakers to build factories on American soil.

Nvidia chips. In December 2025, Trump announced that Nvidia could sell its H200 AI chips to approved customers in China, with the U.S. government taking a 25% cut. He said the same approach would apply to AMD and Intel. The rules were formalized in January 2026.

The H200 is not Nvidia’s newest chip, but it is roughly six times more powerful than the H20, the deliberately weakened model built to comply with earlier export limits. In 2022, the U.S. Commerce Department justified restricting chips like these by warning that China used them to build advanced military systems. Washington has since decided the revenue is worth it.

Chinese car plants. At the Detroit Economic Club in January, Trump said it would be “great” if Chinese automakers built U.S. plants and hired Americans. “Let China come in,” he told an audience in the heart of the American auto industry. He has repeated that openness since, over objections from GM, the United Auto Workers and senators from both parties.

No Chinese plant has been approved, and the 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese vehicles remains. But consider the difference in kind. Canada’s deal lets in a limited number of imported cars. A Chinese assembly plant in Ohio or Michigan would be a permanent industrial foothold inside the American economy.

The decoupling that isn’t

Americans will point out that U.S. imports from China fell by about 30% in 2025, while Canada’s trade with China grew. That is true on paper. It is less true in practice.

While direct imports from China fell, the U.S. deficit with other Asian economies soared. In 2025 the U.S. ran a US$178.2 billion goods-and-services deficit with Vietnam and US$146.8 billion with Taiwan. A CSIS analysis found the deficit with Taiwan alone rose 865% between 2018 and 2025, and concluded that tariffs may have redirected supply chains rather than shrinking them.

Chinese investment in countries such as Mexico and Vietnam has risen alongside this shift, so some of those goods come from Chinese-owned factories or rely on Chinese parts. They still end up on American shelves, with a different country on the label. Overall U.S. trade, meanwhile, kept growing: exports rose 6.2% and imports 4.8% in 2025.

What Canada actually did

Canada’s supposed betrayal is a quota. Ottawa replaced its 100% surtax on Chinese EVs with a 6.1% tariff on up to 49,000 vehicles a year, rising gradually to roughly 67,000 to 70,000 by the end of the decade. Carney told Trump at the G7 it amounts to less than 3% of the Canadian car market. So far, only 15,603 Chinese-made EVs have entered Canada under the deal. Those cars do not qualify for Canada’s federal EV rebate.

In return, China cut its tariff on Canadian canola seed from roughly 84% to about 15% and dropped duties on canola meal, lobster, crab and peas. That relief was worth nearly $3 billion in export orders for Canadian farmers and fishers, according to Carney, a market Canada needed after U.S. tariffs hit its exports.

The U.S. reaction has been telling. On the day the deal was announced, Trump himself said it was a good thing, adding that if you can get a deal with China, you should. Shortly afterward, on social media, he claimed China was taking over Canada. Both statements came from the same man who has since hosted Xi for a state dinner.

Glass houses

Put the two relationships side by side. Canada has a capped car quota, a canola truce and one prime ministerial visit. The United States has four leader summits in a year, new standing boards for trade and investment, Boeing and farm purchase deals, AI chip sales, an open invitation to Chinese car factories, and US$633 billion of its debt in Chinese hands.

Canada is entitled to find new customers after its largest trading partner put tariffs on its goods. Americans are entitled to debate whether their own government’s courtship of Beijing is wise.

What does not hold up is the idea that Canada is the one getting too close to China.The United States remains far more entangled with China in absolute terms, in finance and in high-level diplomacy. So when it comes to Beijing, Washington is in no position to lecture anyone.

Sources:

GDP and per-person comparisons are the author’s calculations using the figures above, approximate 2025 populations and an exchange rate of about US$0.72 per Canadian dollar.