The American president — his policies, his approaches to international relations, his freewheeling and provocative statements about Canada — helped inform meetings 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) away between two nations working to reestablish ties stalled for nearly a decade as they grapple with the same challenge: wondering what Washington might do next.
Canada’s reengagement with China, its second-largest trading partner behind the U.S., is unfolding in keeping with a term Chinese media have loved this past week — “strategic autonomy.” Essentially, it means that a nation like Canada, so intertwined with the United States for so long as unswerving allies, needs other pillars to hold up its international foundations given recent speed bumps in the Washington-Ottawa relationship.
