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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in CovertAction Magazine.

Written by: Aidan Jonah

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Canada has been servile to the U.S. war agenda under Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former Governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, whose professional loyalties have been with the business and government elites who allowed him to rise to his current status.

But what has the reward been for Canada’s servility under Carney?

Tariffs of 35 per cent—which were justified by the claim that Canada was allowing huge amounts of fentanyl to get into the U.S.—and a policy to destroy Canada’s auto-manufacturing industry within one year.

Canada was already acting against China’s sovereignty

In May, “U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told a media briefing in Washington that the U.S. government also wants Ottawa’s help in ‘countering the Chinese Communist Party influence in our hemisphere.’”

Yet it’s utter comedy to infer Canada was not already assisting the US in targeting China. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) began push the China danger narrative in Canada after receiving messaging from US intelligence agencies about Huawei in Spring/Summer 2018. This author noted for The Canada Files, “A Canadian parliament subcommittee began the process that would lead to a 2021 Xinjiang genocide vote, in [Fall] 2018.”

Canada’s government then kidnapped Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at Washington’s behest in December 2018, tanking Canada’s relations with China. Canada’s government and CSIS allowed NED-funded Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) to run amok, driving the infamous and unanimous February 2021 ‘Uygur genocide’ vote in Canada’s parliament.

After Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was returned to China in September 2021, there was a window of opportunity for Canada to reset relations with China. Yet instead, Canada’s government got busy subtly supporting ‘Taiwan independence’, while its parliament used Canada’s ongoing history of genocide against Indigenous nations to slander China’s now-Xizang Autonomous Region (formerly Tibet Autonomous Region) and then supported separatism.

Canada’s hysteric CSIS-driven foreign interference inquiry, focused mostly on targeting China, did more to damage Canada-China relations along with the Chinese Canadian community, while a Uygur separatist diaspora staffer openly called on the Canadian government to fund a community organization for Uygur separatists (while the government already worked to help them collaborate with each other).

The coup-de-grace? ‘Tibet separatist’ and Uygur separatist organizations in Canada who were sanctioned by the Chinese government in December 2024, were immediately defended by the Canadian government.

Meanwhile, Canada seems on the verge of bringing the knees and elbows down for Trump’s fanatical ‘Golden Dome’ - and joining it (at an estimated cost of $61 billion) - styled on ex-US President Ronald Reagan’s dream ‘Star Wars’ program, which geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic has ripped into as “being built to enable the US to forever threaten other nations around the globe with its missiles” and a “Tax Dollar Heist at Best”.

To portray Canada as doing anything else, except acting against China’s sovereignty well before the second Trump administration, is an utterly delusional act.

NATO spending and Chinese EVs

In Brussels this February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ranted about how:

“We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.

Deterrence cannot fail, for all of our sakes.”

Update: Pete Hegseth is now Secretary of War.

This was the justification for ‘needing’ to “establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively” and to spend five per cent of GDP for defense (in comparison to the former two per cent target).

And wouldn’t you know it, by June, Canada and the European NATO members had all agreed to Trump’s spending demand. On June 25, PM Carney confirmed this extra spending would cost Canada $150 billion CAD per year by 2035.

Canada had already bent the knee to the US in another way during Summer 2024. Rapidly after the former US Biden administration slapped 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs, Canada followed suit.

Flavio Volpe, President of the Automative Parts Manufacturers’ Association, an ardent Zionist and anti-communist, celebrated the Chinese EV ban.

Volpe, in the same Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article, “addressed the climate concerns saying Chinese-made EVs — built in factories largely powered by coal-fired power plants — are not as green as those made elsewhere.”

Now this summer, he claimed that cancellation should come for “The federal government’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate — requiring that 20 per cent of all new vehicle sales in Canada be electric by 2026”.

This author warned that Canada’s electric vehicles target for 2035 were now impossible, in an article skewering Canada’s subservience last year. Thanks to people like Volpe and organizations like APMA, the direction in Canada is firmly towards excuses for limited EVs instead of affordable EVs for Canadians to help the environment, despite China’s desire to get such EVs into Canadian hands.

Update: Last week, Canadian government EV targets for 2026 were paused by Prime Minister Mark Carney.

All this was done to please the US. What ‘rewards’ has Canada been enjoying?

Canada’s ‘rewards’ for being a good poodle

By the time of a July 30 op-ed for The Toronto Star, Canada was suffering from the US’ “25% tariff on imported vehicles and auto parts”, and “50 per cent duty on steel and aluminum, materials used in the manufacturing of vehicles.”

In the op-ed, Volpe complained that good poodle Canada had behaved well for master yet was targeted regardless. Volpe cried that Canada should receive special treatment from master:

“Canada is the most aligned strategic partner with the U.S. in defending our shared industry from subsidized Chinese automotive technology and oversupply. A true partner doesn’t just talk tough, we match and strengthen U.S. actions.

We’ve already put in place measures to block Chinese dumping of inexpensive EVs and key raw materials that match U.S. action, and we’ve tightened investment rules to protect our supply chains in ways Europe and Japan have not.”

Volpe also tried to make the case that, as the US desperately tries to break China’s dominance in the critical minerals industry, “Canada holds a strategic advantage that the U.S. cannot ignore: we have the critical minerals that American automakers need to free themselves from Chinese supply chains.”

Volpe is quite clear that Canada should be considered by the US as “a force multiplier in America’s fight to stay ahead of China”. In this vein, Volpe said:

“Our goal is simple: to use Canada’s mineral wealth, processing capacity, and manufacturing strength to help American manufacturing regain technological and industrial leadership in the global EV race.”

But Trump most certainly will give Canadian automotive industry mouthpieces like Volpe short shrift, as Trump said, in May, he wants to have automakers in the US produce vehicles fully in country:

“But over the next year, they’ve got to have the whole thing built in America. That’s what we want.”

And of course, Canada was also recently hit with a broad tariff of 35 per cent, up from 25 per cent, on non-United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (CUSMA) protected goods.

Furthermore, commentator Arnaud Bertrand caught a Fox News interview where US Treasury Scott Bessent said, in Bertrand’s description:

“the US will now treat US allies' wealth as an American ‘sovereign wealth fund’ (his words), ‘directing’ them, ‘largely at the [US] president's discretion’, how to use their money in order to build American factories and reshore American industries.”

No amount of NATO spending or obedience towards the US’ anti-China crusade will stop good poodle Canada from being shaken down by master. It’s clear however, that sustained resistance to Trump’s targeting of Canada will have to come from outside the political elite, who seem determined, despite other rhetoric, to go down with the US ship.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, an independent news outlet covering Canadian foreign policy with a strong focus on Canada-China relations. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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