It’s All About China, Stupid: The Real Reason the U.S. is Squeezing Canada
While the legacy media blames Trump, dairy, and steel, a top U.S. security expert reveals the chilling bipartisan truth: lock out Beijing, or lose access to the American economy forever.
It’s all about China, stupid.
Lately, the legacy media and the Laurentian elite have been throwing a collective temper tantrum over our increasingly tense relationship with the United States. They want you to believe this is a standard trade spat. They point fingers at dairy quotas, steel tariffs, and aluminum rates. They treat Donald Trump like an unpredictable cartoon character who woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to treat Canada like America’s 51st state.
But if you stop looking at the surface-level noise and look at the actual chess pieces moving across the board over the last decade—and specifically the last few years—all roads lead to Beijing. The Americans are deeply, fundamentally uncomfortable with the Chinese Communist Party’s creeping influence in North America. And frankly, they are sick of Canada playing footsie with our continent’s primary geopolitical adversary.
To cut through the Ottawa bubble, I sat down with an absolute heavyweight in global security diagnostics: Michael Lucci, the CEO and founder of State Armor and a governor-appointee to the Texas Advisory Committee on Geopolitics. As the CUSMA (USMCA) review talks pick up steam here this month, Michael laid out a chilling reality check that every Canadian—left, right, and centre—needs to hear.
The Art of the Divorce: Why Tariffs are Actually Security Weapons
The biggest mistake Canadian politicians make is assuming tariffs are just about economics. Michael shared a story from his time in Germany last year that perfectly illustrates the shift in American foreign policy.
Back in 2018, Donald Trump stood before the United Nations and explicitly warned Germany to stop buying Russian natural gas, telling them they were directly funding a future military invasion of Europe. The German delegation famously laughed at him on camera. Fast forward to today: the Germans aren’t laughing anymore. They admitted to Michael they got it wrong.
But here is the lesson the Americans learned from that embarrassment: If you want a Western ally to take national security seriously, you don’t ask nicely. You bring a tariff with you.
“What if Donald Trump had told Germany in 2018, ‘I’m hitting you with a 30% tariff, and if you want it to go away, stop buying Russian gas’? The Germans told me, ‘We would have stopped buying it immediately.’ That is the calculation driving America First foreign policy today.”
Under the America First Investment Policy memo, the rules are explicitly written: the U.S. will grant better trade terms and access to American technology based entirely on how a country aligns with them regarding China. For years, Canada has coasted along, spending barely 1% of its GDP on defense while Washington begged us to secure our perimeter. Now, the U.S. is done begging.
The Bipartisan Wall: The Midterm Myth Debunked
I want to speak directly to the left-leaning folks here, because you are being fed a dangerous coping mechanism via the CBC. The prevailing narrative in Ottawa is that Canada just needs to hunker down and survive until the U.S. midterms, hoping a Democratic wave will sweep away Trump’s aggressive trade policies.
Let me make this loud and clear: The Democrats are not coming to save us.
Michael reminded us that it was actually President Joe Biden’s Department of Commerce that drafted the sweeping rules banning Chinese auto software and hardware. Trump didn’t reverse those rules; he implemented them. There is a total, ironclad bipartisan consensus in Washington regarding the CCP threat.
Consider what’s happening right now behind the scenes:
The Section 301 Investigation: The U.S. currently has an active federal investigation into Canada where they’ve recently concluded that there is forced labour in our supply chain
The Democratic Auto Block: Democratic Senators, including the Senator from Michigan, are actively introducing legislation to block cars coming out of Canada. Why? Because Canadian auto supply chains are becoming so integrated with Chinese components that the U.S. views Canadian-made vehicles as rolling Chinese surveillance risks.
If you think a change in Congress changes this trajectory, you are dreaming. You aren’t negotiating a trade deal with Congress; you are negotiating with the White House. And if the absolute wildest conspiracy theories of the anti-Trump crowd came true and JD Vance took the reins, Canada would find itself dealing with someone even more hawkish on these security loopholes as Michael Lucci shared.
Mark Carney’s Dangerous Double Game
This brings us to the man of the hour, Mark Carney. It is highly ironic that a global leader so utterly obsessed with lecturing the world about “values” talks out of both sides of his mouth depending on his audience.
Last week in New York, Carney gave a speech tailored for American ears, claiming “Canada Strong can make America Great Again.” But just months earlier, Carney was openly talking about partnering with China in a “new world order.” When asked about the U.S.-condemned genocide in communist China, Carney completely ducked the question. Instead, he oversaw the creation of a new “strategic partnership” with Beijing.
The Americans see right through it. While the U.S. officially lists China as its number one adversary, Carney is bringing them into our shared backyard.
Even worse is the situation regarding domestic policing. It is now a matter of public record that the CCP operates illegal secret police stations—known as Operation Fox Hunt—to hunt down, harass, and repatriate Chinese dissidents living on Canadian soil. The RCMP and Canadian police explicitly objected to renewing agreements with Beijing’s security forces 3 years ago. Yet, Carney and the Liberals are shoving a renewed partnership down the throats of law enforcement anyway.
If Canada continues to signal that we are a safe haven for CCP espionage, the U.S. will cut us off. Period.
Industrial Decoupling and the “Dual-Use” Threat
Let’s look at the raw mathematical leverage the Americans hold over us.
China accounts for a pathetic 3.8% of Canadian exports. They are a rounding error.
The United States accounts for 65% to 80% of Canadian exports.
To make matters worse, look at how fast the U.S. is successfully divorcing China. In Biden’s last year, the U.S. imported $440 billion from China. In Trump’s first year back, that plummeted to $310 billion. Right now in 2026, the U.S. is on pace to drop that to $245 billion. Relative to economic size, America’s trade with China is a fraction of Canada’s, which sits at a massive $66 billion USD.
Michael’s warning to Canada was blunt: If we do not align on security, the U.S. should—and will—completely sever our shared industrial supply chains, particularly in the automotive sector.
Why? Because of a concept called dual-use. In times of peace, an auto plant builds commuter cars. In times of global conflict, those exact same factories are converted overnight to build bombers, tanks, and light tactical vehicles. If Washington cannot verify whose side Canada is on structurally, they cannot risk keeping their military-industrial apparatus intertwined with ours. They will keep buying Alberta oil and potash because it makes geopolitical sense, but the manufacturing partnership will die.
The Endangered Species List
If you want to know how serious the U.S. is about protecting its continental perimeter, look at how Trump is systematically targeting what Lucci calls China’s “axis of troublemakers” in our hemisphere.
Look at the timeline: Late last year, China conducted provocative practice invasions surrounding Taiwan. Exactly three days later, a Chinese delegation landed in Caracas, Venezuela, to meet with Maduro. They woke up the next morning to the sound of America’s Delta Force removing Maduro from power.
From dismantling Chinese intelligence installations in Cuba to forcing the removal of Chinese port cranes in the Panama Canal, the message from Washington is unmistakable:
“If you want to get yourself on the endangered species list, declare yourself to be an ally of Xi Jinping anywhere near the United States military.”
The Subnational Infiltration
Michael’s organization, State Armor, doesn’t wait for Washington to act. They work state-by-state, getting Chinese spies out of state houses and securing local water utilities from CCP hackers.
This is the exact blueprint Canada’s provinces need to adopt. Beijing has a specific, documented strategy of subnational infiltration. If Ottawa is too compromised or too slow to protect the country, leaders like Premier Doug Ford or the leadership in British Columbia need to stand up at the provincial level to harden our local infrastructure and supply chains.
The baseline reality is simple: the Americans want a trade deal with Canada. They want a “Fortress North America” that can stand independently against the rest of the world. But you cannot bring the Chinese Communist Party into our shared backyard and expect the neighbours not to lock the gate.
It’s time for Canada to grow up, pick a side, and if they don’t; expect the Summer of Love to pick up in intensity.