In the News

What Carney’s China Trip Really Signalled

Policy Magazine , January 17, 2026

Guest Contributor: Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: "Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China will stand as one of the most consequential moments in Canada’s foreign policy. It not only reframed Canada’s relationship with China but also signalled a fundamentally new approach to how Ottawa intends to navigate a more fragmented, contested and uncertain world.

On the bilateral front, the trip produced three tangible outcomes: a new strategic partnership framework, a roadmap for economic and trade cooperation, and provisional progress on two of the most politically sensitive trade files in the relationship—electric vehicles and canola."

Carney’s China embrace widens gap with U.S. in Trump’s tariff era

Japan Times, January 18, 2026

Featuring Jeff Nankivell, President & CEO, APF Canada

Excerpt:  Carney’s step is a banker’s hedge — a "backing off,” said  Nankivell.

"It’s fair to assume that the task for the Canadian negotiators was to see what’s the minimum concession we can make on the EV tariffs that would be enough to get the Chinese side to agree to significant reductions on their tariffs,” he said. "This is that deal.”

"The first job of a national leader, and especially in times of economic duress, is to keep the country’s options open,” added Nankivell.
 

CBC News Network speaks to Vina Nadjibulla on Canada's renewed partnership with China

CBC News Network, January 17, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: "Prime Minister Carney has taken a really bold move. He's repositioned our relationship with China, has fully recalibrated, and has announced it's a new strategic partnership."

"We've spent a lot of time unpacking the preliminary and provisional deal on EVs and tariffs, and I'm stressing that that is the title of that deal, preliminary and provisional. But we should really be also looking at the broader strategic framework.... which is a big, big signal of the fact that in this new world order, this emerging post-America-dominated order, Canada will now be seeking to distance itself, to have strategic relationships with countries like China, with whom in the past we would have been reticent to call our relationship strategic, given our full alignment with the U.S. and with the Western bloc." 

"[It] comes with risks of strategic dependence on a country that uses . . . economic engagement for political purposes.... So then what can we do about that? Because we can't also not deal with China because in this new moment of the U.S. becoming unreliable... Therefore, we have to pursue strategic, smart engagement that works in some sectors like energy."

Mark Carney in China positions Canada for ‘the world as it is, not as we wish it’

The Guardian, January 17, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: [W]ith all eyes on how the leaders might frame the deal, Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said the joint statement was the biggest surprise of the summit.

“It is perhaps the most significant achievement, outlining this new strategic partnership between China and Canada,” she said. “And it’s a bold move by Carney to position Canada in this new and evolving geopolitical order, with the hopes of charting a path that leads to more strategic autonomy and agency. He also seems to recognize there are limits to what can be done with China.”

Xi and Carney signal thaw as Canada opens door to Chinese EVs

Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla observed: "Forging a 'new strategic partnership' with China was a bold and risky move on the part of Prime Minister Carney. President Trump's reaction signals that for now at least Carney's bet was the correct one."

Still, other risks remain, she said. "Deeper engagement with China brings the potential for strategic dependence, political pressure and national security challenges." Canada has long benefited from strong economic ties with the U.S.... on the other hand, its ties with China have been rocky, particularly after the 2018 detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada and the subsequent jailing of two Canadians on espionage charges.

Deal Allows 49K Chinese EVs into Canada While China will Trim or Remove Some Tariffs

CBC Power and Politics, January 16, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada 

Excerpt: Nadjibulla says the newly announced trade deal with China signals a "consequential day for Canada-China relations . . . we were talking about how this is going to be a diplomatic tightrope for the Prime Minister. Well, it looks like he has successfully navigated it and has taken some really bold and risky moves."

However, she add that discussion on the "potential economic opportunities coming" should also be tempered with understanding the "serious risks, both in terms of our engagement with China... [and] with the U.S. in terms of how this will play out . . . [O]n balance, I think we should really see this as a fundamental reframing of how Canada will be approaching its relationship, not just with China, but actually more generally."

“This is not a free trade agreement or any kind of trade agreement as we understood before, and this is not even a strategic partnership like we had understood before... this is something new and different, and there needs to be a lot of explaining of how exactly this will serve our interest.”

(Segment begins at 1:17:40 mark) 

Canada Allowing 49K EVs in Exchange for Reduced Tariffs

CTV Power Play, January 16, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: "This was a huge move on the geopolitical chessboard by Prime Minister Carney. A bold one, a daring one, and not just the deal on EVs and tariffs, but the announcement of this new strategic partnership with China, which obviously will bring with it some economic opportunities, especially in the energy sector as well as agriculture. 

"But it also carries with it risks, risks that are inherent in engaging with China, but also risks in our discussions with the US. We will see where that pays off, but I think it's a reflection of just the kind of geopolitical turmoil that we're living through that Prime Minister Carney essentially made an assessment that the risk is worth taking for now, that it can be managed. We will see whether that gamble pays off."

Carney's Canada-China deals are the product of months of diplomatic hustle

The Canadian Press, January 16, 2026

Featuring: Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt:The agreements Prime Minister Mark Carney brokered over the two days of his Beijing visit are the result of months of diplomatic work and cultural knowledge, international relations experts say.

The world as it is

Canada's National Observer, January 16, 2026

Featuring: Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to China has illuminated the extraordinary shift in geopolitics Canada is adapting to in real time — a shift Carney alluded to in the press conference he gave at the end of his day-long meeting with President Xi Jinping: “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

“The order that we all were enjoying existed in a large part because of U.S. power being deployed to underwrite it,” said Vina Nadjibulla in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. “That is now unravelling. What's coming in its place is unclear. It's being shaped as we speak.”

This was the not-so-subtle subtext of Carney’s China visit. Until now, said Nadjibulla, the benign protection of the United States spared Canada from having to pursue the kind of realpolitik that neighbours of powerful dictatorships have had to pursue. “We never really had the imperative to genuinely work with countries with whom we have serious disagreements,” she said. 

Canada Cozies Up to China As Trump Turns Up the Heat

Bloomberg TV, January 16, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla emphasizes that PM Carney is looking to engage "selectively" on his visit to China, "that's why the focus very much is around laying the foundations for a new strategic partnership on economic and trade relations."

She says those specific areas are "Canada's objectives," but it is easier said than done, “because when you become more economically dependent on China... China then wants to have more political leverage [and] wants political compliance on issues it considers its core, for instance, like Taiwan and the South China Sea... how to implement that will be a big challenge."

Carney Reaches 'Landmark' Tariff-Quota Deal with China

CTV News, January 16, 2026

Featuring Jeff Nankivell, President & CEO, APF Canada

Excerpt:  "I think we can say that the Prime Minister and his team did a very successful job of expectation management and have exceeded not only the low expectations that they were deliberately setting the last few days, but I think they've exceeded just about everyone's expectations in terms of how far they were able to go." 

"They got a deal on tariffs that provides relief for some, not all, of the agricultural products affected, but the really big ones. And in turn, they've reached an agreement on electric vehicle tariffs that is very modest in scope to start with . . . but it offers the possibility of new types of investment relationships there."

"It's really a recalibration of the overall relationship . . . it does restore Canada to a normal kind of relationship of the type that every other Western country has right now with China, every major Western country."

Mark Carney is on a mission to trade with the world

The Economist, January 15, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: “The {U.S.'s] National Security Strategy crystallises how difficult it will be for Canada to pursue an independent foreign policy with China,” says Vina Nadjibulla.

 “Everything Canada does will be scrutinised in Washington.”

‘Beginning of a process’: Think-tank breaks down Canada-China trade meetings

650 CKOM, January 15, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla says the recently announced MOUs between Canada and China are a sign of early and promising progress. 

“What this trip has really been about is opening up opportunities and setting the political conditions for deeper economic relations in some sectors, resolving issues like tariffs on canola."

“At the same time, (they’re) still acknowledging that there are difficult issues and that there will be some issues on which there will be no engagement, like around AI or around defence-related technologies.”

6 economic areas Canada and China have agreed to expand — and one big holdout

The Canadian Press, January 15, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: The Canada-China agreements released on Jan 15 aimed at boosting bilateral trade and investment signal to Nadjibulla that "there is a desire to basically revitalize (and) restart a whole bunch of institutional mechanisms that have gone dormant over the past decade because of the strain in the relationship... All of that can be derailed if the political environment changes.”

Canadian Leader Spurned by Trump Finds a Warm Embrace in China

The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla describes the 'spheres of influence' paradigm being adopted by the current U.S. Trump Administration as “reshap[ing] U.S. expectations of allies, refram[ing] global economic competition, and redefin[ing] hemispheric security in ways that will constrain Canada’s policy space with China."

Polling data from APF Canada in collaboration with the Angus Reid Institute indicates Canadians view the Chinese government with skepticism. Only 28% of Canadians have a positive view of China, versus 59% who view the country unfavourably. Canadians would rather see Ottawa deepen economic ties with Europe and Mexico over China.

Canada’s Mark Carney seeks reset on pivotal trip to China

Al Jazeera, January 15, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Against the backdrop of diplomatic tensions with China, Carney’s visit “marks a recalibration and change in tone and signals Canada’s desire to improve relations,” said Nadjibulla.

“This is probably Prime Minister Carney’s second-most challenging trip after his first visit to the White House...the Prime Minister is being pragmatic, and his trip will focus on specific economic deals – selling Canadian energy and agriculture products,” Nadjibulla added, noting that she did not expect to see the full lifting of tariffs between the sides.

Will Carney's visit to Beijing reset Canada-China relations after turbulent decade?

Global News, January 14, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla says the diplomatic freeze between Canada and China that started in 2017 was the "lowest period in the relationship and since then, even though there has been some improvement on the political level, when it comes to public opinion, there is still limited trust" from Canadians on co-operation with China.

"Since [Canada's] difficulties with the Trump Administration started about a year ago, we are seeing that attitudes towards China are changing," adds Nadjibulla. "Economic relations will definitely be front and centre" during this meeting, and issues on human rights will likely only be addressed "in private."

Canadian PM's China oil pitch risks blunting Trump's Venezuela strategy

Nikkei Asia, January 14, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: Nadjibulla says the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline – a key link between Alberta's oilsands and Pacific ports – gives Canada a rare opportunity to increase shipments to Asia.

"It could potentially be mutually beneficial," she said, noting that China is also seeking new suppliers.

Carney heads to Beijing to talk trade after years of diplomatic strain with China

CBC News, January 14, 2026

Featuring Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President, Research & Strategy, APF Canada

Excerpt: "We're not going to see an immediate resolution. But we likely will see some progress or some signals in terms of where they're heading," said Nadjibulla.

Nadjibulla calls Carney's visit a milestone in Canada-China relations and a big test. The prime minister has to strategically decide what deals he's willing to make and how to manage the risks, she said.

Canada could explore the "European route," she said, and impose a variety of tariffs on specific EVs manufactured in China.

Canada, China should eye a fresh start

China Daily, January 14, 2026

Guest Contributor:  Hugh Stephens, Distinguished Fellow, APF Canada

Excerpt: "What the Carney visit can do is to reset Canada-China relations in areas where there is scope for co-operation while reserving more difficult areas for further work. Where there are irreconcilable differences, the two sides will have to agree to disagree."

"There is plenty of room to find common ground within the bilateral trade agenda, including energy, dealing with common global issues such as climate change, and exploring ways to relieve the current tariff standoff," wrote Stephens.