With the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Trump administration has delivered a comprehensive articulation of how it sees America’s core interests, what it expects from allies, and how it plans to compete in a world defined by great-power rivalry and economic insecurity. Whatever one thinks of its ideological framing or tone, the document is strategically significant. For the first time, we have a clear statement of second-term Trump priorities and an account of how Washington understands China, the Indo-Pacific, and even its own neighbourhood.
For Canada, the implications are profound. Our relationship with China—and our ability to operate with a degree of autonomy in the Indo-Pacific—will increasingly be shaped by how the United States defines the strategic map. And this strategy defines it in strikingly zero-sum terms: a return to spheres of influence, a renewed focus on balance of power, and an unapologetic assertion of U.S. primacy in the Western Hemisphere alongside intensified economic competition with China in the Indo-Pacific.
A strategy of interests, not ideology
One of the most striking elements of the NSS is its explicit rejection of the ideological framing that has characterized earlier eras of American foreign policy. The document goes to great lengths to emphasize non-intervention, sovereign equality of states, and “flexible realism.” Gone is any reference to democracy promotion or the defence of human rights abroad. Instead, the U.S. will press like-minded allies to “protect core rights and liberties” as defined by the MAGA movement, while signalling that it will pursue co-operative relationships with non-democracies without expectations of internal reform. In effect, the NSS draws a distinction between those expected to align with America’s cultural and political vision and those with whom Washington will engage transactionally.
Gone is any reference to democracy promotion or the defence of human rights abroad. For Canada, this tension matters.
It suggests a future in which the United States may ask Ottawa to take harder positions on civil liberties and “democratic backsliding” in Europe, as understood by the MAGA movement, while simultaneously expecting more interest-based alignment on China—particularly in domains tied to economic security, technology, and export controls. This asymmetry creates new complexities for Canadian policymakers accustomed to a more values-driven transatlantic agenda and a co-ordinated “Western” approach to China.
Five core interests, two regions that matter most
The NSS defines five “core interests” that will guide U.S. action and sets clear regional priorities. Two of them—focused on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific—carry immediate consequences for Canada’s evolving China policy and engagement with the Indo-Pacific.
The strategy declares that the United States will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine” and deny non-hemispheric powers access to key assets or influence in the Western Hemisphere. It describes a “Trump Corollary” under which the U.S. will not only discourage outside military presence but also seek to limit foreign ownership or control of “strategically vital assets” across the region.
To that end, the NSS tasks the National Security Council with launching a “robust interagency process,” supported by the intelligence community, to identify “strategic points and resources in the Western Hemisphere” with an eye to their protection, and “joint development with regional partners.” Non-hemispheric competitors—China first among them—are portrayed as having made “major inroads” designed both to disadvantage the U.S. economically and to pose future strategic risks. Allowing these incursions “without serious pushback” is described as a major strategic error of recent decades.
The corrective is blunt: the United States “must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity.” The terms of alliances and aid will, according to the strategy, be contingent on partners “winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”
This is not subtle, and it is not abstract.
The corrective is blunt: the United States “must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity.”
For Canada, the Western Hemisphere framing is impossible to sidestep. It signals intensified expectations that Canada limit Chinese access and influence, a narrowing of policy space for selective engagement with China, and a shift from persuasion to pressure—with reliance on the U.S. now explicitly linked to diminished autonomy. The NSS makes clear that U.S. efforts to “secure the hemisphere” will be a strategic priority, and Canada—by geography and economic reality—sits at the centre of that project.
The Indo-Pacific: Win the economic competition, prevent the conflict
The NSS portrays the Indo-Pacific as the central economic and geopolitical theatre of the 21st century. Its two overriding goals are clear: win the economic competition with China, especially in technology, standards, and supply chains; and prevent a war in Asia, particularly around Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
In this context, allies—including Canada—are expected to align with Washington’s economic statecraft. The strategy calls for partners to adopt trade and industrial policies that help “rebalance” China’s economy toward domestic consumption, counter industrial overcapacity, and strengthen export-control co-ordination.
This goes beyond general expectations of co-operation. The NSS positions economic policy as a collective strategy among allies to shape the global environment in ways that constrain Beijing’s industrial and technological trajectory.
For Canada, this intersects directly with ongoing debates about China-exposure in critical supply chains, the role of Canadian critical minerals in allied strategies, and how to balance China-adjacent commercial opportunities with broader economic-security concerns.
The return of spheres of influence—and why it matters for Canada
Perhaps the central conceptual message in the NSS is its unapologetic endorsement of spheres-of-influence logic. For Canada, the implications are threefold.
Canada shares a continent with the world’s dominant power at precisely the moment that power is reasserting a hemispheric sphere of influence. Even areas of existing co-operation with China—climate, public health, agri-food—will increasingly be assessed through a lens of U.S. expectations about limiting non-Hemispheric influence. Canada’s China engagement will no longer be judged solely on bilateral dynamics but also on how it intersects with U.S. goals for regional security and control.
The NSS presents China not as an ideological competitor but as an economic and technological one. That framing aligns with how many in Canada view China, but Washington’s sense of urgency is more acute. The emphasis on reshoring, reindustrialization, and securing access to critical minerals all carry direct implications for Canada: investment screening and research security will attract heightened scrutiny; supply-chain diversification away from China will be tied to hemispheric strategy; and co-ordination with U.S. export controls will become increasingly necessary. The NSS effectively narrows the margins for Canadian divergence.
The NSS presents China not as an ideological competitor but as an economic and technological one.
The NSS also underscores that allies must help build the economic and technological foundations of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” For Canada, this elevates the importance of partnerships with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, India, and key ASEAN economies. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy has already expanded our presence, networks, and visibility. Under the NSS, however, this regional agenda becomes tied to broader questions of allied coherence in dealing with China. Areas such as critical minerals, maritime domain awareness, cyber co-operation, and trade diversification take on new strategic weight—not as bilateral initiatives, but as contributions to a larger collective posture.
A smaller comfort zone, a larger strategic horizon
The 2025 National Security Strategy is not a document Canada can ignore. It reshapes U.S. expectations of allies, reframes global economic competition, and redefines hemispheric security in ways that will constrain Canada’s policy space with China. But it also clarifies the strategic environment in which Canada must operate. The United States is now explicit about the hierarchy it expects in allied decision-making: hemispheric security and co-ordinated economic statecraft take precedence over national discretion, particularly when it comes to China. For Canada, this means that stabilizing relations with Beijing—already a complex undertaking—will unfold within a much narrower field of manoeuvre. The desire to maintain selective engagement with China will increasingly intersect with U.S. pressure to reduce exposure, align on export controls, and support broader economic strategies designed to shape China’s behaviour.
In this context, the quality of Canadian statecraft becomes central. Ottawa will need to understand not only the structural pressures of U.S.–China rivalry, but also the tradeoffs embedded in managing two critical relationships simultaneously. Efforts to preserve space for co-operation with China will have to be balanced against a U.S. approach that views the hemisphere through a security lens and the Indo-Pacific through an economic-security one. The NSS underscores that Canada cannot assume previous degrees of flexibility in navigating these parallel tracks. Instead, Canada will need to approach its China engagement with a clear-eyed recognition of how closely it is now interwoven with Washington’s strategic priorities, and how deviations—whether real or perceived—are likely to be interpreted.
The Trump doctrine signals a smaller comfort zone—but it also forces a larger strategic horizon. Canada’s challenge will be to understand this new landscape, anticipate where pressures will emerge, and navigate with realism rather than drift.
