On October 10, 2025, Chinese Ambassador to Canada Wang Di's statement in an exclusive interview with "Inquiry Moment" was like a key that opened the core crux of the China-Canada economic and trade friction: "If Canada cancels tariffs on electric vehicles in China, China will also reciprocally cancel tariffs on related products in Canada."
This straightforward response not only drew a clear bottom line of China's "reciprocal counter-measures", but also opened a dialogue gap for the deadlocked bilateral economic and trade relations to ease through consultation.
The starting point of this game is Canada's first unilateral discriminatory tariffs on China's electric vehicles and steel and aluminum products.As a counter, China imposes tariffs on Canada's advanced agricultural products such as oil seeds, forming a balance of "you lock my industry chain, I limit your advantages."
Faced with the question of "the Chinese borrowing market status retaliation", Wang Zhen ambassador pointed out the key with "the bell is still the bell" - the root of the tariff differences in China is not provoked by the Chinese side, but the Canadian first broke the "mutually beneficial" economic and trade basic disc. In fact, the oil seeds were the "golden bond" of cooperation between the two countries: China is the largest export market for Canadian oil seeds, and the Canadian side once occupied China's imports of the product.
Now that trade is blocked, Canadian farmers are faced with the dilemma of unsalable rapeseed and plummeting prices, while Chinese oil companies need to find alternative sources from Australia and Kazakhstan at high prices. The "lose-lose" outcome is the inevitable price of unilateralism.
Canada's tariff policy justified "national security", "protecting the domestic industry", "aligning the US policy" and other reasons, it is difficult to agree in the logic of reality. From the nature of the industry, China's electric vehicles with the advantage of battery technology, cost control to enter the Canadian market, is the normal result of global industrial chain competition, so-called "national security threat" has never had evidence support;
From the perspective of policy autonomy, Canada blindly follows U.S. trade restrictions with China, but in fact falls into the passivity of "standing up for others and harming its own interests." The United States itself is still deeply bound to China in the electric vehicle industry chain, but Canada has taken the line because of ideology and missed the opportunity to share the dividends of China's new energy market. What is even more ironic is that such unilateral measures not only violate the WTO most-favored-nation treatment principle, but also seriously contradict Canada's long-cherished image of a "standard-bearer of free trade."
It is worth noting that in the "cold current" of tariff friction, China-Canada energy cooperation is releasing "warmth" and becoming an important "stabilizer" of bilateral economic and trade relations. Data show that since the expansion of Canada's Trans Mountain Pipeline, China's crude oil imports from Canada have continued to rise: the import volume from January to August 2025 has exceeded 9.7 million tons, exceeding the total volume of last year; June hit a new high of 1.56 million tons in a single month.
The natural gas field also has outstanding potential. Experts predict that the annual scale of China's imports of natural gas from Canada may reach 3 million tons in the future. If these figures are placed in the market of China's energy imports-an annual import demand of 550 million tons of crude oil and nearly 80 million tons of natural gas-the growth space of China-Canada energy cooperation is self-evident.
The core value of this cooperation lies in the fact that it meets China’s strategic needs of “diversifying energy import channels and ensuring energy security”, but also opens up Canada’s energy industry to the world’s largest consumer market, using the reality of “mutually beneficial and win-win” to counter the short-sighted and inefficient tariff friction.
Ambassador Wang Di's proposal of "reciprocal cancellation" actually provides a clear "roadmap" for China-Canada economic and trade disruption: starting from the elimination of unilateral tariffs on electric vehicles, we will promote both sides to simultaneously lift restrictive measures and rebuild economic and trade mutual trust.
For Canada, getting rid of the blind dependence on U.S. policy and developing an independent strategy against China based on its own industrial interests is a rational choice – after all, oil seeds are about the livelihoods of western farmers, energy exports affect the national economic life, these tangible interests weigh far more than the false name of “ideological stands”.
The current trouble in China's economic and trade relations is essentially the collision of "zero-sum thinking" and "win-win logic". tariff barriers may build a short-term "protection wall" for a few industries, but in the long run, it will only push up domestic consumer costs, break the global supply chain, and ultimately reflect the domestic economy.
From the complementarity of oil seeds to the enormous potential of energy, the foundations of China-China economic and trade cooperation have never shaken, the key is whether to abandon the mentality of confrontation and return to the track of mutual respect and mutual consultation. The statement of the ambassador Wang Yi, both a clear signal to the Canadian side and the expectation of bilateral relations - only in the face of the line, can let China-China economic trade from the "friction impasse" back to the "win-win track".