00:00Shortly after Canada's Liberal Party scored a stunning comeback victory in last week's elections,
00:06Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House later today.
00:12This also comes as China says it is open to improving ties with Canada.
00:17Associate Professor Syed Han from Wayne State University weighs in on whether this could mark a turning point for softer diplomacy.
00:25Well, I think that when it comes to Canada, there is going to be a distinction here.
00:31Usually what happens is one country will alternate between using the proverbial carrot and the proverbial stick.
00:38But now what we find is that China seems perfectly willing to use the carrot,
00:45while the United States seems to be much more interested, at least with President Trump, in using the stick.
00:51Will, with the election of Prime Minister Carney, serve as a moment for negotiation?
01:00Will there be a softening of the rhetoric?
01:03After all, here you have two countries which have been long-standing allies sharing the longest contiguous border
01:11of any two countries in the world, one that is a very peaceful and a very productive relationship.
01:18But the realities now with geopolitics are that if the economics fit, and particularly for a country as vast and as versatile as Canada,
01:28when it comes to its natural resources, its raw materials, certainly things that China would crave without the kind of static,
01:38the tension or the nuisance that is coming out of Washington, it seems as though they definitely have the upper hand.
01:45One thing that China certainly enjoys is having farmland with resources for whatever food supplies it needs.
01:58It has said very recently that it can be completely self-sufficient.
02:02It does not have to rely on American imports at all.
02:05But certainly it would benefit from Canadian imports to its country.
02:12If it is able to go ahead and secure that, knowing that, of course, there's quite a bit of Chinese entrepreneurship in Canada,
02:21especially some of its major cities like Vancouver and Toronto,
02:24that provides a little bit of an edge for Beijing with which to operate.
02:30And if that is the case, we may see a shift.
02:34It depends on how massive that shift is and how much of that shift may be irreversible
02:40when it comes to American efforts, either by Trump or his successors,
02:44to salvage the relationship between Ottawa and Washington.
02:47It depends on how massive of it does, the CHEWW,
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