Canada Renews China Trade Push

Canada’s finance minister will travel to China for a four-day visit, China’s Finance Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Following the Prime Minister’s visit, I am travelling to the People’s Republic of China to re-engage with counterparts, strengthen our economic relationship, and advance priorities on trade and investment, building on our existing [Canadian] $118.9B [US$85.7 billion] in two-way trade,” Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Champagne will be in China until Saturday.

The visit was part of Ottawa’s vision to build a more independent and resilient Canadian economy, through diversifying its trade partnerships, according to a Canadian government statement published on Monday.

Beijing’s statement specifically mentioned Champagne as the “Canadian Co-chair” of the Canada-China Economic and Financial Strategic Dialogue, which resumed in January following the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Beijing.

The strategic dialogue was launched in 2017 in Beijing by then-Vice-Premier Wang Yang and the visiting Canadian ministers – Bill Morneau, then finance minister, and Champagne, then international trade minister.

The first round of talks was held in November 2018 in Beijing, producing a series of agreements spanning investment, energy, agriculture, aerospace, tourism and financial services.

The mechanism was shelved almost immediately, as relations between the two countries collapsed following the arrest of Huawei Technologies’ executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver inDecember 2018.