Category World News

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has arrived in China for a visit that comes at a pivotal moment in relations between the two countries.

Carney, the first Canadian leader to visit China since 2017, is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Qiang.

Relations between Canada and China plunged into a deep freeze after Canadian authorities arrested a key official of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei as she was transitioning through the Vancouver international airport in December 2018.

China retaliated against the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, which was carried out at the request of authorities in the United States, by detaining two Canadians.

Relations have continued to face challenges.

In 2024, Ottawa, following a line set by Washington, slapped Chinese electric vehicles with 100 percent tariffs, prompting Beijing to impose tariffs on certain Canadian agricultural goods, including canola.

Ottawa has also accused China of political interference.

Against that backdrop, Carney’s visit “marks a recalibration and change in tone and signals Canada’s desire to improve relations”, said Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

“This is probably Prime Minister Carney’s second-most challenging trip after his first visit to the White House,” Nadjibulla told Al Jazeera.

Carney is keen to diversify the Canadian economy and reduce its dependence on the US, the destination for nearly 80 percent of Canadian exports.

While Canada has historically been among the US’s closest allies, the relationship has gone south since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Trump has slapped Canada with a 35 percent across-the-board tariff and separate duties on steel, aluminium and lumber, while repeatedly threatening to make the country the 51st US state.

Carney has travelled extensively, including to the European Union and the Gulf – he heads to Qatar after Beijing – to find new markets and investors for the economy. The Canadian leader has said he wants to double Canada’s non-US trade in the next decade.

In a first step towards a thaw with China, Carney met Xi in South Korea during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in October.

“The Prime Minister is being pragmatic, and his trip will focus on specific economic deals – selling Canadian energy and agriculture products,” Nadjibulla said, adding that she did not expect to see the full lifting of tariffs between the sides.

The trip, as a review of the trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada, is under way. The USMCA has allowed Canadian and Mexican goods that are covered under the agreement to enter the US tariff-free.

In Canada’s case, that means about 86 percent of US imports from Canada and Mexico are compliant, making the effective tariff rate on Canadian goods about 6 percent, Tony Stillo, director of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, said in a note on Wednesday.

While Canada clearly would benefit from USMCA continuing, Trump, as recently as Tuesday, said the trade agreement was “irrelevant” to the US.

But if an agreement to extend or modify the USMCA is not reached, it will enter a period of mandatory annual reviews until 2036, after which it would expire, resulting in a “prolonged period of trade policy uncertainty”, Stillo said.

“If the North American trade agreement eventually disintegrates, the three parties could return to bilateral trade agreements to maintain market access to one another, but this would impose costs on North American trade and investments.”

‘Political and narrative win’

While Carney is keenly aware of the stakes, the visit holds significance for China, too.

Beijing is not only on the lookout for new export markets and the removal of trade restrictions, such as the electric vehicle tariff, but a “political and narrative win” as well, Nadjibulla said.

China has often criticised Canada for following the US too closely and will portray Carney’s visit, and any policy changes that may follow, as Ottawa “trying to correct mistakes of the past,” she said.

Beijing’s ultimate hope would be compliance from Canada on sensitive issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Earlier this week, two Canadian MPs from Carney’s Liberal Party wrapped up a visit to self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory, ahead of schedule on the advice of the government.

The lawmakers cited the need to avoid “confusion” in Canada’s foreign policy ahead of Carney’s visit.

United States Vice President JD Vance has cast the tie-breaking vote to defeat a war powers resolution that would have forced President Donald Trump to seek Congress’s approval before taking any further military action in Venezuela.

The Senate’s session on Wednesday evening came to a nail-biting conclusion, as the fate of the resolution ended up resting on the shoulders of two Republican politicians.

Senators Todd Young of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri had voted last week, as part of a group of five breakaway Republicans, to put the resolution to a full Senate vote. With unanimous support from Democrats, the measure advanced with 52 votes in favour, 47 against.

But supporters of the resolution could only afford to lose one vote in order to secure the bill’s passage. By Wednesday, it had lost two: both Young and Hawley.

The final vote was evenly split, 50 to 50, allowing Vance to act as tie-breaker and defeat the resolution.

Hawley signalled early in the day that he had decided to withdraw his support. But Young was a wild card until shortly before the final vote took place.

“After numerous conversations with senior national security officials, I have received assurances that there are no American troops in Venezuela,” Young wrote on social media.

“I’ve also received a commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization of force.”

Young also shared a letter, dated Wednesday, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, offering lukewarm assurances that Congress would be notified ahead of any future military action in Venezuela.

“Should the President determine that he needs to introduce US Armed Forces into hostilities in major military operation in Venezuela, he would seek congressional authorizations in advance (circumstances permitting),” Rubio wrote.

Legal questions about the Venezuela attack

The latest war powers resolution arrived in response to a surprise announcement on January 3 that Trump had launched military action to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Explosions were reported in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and nearby military bases, and Trump appeared in a broadcast hours later to announce that the US had abducted Maduro and transported him to the US to face criminal trial.

Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was also captured as part of the operation.

Two US service members were injured in the attack, and as many as 80 people in Venezuela were killed, including Cuban security personnel involved in guarding Maduro.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said in his speech announcing the attack.

He and Rubio then fielded questions about whether Congress had been notified about the operation. They acknowledged they did not notify lawmakers in advance.

“This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” Rubio said. “It was a trigger-based mission.”

Trump, meanwhile, argued that congressional notification had been a liability to the mission’s security. “Congress will leak, and we don’t want leakers,” he said.

Normally, the US Constitution divides up military authority between the legislative and executive branches. While the president is considered the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, only Congress has the power to declare war and authorise military action.

But that division of power has become gradually eroded, as the executive branch has exercised greater authority over the military.

In recent decades, presidents have often justified unilateral military action by referring to authorisations of military force (AUMFs) approved by Congress in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

But military action in Venezuela falls outside of the purview of those authorisations, raising questions about the legal justification for the January attack.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice published a 22-page memo it originally wrote in December to justify the forthcoming attack. That memo argued that, since Maduro’s abduction was an act of “law enforcement”, it fell short of the legal threshold that would have required congressional approval.

In addition, the document asserted that, since the planned military operation was not expected to trigger a war, it also landed outside of Congress’s powers.

“The law does not permit the President to order troops into Venezuela without congressional authorization if he knows it will result in a war,” the memo explained. “As of December 22, 2025, we have not received facts indicating it will.”

A Republican breakaway

But not every Republican agreed with that explanation, and several sought to claw back Congress’s power to oversee US military action.

They included senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine, all seen as pivotal swing votes in Congress’s upper chamber.

Young and Hawley joined the three rogue Republicans for an initial vote to advance the war powers resolution on January 8. But afterwards, all five came under acute pressure to switch sides and rejoin the Republican caucus for the final vote.

President Trump, in particular, denounced the five Republicans on his social media platform Truth Social.

“Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America,” he wrote in a post.

“This Vote greatly hampers American Self Defense and National Security, impeding the President’s Authority as Commander in Chief.”

Reports emerged that Trump even called some of the senators in advance of Wednesday’s vote, in an effort to gain their support. But the publication The Hill indicated that Trump’s conversation with Collins devolved into a “profanity-laced rant”.

Paul, another Republican who has courted Trump’s ire, was among the senators to speak before Wednesday’s final vote.

He defended his decision to back the war powers resolution, calling his vote a necessary act to uphold the Constitution’s separation of powers.

“This isn’t really and shouldn’t be Republican versus Democrat. This should be legislative prerogative versus presidential prerogative, and it should be about the Constitution,” Paul said.

“The Constitution — specifically, thoughtfully — vested the power of initiating war and declaring war to Congress,” he added.

“The spectrum of our founding fathers concluded they didn’t want the president to have this power.”

Risking Trump’s ire comes at a higher cost for some Republicans than others. Of the three Republicans who joined Democrats on Wednesday to vote for the war powers resolution, only one is up for re-election this year in the US midterm races: Collins.

United States news agencies and press freedom groups have expressed concern after federal agents raided the home of a reporter for The Washington Post as part of a probe into the handling of classified material.

Wednesday’s raid focused on the residence of journalist Hannah Natanson, who has led the Post’s coverage of efforts under President Donald Trump to slash the federal workforce.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized her work and personal laptops, as well as other electronics like her phone and a Garmin watch.

“According to the government warrant, the raid was in connection with an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. We are told Hannah, and the Post, are not a target,” said Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray.

“Nonetheless, this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”

Free press organisations echoed the Post’s concerns, arguing that the raid fit into a pattern of escalating pressure on journalists who report on information the government does not want made public.

Trump has frequently attacked the news media and threatened those he deems too critical with lawsuits and investigations.

Still, it is unusual for law enforcement to seize materials from a journalist, given the broad press freedom protections established under the US Constitution. Advocates warned that Wednesday’s actions could dampen any efforts journalists may take to report on whistleblower complaints.

According to the Post, the search warrant was part of an investigation into leaks of classified materials, another one of Trump’s pet peeves.

Prosecutors allege that a contractor named Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system engineer and information technology specialist, took screenshots of intelligence reports and printed them while working for a government contractor in Maryland.

Investigators also say they found classified documents in a lunchbox while searching his car and basement earlier this month.

The Trump administration accused Perez-Lugones of contacting Natanson to leak the information and said the search of her home came at the request of the Department of Defense.

“The Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post.

She added that “the leaker” – an apparent reference to Perez-Lugones – had been arrested.

“The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country,” she said.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also weighed in, writing online that Trump had “zero tolerance” for leaks and would “aggressively crack down” on them.

But press advocates argue that working with whistleblowers is an essential component of reporting on secretive government agencies, especially in areas such as national security.

Raids like the one conducted at Natanson’s residence risk violating the understanding of anonymity that journalists build with their sources, particularly those in sensitive government positions.

Natanson had extensively covered the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce and push for nonpartisan employees to align with his political agenda.

She has also reported on recent US actions in Venezuela, which culminated with the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro on January 3.

Groups like Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) were among those to speak out against the search warrant.

“This raid should disturb all Americans. The United States is at a critical juncture as the Trump administration continues to roll back civil liberties,” said Katherine Jacobsen, coordinator for the US, Canada and the Caribbean at the CPJ.

“Using the FBI – funded by American taxpayers – to seize a reporter’s electronic devices, including her official work laptop, is a blatant violation of journalistic protections and undermines the public’s right to know.”