Canada shows how Trump is bumbling the US empire into history

As US president Donald Trump ramps up his expansionist warmongering, Canada is taking its own measures. And it provides another sign that Trump may be bumbling the US empire into the history books.

An “extraordinary” shift for Canada

Through his flagrant violations of international law, apparently total disinterest in global cooperation of any kind, and a clearly authoritarian surge at home, Trump is openly showing the ugly reality of US imperialism like few other presidents before him. And as the Financial Times suggests:

Trump is making the world fall in love with China

Unlike the US, fellow economic superpower China has been playing its cards more carefully (and peacefully). And “a predatory US” is convincing many people, according to a European Council on Foreign Relations opinion poll, to look more favourably on China.

This general trend seems to have pushed Canadian prime minister Mark Carney to make a new “mega deal” with China in an apparent effort to “Trump-proof Canada’s economy“. With Trump talking repeatedly about making Canada “the 51st state” but simultaneously saying “we don’t need Canada“, Carney seems to be looking to China as a “counterpunch“.

A China commentator has called Carney warming up to China “extraordinary”. This is because Canada was previously “all-in on the US”. Indeed:

Canada was probably THE country globally most aligned with the U.S. when it comes to China.

Today, Canada increasingly sees that it’s Trump who’s “the threat”:

This is the perhaps best illustration that Trump's new "Monroe doctrine" is objectively achieving the exact opposite of what it intends. pic.twitter.com/M5WJBkoj1M

Carney is currently in Beijing describing a "new era of relations between Canada and China" and explicitly talking…

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) January 16, 2026

Canada previously tanked relations with China by arresting a Chinese business executive on behalf of the US. But Carney has now sought to patch things up with a “strategic partnership” at a low point in US-Canadian relations. Canada now plans to lower some tariffs, and China will do the same.

The Associated Press called this “a break with the U.S.“.

Reporter: What did you mean by the new world order?

Carney: The architecture, the multilateral system is being eroded—undercut. The question is what gets built in its place… pic.twitter.com/UM6cvvKGgL

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 16, 2026

You are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Pax Americana, and it will be Trump’s most lasting foreign policy legacy. https://t.co/yAIO34o1Gu

— Alonso Gurmendi (@Alonso_GD) January 16, 2026

Some fawn over Trump’s decadent empire. Others plan for the future.

The impunity for Washington’s key role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza was already exposing the ugly power of the US again. But Trump hasn’t just continued his country’s long history of global terror. He has unapologetically waged all-out war on international law. And he’s shown real pride in turning the US into even more of a rogue state.

Some regime-change fanatics have been pathetically pandering to Trump, falling over themselves to kiss his feet. And international organisations and close allies have all done their best to stay on his good side. But some, like Carney, are sensibly preparing for the moment when the US empire finally falls, which it inevitably will.

Journalist Matt Kennard is one who thinks Europe should also seek closer relations with China:

If European leaders were smart, they’d do same

The US is a lawless, belligerent and unstable power https://t.co/z73TpL7RND

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) January 16, 2026

And Europe absolutely is preparing for its own future potentially outside the US sphere of influence.

Because European nations are currently pushing through a new deal with South American nations, which would give them an important foothold in the continent. That doesn’t mean this deal is good for ordinary people, of course. (Spoiler: It’s not.) But it does suggest Europe is thinking ahead.

That’s what we should all be doing. We need to be imagining a world without US imperialism. What do we want it to look like? What do we not want it to look like? Because that world will come. And the more Trump pushes a brash, unapologetically shameless version of US imperialism, the quicker that will happen.

Featured image via Twitter