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This message comes from Noom. Using psychology and biology to build personal meal plans to fit your lifestyle, taking into account dietary restrictions, medical issues, and other personal needs. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. Today on State of the World, we go to Canada and China for reaction to this week's U.S. trade actions.
You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they are happening. It's Tuesday, February 4th. I'm Christine Arismith. Now, we'll hear about China's already subdued Lunar New Year celebrations in a moment, but first to Canada. President Trump has postponed imposing stiff tariffs on Canada and Mexico for 30 days. That's averted a trade war for now.
But the incident has dented relations among the allies, and Canada is roiling from President Trump's remarks, and the tariff threat remains.
NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam reports from Ottawa. When President Trump announced last weekend that he was slapping 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, the reaction was immediate. Ottawa announced its own tariffs against the U.S. Canadians began booing during the Star-Spangled Banner at sporting events, and a campaign was launched to boycott American products.
What the hell are you doing? What? That's Heinz ketchup. So? It's American. This Canadian comedy skit from CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes show demonstrates how to avoid buying groceries from the U.S. We all have to do our part. There's only one winner in a trade war. Humor aside, the tariff threat by Trump hit a nerve with Canadians.
I have never seen the Canadian public so angry and determined to stand up to Trump's threats against Canada's economy and sovereignty. Roland Parris is a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and a former foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He says the whole incident has damaged relations between Canada and the U.S. that will last for some time. Certainly it's an inflection point in Canadian attitudes towards the United States.
Although both countries have had trade disputes in the past, Canadians never believed that the United States would threaten to cripple our economy. And that assumption, that trust, has been shattered. President Trump says a trade war was averted after he wrenched concessions out of Canada to curb the flow of fentanyl crossing the border. That includes creating a joint strike task force to take on organized crime and appointing a so-called fentanyl czar.
Trudeau said Canada had already launched a $1.3 billion plan to beef up border security, and that the amount of fentanyl crossing the northern border is a fraction of what crosses from Mexico, leaving many Canadians wondering why President Trump was prepared to unleash a trade war. So I would say there are a lot of moving targets with him. He keeps changing things.
kind of a story on what exactly he wants from Canada. Robert Asselin is Senior Vice President at the Business Council of Canada, located here in Ottawa.
He gives Trump credit for trying to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., but says Canada isn't the problem, and that even though a trade war was avoided, it still had an impact, rocking stock markets and undermining confidence in future investments and the like. Aslan says the tariff flap is more than just a disagreement. Canada may have to rethink its trading paths going forward. So sure, we can start making...
alliances with other countries and exporting our natural resources to Asia a bit more and building capacity to do so.
But at the end, we thought the best way would be to kind of agree with the Americans that there's a path forward and that each country can find benefits in this relationship. For many Canadians, Trump's decision to slap tariffs on Canada feels personal. It comes after the president has suggested Canada become a 51st state and calling Prime Minister Trudeau governor. You know, he's playing to the MAGA guys. Ottawa resident Doug Talbot says people are tired of being bullied.
I get it, but it's a little tiring to listen to, you know, from a Canadian perspective, right? We're not really, you know, most of us have no animosity towards these states at all, right? In fact, we've had a wonderful relationship, so why is this guy trying to taint it? I just don't get it. And the country may well have to go through this again if President Trump fulfills his promise to impose tariffs on Canada in 30 days.
Jackie Northam, NPR News, Ottawa. Now to China. The Trump administration's put tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the U.S., and Beijing is retaliating with counter-tariffs of its own on American imports to China, such as coal, liquefied natural gas, crude oil, and machinery, and with a threatened antitrust investigation of Google.
This comes at an otherwise happy time for China, which just concluded a week-long holiday for the Lunar New Year. People are traveling and celebrating, but the economy at the start of the Year of the Snake is, you could say, buttering. NPR's John Ruich reports from the southern city of Kunming.
As the holiday was getting started, Kunming's Zhuanshin Farmers Market was hopping. 23-year-old Liu Bowen has a table where she sells wall and door decorations for good luck in the new year. It's the most important day on the calendar, she says. The decorations are a tradition and sales have been good, but the market's not normally this bustling. My mom also sells vegetables.
She says her mom has a stall across the way selling vegetables year-round, and demand has been soft. Weak consumption has, indeed, been a huge problem for the Chinese economy, which never quite bounced back the way many expected after the authorities dropped stifling COVID rules more than two years ago. The government says GDP growth hit its target last year anyway, expanding by 5%. But people like 36-year-old Zheng Jun say it doesn't feel like it. This is the economic situation.
The economic situation here is, how can I put it, just so-so. The overall environment is bad. Zeng is a partner in a company that makes novelty ice cream bars. They're shaped like local landmarks and sold to tourists.
He says revenue fell by 30 to 40 percent in 2024 from the year before. Most people just don't have money in their wallets. They're conservative with their spending. I am too. I watch what I have in my wallet. In the fall, the government rolled out a string of support measures, cutting interest rates, propping up the stock market, loosening rules around real estate. It also introduced trade-in subsidies for appliances and later consumer electronics.
This incentivized 28-year-old Wen Hao, a teacher in the northern city of Tianjin. This national subsidy is 500 yuan. We've used it all.
Wen says the subsidy got him more than 8% off an iPhone 16. It came at the right time for him, but he warns these targeted subsidies probably aren't a game changer. People will use them to buy what they need, he says, but no one's going to buy something they don't need because of the subsidies.
Arthur Kroeber, head of research for the research firm Gavcal Dragonomics, says the policy support has helped a little. But it's not like we've got a, we're not back to boob times by any stretch of the imagination. That's primarily because China hasn't really addressed deflation, which is a problem, he says. Prices have been falling for nearly two years in the world's second largest economy. And you get into this spiral of people not spending money and businesses not investing and people
it can be very difficult to get out of that. New tariffs from the Trump administration could make matters worse. Back at the market in Kunming, Wang Yimin sells coffee at a temporary stall to fortify shoppers against the cold. He used to run a cafe, but he closed it about a month ago because he couldn't make rent. I ask him how he feels about the prospect of a trade war heating up with the United States. He says he likes Donald Trump, but a trade war would not be good.
He says it'll be ordinary people like him in China and in the United States who would pay the price. John Rewich, NPR News, Kunming, China. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.
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