While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Vina Nadjibulla.
Canada’s new National Security Strategy and the Canada–EU summit in Montreal show how Ottawa plans to turn strategic autonomy into real partnerships. Yet a bet on Europe alone won’t deliver the resilience Canada needs, writes Vina Nadjibulla. With Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan central to critical minerals, semiconductors and defence production, she calls on the upcoming foreign policy strategy...
When Xi Jinping’s plane touches down at Joint Base Andrews this week, Donald Trump intends to be there to meet it. Protocol dictates that American presidents do not usually greet foreign leaders at the airport; they receive them at the White House. The last exception occurred when President Barack Obama met Pope Francis at Andrews in 2015. The unusual gesture...
China’s export controls, a more interventionist G7 agenda and Washington’s widening network of mineral partnerships have transformed the market in which Canada’s critical-minerals strategy must operate. Ottawa now needs to connect domestic industrial policy, international partnerships, and its North American economic relationship into a single strategy. In 2025, China turned longstanding concerns about critical-mineral concentration into an immediate industrial-security challenge...
In July 2026, Geely-owned Lotus electric vehicles (EVs) began arriving in Canada under the arrangement reached between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping in January. The deal allows an initial quota of 49,000 Chinese EVs annually to enter Canada at a reduced 6.1 per cent tariff rate, with the stated objective of encouraging Chinese joint-venture investment...
Chery Automobile has become one of China’s most important global automakers. Less well known in North America than BYD or Geely, Chery has nevertheless spent more than two decades building an export-oriented business across emerging and developed markets. The company’s growing interest in Canada therefore presents both an opportunity and a policy challenge. For Canadian consumers, Chery could offer more...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to select Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), in partnership with Norway, as the supplier of Canada’s next submarine fleet is one of the most consequential defence procurement choices Canada has made in decades. It will shape the Royal Canadian Navy, Canada’s Arctic and maritime posture, and the country’s defence-industrial partnerships for a generation. The decision...
China’s BYD has emerged as one of the most consequential companies in the global automotive transition. Once known primarily as a battery producer, it is now the world’s largest seller of battery-electric vehicles and a major producer of plug-in hybrids, batteries, and energy-storage systems. BYD’s combination of low-cost vehicles, technological innovation, and control over much of its supply chain has...
In the inevitable hot-mic moment at this week’s G7 in Evian, France, Prime Minister Mark Carney summarized for President Donald Trump Canada’s new electric vehicle arrangement with China. Carney is overheard reassuring Trump that there’s a cap of 49,000 Chinese EVs imported under the deal. But the real story of how China’s global auto-industry ambitions are playing out in Canada...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Canada this week is significant. It is the first bilateral visit to Canada by a Chinese foreign minister since June 2016, and the most visible sign yet that the thaw in Canada-China relations that began with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January visit to Beijing is moving into a more consequential implementation phase. If...
The first year of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership has had a transformational impact on both Canada’s foreign policy and its standing in the world. The shift has been especially evident in the Indo-Pacific, where Ottawa is more active, more strategic, and more ambitious than it has ever been.
The controversy around Liberal MP Michael Ma’s comments on forced labour in China is an early test of how Prime Minister Mark Carney’s China policy is being put into practice — and whether it can remain pragmatic without drifting into equivocation, accommodation or self-censorship. Carney’s recalibration — toward a more interest-based approach aimed at stabilizing ties with Beijing while widening...
A year ago, it was not obvious that Canada–India relations could be pulled back from the brink. Diplomatic expulsions, public recriminations, and allegations of foreign interference had frozen one of Canada’s most consequential Indo-Pacific partnerships. Yet since Prime Minister Mark Carney and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the margins of the G7 summit in Kananaskis last June, a different...
Canada’s first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) marks a genuine shift in how Ottawa thinks about sovereignty, security, and economic resilience. After decades of treating defence procurement as a back-office function, the government is now framing it as strategic statecraft — linking military readiness, industrial policy, innovation, and economic security. The creation of a Defence Investment Agency and the adoption of...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China will stand as one of the most consequential moments in Canada’s foreign policy. It not only reframed Canada’s relationship with China but also signalled a fundamentally new approach to how Ottawa intends to navigate a more fragmented, contested and uncertain world. On the bilateral front, the trip produced three tangible outcomes: a new...
Prime Minister Mark Carney will travel to Beijing from January 13 to 17, marking the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China since 2017. The trip comes amid mounting economic and political pressure from the Trump administration and reflects the Carney government’s stated objective to diversify Canada’s economic partnerships and double non-U.S. trade over the next decade. At...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China marks a significant milestone in this country’s relations with Beijing. It signals Ottawa’s intent to improve a strained relationship at a moment when Canada is also navigating threats from the Trump administration. From Ottawa’s perspective, the objectives are clear and pragmatic: explore trade and investment opportunities, and ease trade frictions, especially China’s tariffs...
The year 2025 was a year of volatility, experimentation, and recalibration across Asia and Canada. Much of the volatility stemmed from U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, which upended global trade norms and injected new uncertainty into supply chains. China, meanwhile, pressed ahead with an increasingly assertive industrial strategy, even as it contended with slower domestic growth and structural...
Even modest Canadian engagement with China may be judged less on its merits than on how it is interpreted in the U.S. within a framework designed to ‘wind down adversarial outside influence.’
With the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Trump administration has delivered a comprehensive articulation of how it sees America’s core interests, what it expects from allies, and how it plans to compete in a world defined by great-power rivalry and economic insecurity. Whatever one thinks of its ideological framing or tone, the document is strategically significant...
The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada held its inaugural Indo-Pacific Forum in Ottawa on October 1- 2, 2025, nearly three years after the launch of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). The Forum brought together stakeholders from the Government of Canada, academics, think-tank experts, private-sector leaders, and policy researchers from across the Indo-Pacific to assess progress and offer actionable advice on how...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first trip to the Indo-Pacific was deliberately ambitious. In just over a week, he spoke at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, joined APEC leaders in South Korea, made a bilateral stop in Singapore, held a rapid-fire series of pull-asides with key regional leaders, and held his first meeting as Prime Minister with Chinese President Xi...
Last Thanksgiving, Ottawa was expelling Indian diplomats; this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is in New Delhi. The contrast captures how far relations have come – and how fragile the progress remains. Ms. Anand’s visit, Canada’s first ministerial-level trip to India in two years, also signals that the diplomatic reset launched by prime ministers Mark Carney and Narendra Modi...
The signing of the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) last week is a significant boost to Canada’s economicdiversification agenda.
Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) has passed the crucial three-year mark. On balance, the record thus far has been positive: Canada is more present, more visible, and more plugged into regional networks than at any time in recent memory. New offices have opened, ministerial and prime-ministerial travel has become routine, Team Canada trade missions are drawing large delegations, and the Canadian...
Perhaps the strongest indication that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s UNGA meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang last week signalled a new era in bilateral relations was the Xinhua coverage. “China and Canada have been promoting the improvement and development of their bilateral relations in a practical and constructive manner, which has been widely welcomed by all sectors in both countries,”...
Canada’s critical minerals strategy needs to move past broad ambition to systematic, prioritized, and partnership-focused action. We need an approach that right-sizes the China challenge, adjusts to the evolving environment south of the border, embeds within a national industrial strategy, and updates our 2022 critical minerals strategy with targeted tools and deeper partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, Europe, North America, and...
Over the past two decades, India-U.S. relations have made steady strides, buoyed by bipartisan support in both countries and thriving in areas such as trade, technology, and strategic convergence in the Indo-Pacific. Yet the bilateral partnership has suffered an unprecedented setback in recent months. Beginning August 27, Indian exports to the U.S. face a steep 50 per cent tariff, including...
On March 11, China concluded its annual 'Two Sessions' — a pair of legislative and advisory meetings focused on Beijing's economic priorities for the year ahead. The slew of macroeconomic measures announced at those meetings are now taking on heightened significance amid the escalating U.S.–China trade war.
On April 2 — just before the U.S. announced sweeping new tariffs on much of the world — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded a three-day visit to Moscow, where he met with his counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two sides discussed the Russia-Ukraine war and other security flashpoints, including Iran’s nuclear program and the Korean...
Canada-India relations sharply deteriorated in September 2023 when former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked the murder of Canadian Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar to Indian state agents. The crisis deepened in October 2024 when Ottawa accused Indian diplomats of being complicit in criminal activities, including intimidation, extortion, and murder. New Delhi rejected these claims, labelling Canada a “safe haven” for...
Over the last five years, competition over critical minerals has become a focal point of great-power rivalry — particularly between the United States and China. These strategic materials, including rare earth elements, are vital for producing the advanced technologies underpinning the green economy, defence industries, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Given that the world is rapidly transitioning to cleaner energy...
Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency will loom large over the Indo-Pacific in 2025. The global economic and security orders are already under serious strain, and Trump’s inclination for trade wars, his skepticism of alliances, and a probable imposition of tariffs at levels not seen since the 1930s will intensify the role of international trade as a geopolitical battleground...
In 2024, a record number of voters across Asia exercised their democratic rights and, in many cases, used the ballot box to punish incumbent governments they felt had fallen short. Ten regional democracies held presidential and/or parliamentary elections, including three of the largest — India, Indonesia, and Japan. If there was any common denominator among these votes, it was that...
South Korea entered a sudden political crisis on December 3 when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law — an unprecedented move for the mature liberal democracy. Although Yoon retracted martial law six hours later, following a unanimous rejection of the order by 190 members of the country’s National Assembly, the shockwaves continue to reverberate.
A new and enhanced security partnership between Russia and North Korea marks a watershed moment in contemporary great power competition, effectively merging the Indo-Pacific and European security theatres and helping to solidify Japan and South Korea’s alignment – both with each other and with the U.S. and its other allies.