A Globe and Mail commentary advocating Canada shift trade reliance from the U.S. to China faced scathing criticism for its flawed logic and dubious recommendation of a partner with a history of economic coercion.

The argument that Canada should trade dependence on an erratic U.S. for reliance on China—as proposed in this puzzling Globe and Mail piece earlier in the month—collapses under even casual scrutiny as Donald Clarke, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, readily demonstrates in his July 18 response, “Bad Advice on Canadian Trade Policy.”

Clarke lambasts the recommendation of a pivot toward China as dangerously naive, citing Beijing’s track record of economic coercion and questioning the logic of replacing one dependency with a riskier authoritarian alternative. Clarke notes Canadian journalist Terry Glavin’s summation of the essay’s thesis as “so dumb, so craven and weird, that there was a widespread rumour on ‘X’ yesterday to the effect that the Globe’s website had been hacked.”

Glavin continues:

“There is nothing quite so parochial in Canadian foreign-policy debates as the recurring imbecility that the weight of this country’s heavy economic reliance on the United States should be lifted by securing advantages in deeper trade relationships with China. Lately, the proposition can even be made to appear sensible, now that the growing costs of doing business with Donald Trump’s America can’t be properly calculated from one day to the next.

Even so, you’d have to be either a fool or a director of the Canada China Business Council to go down that road.”

As Glavin acknowledges, the premise published by the Globe and Mail was not the result of a hack but genuinely submitted by its authors Julian Karaguesian, an economic and policy expert (and former special adviser to the Department of Finance Canada), and Robin Shaban, a founding partner at Canadian consulting firm 2R Strategy and a fellow of the Public Policy Forum.

As for the specifics, Clarke’s critique of Karaguesian and Shaban’s Canada pivot to China ranges from misapplied metrics—using China’s purchasing power parity (PPP) to claim China will drive global growth—to false political equivalence: comparing China’s repressive one-party state to Japan’s democratic system (where opposition exists). The final limit for Clarke arrived at the end with the authors’ invocation of economist Jeffrey Sachs, whom Clarke derides as now better known for his Kremlin apologia.

Reactions on social media to the Globe and Mail essay reflected Clarke and Glavin’s affront. China expert, Byron Wan, published a photograph of co-author Robin Shaban meeting Li Ying (李鹰), a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a partner at the Chinese law firm Anli Partners (安理律师事务所) in Beijing a month prior to the release of her article. Wan highlighted the Globe and Mail piece in his post to X [see below], adding the descriptor of Canada’s Beijing “tool” and “mouthpiece” for Shaban. The latter provided a most positive write-up of her meeting with Ying via her LinkedIn account, as well as tourist snaps taken during her trip to Beijing, including one of a visit to Tiananmen Square (the irony is bleak).