Prime Minister Trudeau says the US and Europe were about to push Canada into China

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadian companies are turning away from doing business with China because of economic coercion from the United States.

Prime Minister Trudeau spoke Thursday on CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore about a time when the U.S. and Europe nearly drove Canada “into the arms of China.”

Canadian private jet maker Bombardier began manufacturing commercial jets known as the C-series in 2008, but was unable to sell the model to airlines due to pressure from airlines. airbuswith European companies boeingPrime Minister Trudeau said it is an American company.

Prime Minister Trudeau said Bombardier had been approached by Chinese investors who offered to provide “dump trucks full of gold” to buy the business. “Boeing and Airbus were busy putting Bombardier out of business because they didn’t want Bombardier to be a competitor, but they almost drove us into the arms of China,” Trudeau said.

Chinese investors offered Bombardier a partnership in 2015 after negotiations over a potential merger with Airbus broke down. In 2017, after negotiations with Boeing over the C-series failed, Bombardier approached China again for a deal.

He said Trudeau intervened in 2017 at the G7 summit, an annual meeting of seven major industrialized nations. “I went around the G7 table in Sicily… in 2017, I said to Macron, Merkel and Trump, you’re pushing us into China’s pockets, into China’s hands, to protect jobs. They’re willing to pay whatever it takes to get this,” Trudeau told CONVERGE LIVE.

In 2018, Airbus acquired a “majority stake” in Bombardier’s C-series commercial aircraft, which it began manufacturing as the A220. The company purchased the remaining stake in 2020, securing more than 3,300 Airbus jobs in Quebec, the companies announced at the time.

“This is an example of domestic economic pressure and coercion, and at a time when we are busy competing as a like-minded nation, we almost caused a significant disappointment to a significant competitor who does not share our approach or views,” Trudeau said.

He called the Bombardier incident an example of economic coercion, adding that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats had a “similar” impact, as Canada’s auto industry “had to consider working with China because the U.S. auto industry didn’t want to work with us anymore.”

Trudeau added that Canada has struck an agreement with Europe to supply aluminum after the United States imposed a 50 per cent tariff on metal imports. “The uncertainty of whether we’re going to impose tariffs again means we’ve found a better partner to do that, and that’s a way to avoid some of the economic coercion,” he said.

Speaking on CONVERGE LIVE, Trudeau singled out the United States, China, Russia and India, also calling them “great powers” and said he had decided they could “opt in or opt out of being part of the rules-based order.”

—CNBC’s Anniek Bao contributed to this report.