I seem to remember someone on here talking about how we (the RCN) had to buy vacuum tubes off Czechoslovakia during the height of the Cold War because they were the only ones that produced what we needed. Not really much different. They, 'the sworn enemy' sold a product that we needed, thus we did a deal with them. In that case it was to keep our warships functioning in order to possibly go to war against them. Now we are buying products (consumer overwhelmingly, but how much Chinese steel went into the AOPS's?) from 'a different sworn enemy' once again.
We had to buy printed circuit boards out of Eastern Europe somewhat regularly to keep the 280s going to end of life, and for other things on different classes using very old digital controls.
Supply chains are global, and it's probably impossible to buy anything that has no Chinese production in the main line, component parts or chemicals etc in it.
China industrialized while Canada, the US, the UK and some others decided to get away from 'dirty blue collar labour' and grow service and financial industries instead, while the race for 'shareholder returns' drove further offshoring for short term gains (that only further centralized wealth into the privileged few).
I think the trade deal with China is pragmatic, and as long as people are aware of the risks, and safeguards are put in place where needed for security, then it's manageable. Also, no one has to actually buy any of the cars they are selling; they were promised access, not sales.
Lots of valid fire protection reasons to not have EVs generally park near DND buildings, so maybe this will let us actually enforce those and keep personal EVs parked in the arse end of the parking lots and off bases.
