The EU can't figure out that China has a stated goal of making them 100% dependent on...China. They're charging headfirst into a future where Beijing more or less owns them. That's a hard NO from us over here and again, if that's what Canada wants so as to spite the Bad Orange Man, so be it.

I don't think they want that to "spite the Bad Orange Man." They just view it as better than the alternative.

Right now, the U.S. policy towards Canada appears to have two prongs. First, we want to make them 100% dependent on the U.S. market - or at best, only North American markets. Second, we want to exploit their existing dependency on U.S. markets to extract economic concessions, under the claim that they are robbing us blind or are bad trading partners.

Those two prongs are pretty inconsistent with each other. If you want another country to increase their interdependence on you, to the point of near-total dependence, you typically have to give them reason to believe you won't use that against them. But we're oddly trying to do both those things simultaneously. Therefore, even though there are enormous efficiency reasons (and others) for Canada to have a huge trading relationship with the U.S., it is now a poor choice for them to do so. And, of course, our economic fighting with Canada has made cooperating with the U.S. extremely unpopular with Canada, which makes the politics of reducing the economic relationship with the U.S. a no-brainer now - when in years past it might have been far more difficult to pull off.

Therefore, Canada is naturally looking to diversify away from the U.S. They used to trust us not to start trade wars with them, now they can't trust us - so they're protecting themselves against us. That requires looking for markets and economic ties outside of the U.S. - almost exactly the opposite of the "Fortress North America" that we were pursuing.