but after i'd read nick beam's Oct. 9, 2018: ‘Key provision of USMCA trade deal aimed at China’, wsws.org, including these passages:

“The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade that was concluded last week contained a clause which makes clear that one of its essential aims is the economic isolation of China, as the US steps up its trade war against Beijing.
The clause, contained in article 32.10 of the agreement, stipulates that: “Entry by any Party into a free trade agreement with a non-market country, shall allow the other Parties to terminate this Agreement on six-month notice and replace this Agreement with an agreement as between them (bilateral agreement).”
China was not specifically named but there is no doubt it is the target, with the US having designated it a “non-market” economy.

International experts have said that nothing like this clause has ever been seen in previous trade deals. According to Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the clause is “completely novel in a trade agreement.” He described it as the “latest strand in the Cold War that the [US] administration has launched against China.”

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Reuters the clause was “logical” and a “kind of poison pill.” The US insisted upon it during the negotiations with Canada after raising concerns that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was exploring the possibility of a free trade deal with Beijing.

The provision is intended to go far beyond Canada and Mexico and become the template for the bilateral trade agreements the US is seeking with its major trading partners, in particular the European Union.”

i was reminded of this just about a year ago: ‘why was Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou arrested in canada?, 12/12/2018

Andre Damon has called it ‘a kidnapping’, and gives some background. On Dec. 1 she was arrested at the Vancouver airport while changing planes to head to Mexico at the behest of the US justice department, and stuck in jail. She’s been charged with two counts of fraud for breaking sanctions against Iran by way of a Hong Kong-based company Skycom sometime in the past (the Guardian had reported 2009-2014) that US officials allege to be a shell company of smart phone giant Huwawei’s. Her arrest hadn’t been announced until Dec. 3, with reports that the US wants Meng extradited so that he can be tried for crimes whose sentences could amount to 60 years. But that it’s not the issue, just the cover story, will become clear.

Damon reported that the NYT published this ‘bombshell’ the day after Meng’s arrest had stunned the world:

“As Donald Trump was sitting down to dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping last Saturday [at the G20 in buenos aries] to arrange a “truce” in the US-China trade war, the US president was unaware that the unprecedented arrest was about to take place.

This was despite the fact that figures such as Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Richard Burr, as well as National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, were alerted to the arrest. Asked why he did not tell the president, Bolton, who was with Trump at the meeting with Xi, declared inexplicably, “we certainly don’t inform the president on every” notification from the Justice Department.”

Justin Trudeau had also known her arrest was imminent.

But part of Damon’s conclusions were that the US wants command and control of its allies and enemies alike, as in: ‘do our bidding, or you will end up like Meng, or worse. He’d also concluded that it had been down to the ‘Deep State’ to order her arrest given Herr Hair’s ignorance of her arrest. He’d narrated the many Very Important Figures (Ds and Rs alike) that agreed with Pence’s proclamations in an Oct. speech in which:

“Pence demanded that Beijing abandon its “Made in China 2025” plan, which Pence claimed was an effort to control “90 percent of the world’s most advanced industries, including robotics, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.”

Some applauded Weng’s arrest, noting that the Orange One hadn’t been hard enough on ‘the Great Competitor China’; some media was silent. The US trade rep scoffed at the notion that her arrest would stop the negotiations with China in their tracks, claiming this wasn’t a trade issue, but a law enforcement issue. Ho, ho, ho."

but part of it was that there were reports that china's huawei 5-G devices were NS-proof, so the US declared them 'a anger to our national interest', and legislation was introduced to prevent the US from selling parts to huawei that china hadn't been producing. but i remember seeing a headline a bit ago noting that china was either making their own chips, or another nation was doing so.

then i remembered having read this recently: ‘Canadian Opposition Parties Fill Anti-China Void Left by Freeland’s Ouster’, December 18, 2019, Mathew Ehret, strategic-culture.org

“The major political parties of Canada don’t agree on much, but they have found common ground on one policy: China is evil and any collaboration with this tyranny is an assault on Canadian values.
Previously, this anti-China agenda was reserved for Canada’s prize regime change fanatic Chrystia Freeland, who as Foreign Minister successfully alienated nearly every nationalist government on earth, to the point that China’s foreign ministry cancelled its Ambassador’s role in Ottawa and even ceased picking up Freeland’s phone calls.

Since Freeland’s ouster as Foreign Minister on November 20, a new effort to rebuild trust and business relations coincided with Francois-Philippe Champagne’s appointment to head Global Affairs, promising a fresh wave of dialogue and cooperation on private and security matters- not excluding Freeland’s commitment to extradite Huawei’s Meng Wangzhou to the USA. Other obstacles which this shift in power may finally resolve include China’s sanctions on Canada’s Soybean purchases now crippling Prairie economies, and the recently announced trial date of two Canadians (Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor) held in Chinese prisons on the accusation of spying and stealing state secrets.

No sooner had dialogue begun with a new Canadian Ambassador deployed to Beijing on September 4th and a new Chinese Ambassador in Ottawa on September 22, followed in short measure by the most important energy contract between Canada and China in years that insanity showed its ugly face in full force. This insanity first struck in the USA where extreme pressure bent the hand of President Trump who signed off on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act- essentially accusing China of all wrongs underlying the western-backed chaos spread across Hong Kong.”

then China’s response, etc.

This is the internal link to Freeland's Ouster (remember she wrote at the finacnial times for a long time?): A Sea Change for Canada Foreign Policy as Freeland Is Replaced by a Pro-Chinese Politico, also matthew erhet, November 30, 2019

he'd opened with:

In Chrystia Freeland’s 2012 book Plutocrats, Canada’s leading Rhodes Scholar laid out a surprisingly clear analysis of the two camps of elites who she explained would, by their very nature, battle for control of the newly emerging system as the old paradigm collapsed.

In her book and article series, she described the “practical populist politician” which has tended to be adherent to business interests and personal gain during past decades vs the new breed of “technocrat” which has an enlightened non-practical (ie: Malthusian) worldview, willing to make monetary sacrifices for the “greater good”.

She further defined the “good Plutocrats” vs “bad Plutocrats”. Good Plutocrats included the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos who made their billions under the free-for-all epoch of globalization, but who were willing to adapt to the new rules of the post-globalization game. This was a game which she defined in an absurd 2013 TED Talk as a “green New Deal” of global regulation under a de-carbonized (and depopulated) green economy. For those “bad plutocrats” unwilling to play by the new rules (ie: the Trumps, Putins or any industrialist who refused to commit seppuku on the altar of Gaia), they would simply go extinct. This threat was re-packaged by Canada’s “other” globalist puppet Mark Carney, who recently said “If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist.”

good riddance.