When the Carney government decided to let a small, capped, number of Chinese EV's into Canada's auto market, it was clearly meant to send a message to Trump. Namely, if you succeed in destroying our auto sector, we'll drop all tariff's and import bans on auto's from abroad so de-Canada'ified American autos will have to compete on a level playing field for what is, currently, their #1 export market.

Instead of treating this concession like something that could be negotiated away at any moment, BYD is going hard right out of the gate. Even Tesla only built a small and inadequate charging network in Canada. If BYD builds a more substantial charging network while they have the access, that access will be much harder to take away. It would go from a potential negotiating chip to something Canadians won't want to do without.