Sen. Elissa Slotkin, the Michigan Democrat and possible 2028 presidential contender, is set to travel to Canada on Saturday for a summit with Prime Minister Mark Carney and other center-left politicians. The gathering, organized by the Center for American Progress, is designed to map out what organizers describe as a strategy for battling right-wing politicians on affordability, a framing that tells you everything about who they think the enemy is.
The trip comes as Carney's government deepens its economic ties with Beijing, having struck what Ottawa calls a "new strategic partnership" with China that opens the door for tens of thousands of Chinese-made electric vehicles to enter the Canadian market. For a senator from Michigan, the historic heart of American automaking, the optics are difficult to explain away.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, another possible Democratic White House hopeful for 2028, will also attend, Breitbart News reported, citing Semafor. The event follows former President Barack Obama's visit to Toronto on Friday for a keynote speech hosted by Canada 2020, a think tank that says it promotes a "more just, inclusive and forward-thinking Canada."
CAP President Neera Tanden told Semafor the meeting would examine a single question:
"How do we fight the authoritarian right?"
Tanden argued Democrats could learn from Carney, who she said had moved "to the right on some issues" and "surged in popularity." The premise is revealing. Rather than reckon with why their own policies keep losing ground with voters, leading Democrats are flying north to study a foreign leader who ran against the United States during a trade dispute, and won.
Carney built his Liberal Party victory in April 2026 around the argument that Canada's close economic relationship with America had become a liability. He told Canadians that many of the country's "former strengths" tied to the U.S. "have become weaknesses," and that "the U.S. has changed and we must respond." After winning, he declared Canada could no longer rely on "one foreign partner."
That rhetoric played well in Ottawa. But the policy that followed it should alarm anyone who cares about North American security, and especially anyone who represents Michigan auto workers.
On January 16, 2026, Carney announced the "new strategic partnership" with China. His government's own press release stated plainly that "China presents enormous opportunities for Canada" as Ottawa sought to diversify trade relationships and increase investment.
The agreement includes a provision allowing up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market at a most-favored-nation tariff rate of just 6.1 percent. Ottawa said the arrangement would spur Chinese joint-venture investment in Canada's automotive sector and expand the country's EV supply chain.
The pipeline is already flowing. ElectricVehicles.com reported that Geely-owned Lotus shipped 18 Chinese-made Eletre SUVs from Shanghai to Canada on May 7, the first batch of Chinese EVs to arrive under the new trade framework.
That is the government Slotkin is flying to learn from. A government that opened a back door for Chinese-manufactured vehicles into North America while American automakers, many of them in Slotkin's own state, compete under far tougher conditions. The arrangement invites exactly the kind of supply-chain dependency that Democrats have struggled to answer questions about when pressed on where their loyalties lie.
Slotkin's trip to sit alongside Carney lands against a backdrop of bipartisan warnings about the national security risks of Chinese-made vehicles. During a December 2025 congressional hearing titled "Trojan Horse: China's Auto Threat to America," House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar did not mince words.
"Potential spy platforms with a kill switch inside."
That was how Moolenaar described Chinese-made vehicles equipped with cameras, sensors, microphones, and internet connectivity systems. He warned that such technology could allow Beijing to collect sensitive information or disrupt transportation systems during a crisis.
The concern was not partisan. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, told the same hearing that China had used "a familiar playbook of forced joint ventures, intellectual property theft, overproduction and dumping to dominate the auto sector." Krishnamoorthi warned that Chinese electric vehicles were often priced "below what it would even cost to make a car."
Former British diplomat Charles Parton described the cellular modules used in connected vehicles as "the gateway" to modern transportation systems and warned that China already supplies a large share of those components globally. Automotive software executive Peter Ludwig compared Chinese vehicles to "the same kinds of risks in the physical world that TikTok represents in the digital world."
None of this is obscure intelligence. It was stated in open congressional testimony, testimony that members of Slotkin's own party participated in. Yet here she is, heading to Canada to strategize with the prime minister who just rolled out the welcome mat for those very vehicles.
The Canada trip is not the first time Slotkin has drawn fire for conduct that critics say undermines American institutions. She previously appeared in a video telling military personnel they could "refuse illegal orders," while saying she was concerned about the military being used "against American citizens." She later acknowledged on ABC's This Week that, to her knowledge, Trump had not issued illegal orders, an admission that undercut the premise of her own video.
Former CIA operations officer Bryan Dean Wright said on Fox News that Slotkin "knew exactly what she was putting together with her little propaganda video." The episode fits a pattern of provocation followed by quiet retreat that has become familiar among Democrats who escalate rhetoric against the administration and then walk it back when pressed for evidence.
Slotkin also urged Democrats to "f***ing retake the flag", a rallying cry that sounds less like patriotism and more like a branding exercise when the senator's next move is to fly to a foreign country and huddle with politicians who define themselves in opposition to America's elected leadership.
The Center for American Progress, which organized the summit, is not a scrappy grassroots outfit. Breitbart News reported in July 2025 that CAP has received millions of dollars in annual funding from George Soros's Open Society Foundations. That funding stream places the gathering squarely within the infrastructure of well-financed progressive institutions that have spent years shaping Democratic Party strategy from the outside.
The meeting's stated focus, fighting "right-wing politicians on affordability", is itself an exercise in misdirection. Affordability is the issue that has punished Democrats at the ballot box cycle after cycle. Rather than change their policies, they are meeting with foreign allies to refine their messaging. The substance stays the same; only the packaging gets an upgrade.
Meanwhile, the legal and political exposure facing prominent Democrats continues to mount on other fronts. Federal investigators have opened probes into Democratic officeholders in other states, and courts have had to address procedural questions arising from failed efforts to indict Democratic lawmakers, a legal landscape that suggests accountability, however slow, is not off the table.
Slotkin and Buttigieg are both described as possible Democratic presidential contenders for 2028. Their presence at a summit explicitly designed to counter "the authoritarian right", a label applied to the sitting administration, signals the early shape of the next Democratic primary. The pitch will be international solidarity against populism, wrapped in the language of affordability and framed as a defense of democratic norms.
But voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania may see it differently. They may see a senator from the state that built the American automobile industry sitting across the table from a prime minister who just let 49,000 Chinese EVs into his country at a 6.1 percent tariff. They may notice that the same senator who told troops to refuse orders is now taking strategic advice from a leader who publicly positioned himself against the United States.
And they may wonder whose side she is on.
When your plan for winning back American voters starts with a flight to Canada, you have already answered the question you refuse to ask at home.
