Canada gets closer to China
Almost 76% of Canada’s exports were destined for the United States and bilateral trade reached $761.8 billion in 2024, a level of concentration that Ottawa considers risky in an environment of political pressure and recurrent use of tariffs as a negotiating tool.
Trade tensions cut Canada’s exports of goods to the United States by 4% between January and October 2025, compared to the same period in 2024.
Mark Carney’s government decided to accelerate its diversification strategy and closed a trade agreement with China, a country that stopped playing the role of common “enemy” in front of Washington. Canada also opened talks with Qatar, as part of an effort to expand its partner network.
The goal is to double non-US exports in a decade and the Asian giant seems a good option.
Trade between Canada and China totals 118.7 billion dollars, a figure still marginal compared to the United States, but with a growing strategic value as an alternative and as a negotiating lever.
In contrast to the United States, Canada’s exports to China increased 9.8% between January and October 2025.
The vision is clear at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney took the microphone and left a definition that summarizes his position. Canada has what the world wants and, in an era of profound change, it presents itself as a strong and reliable partner with the ambition to build.
In Davos, he said, he held meetings with business leaders from different sectors and countries interested in investing and cooperating.
Carney went beyond the commercial speech. He stated that the world is experiencing a rupture, not a transition. Great powers, he noted, began to use integration as a weapon, tariffs as leverage, and supply chains as exploitable vulnerabilities. Multilateral institutions, from the World Trade Organization to the UN, are showing obvious wear and tear.
Canada’s public export credit agency recognizes the challenge of reducing its high trade concentration with the United States and opening new horizons for its exporters, but it already has an analysis in which three regions emerge as diversification axes with high potential: the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the United Kingdom, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
For Canada, the answer is to gain strategic autonomy without locking itself in. Energy, food, critical minerals, finance and supply chains are part of that agenda. A world of blocs, Carney warned, will be poorer and more fragile, but negotiating bilaterally with a hegemonic power means doing so from a place of weakness.
“We accept what is offered to us. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is exercising sovereignty while accepting subordination,” Carney said. A message that in Mexico is read as a direct dedication.
