Betrayed and dismayed It’s time Canada breaks it off with the bully to the south to test the waters with more-sensible trade suitors By: Dan Lett Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Friday, Mar. 28, 2025

Opinion

Hey America, I think it’s time we started dating other trading partners.

I’d love to be able to say ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ But frankly, this is all about you. Seriously, your behaviour is unacceptable and something’s got to change.

Our economies have been so close for so long it’s hard to imagine going forward without you. But with all the recent thinly-veiled threats and bullying, we here in Canada have come to a decision.

We’re going to find a way to live without you.

We’ll be the first to admit that being less reliant on your vibrant economy is going to be tough.

More than two-thirds of all of the goods and services we produce — which amounted to nearly $965 billion in 2023 — are exported to other countries, with three-quarters of that headed to the United States. Think that’s a lot? No other trading nation gets more than five per cent of our exports.

Manitoba is as dependent on the U.S. economy as any province in Canada. Last year, we exported $18-billion worth of goods to the U.S.; that’s nearly three-quarters of all our exports. Combine goods and services coming north, and Manitoba has a $42-billion trade relationship with the Americans that helps more than 1,700 companies employ more than 63,000 Manitobans.

So, Americans are good customers. But Canadians are no slouches when it comes to buying U.S. exports. In fact, Canadians purchase more than $350 billion in American goods and services every year, making us your single biggest export destination.

You would think our appetite for American products and services would earn us a bit of respect as your president attempts to reconfigure global trade relationships.

Apparently, that’s not in the cards.

So, what is a trading nation like Canada supposed to do? It might be hard for you to hear, American economy, but after you punished Canadian exports to your country, and we responded by penalizing U.S. imports to ours, we’ve made an important decision.

It’s time for us to play the field and date other countries.

There is a growing awareness among Canadians that there are customers in markets other than the U.S and that maybe — just maybe — we can start lessening our reliance on the American market. It’s going to be tough, but to be honest, we’ve been looking around for other partners for some time now.

Take the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a treaty we started negotiating with European countries way back in 2016. In 2023, bilateral trade in goods and services totalled nearly $200 billion. Although that’s just a sliver of the trade we do with you Americans, it has risen by more than two-thirds over the past decade, even though 10 European nations have yet to sign CETA.

America may consider CETA to be nothing more than a dalliance. But we’re here to tell you we’re ready to step out and trade with other nations in bigger and broader fashion.

For example, the EU and five South American countries — Brazil, Argentina Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia — signed a new trade agreement in December 2024 that creates one of the world’s largest free-trade zones. As is the case with CETA, some of the terms are still being debated by individual European nations. Still, the deal between the EU and the so-called Mercosur Bloc will lead to increased trade among more than 700 million people.

Oh, and we should mention the EU-Mercosur deal is not exclusive. That’s right, Canada has been talking to the Mercosur nations since 2018 on a deal that would remove existing tariffs. Talks were stalled but thanks to the Trump administration’s propensity to threaten just about every country on Earth, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were willing to go on a few exploratory dates.

And here’s the harshest truth you need to hear: every time you muse openly about annexing another country’s territory, or punishing nations for having the temerity to send goods and services into your country, you encourage skeptics to join these new trade deals.

It will also encourage everyone in Canada, from individual citizens to businesses and government, to buy things on an ABA — “Anybody But America” — basis.

Rank-and-file Canadians are already doing their part, purchasing billions of dollars less in American goods and services and cancelling millions of vacation trips to the U.S. Meanwhile, our federal government may pare back a contract it had with Lockheed-Martin in the U.S. for the purchase of next-generation F-35 fighter jets.

The next few years are going to be tough on all of us. Up until recently, we had no reason to question the extent to which our economies were intertwined. We had so much in common, including what appeared to be a shared desire for both countries to thrive.

But all that seems to be gone now. Now that we’re forced to consider seeing other trading partners, how can we find the right ones? How far do we have to go to find true trade happiness?

Some of our best and brightest thinkers have a few thoughts.

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Mariette Mulaire

Mariette Mulaire got a graphic reminder of how the world had changed last November when U.S. immigration officials pulled her aside when she tried to pre-clear U.S. customs in Toronto for a trip to New York City.

Mulaire, a Winnipegger who serves as the managing director of the New York City-based World Trade Centers Association, possesses a work visa that allows her to work in the U.S. Even so, U.S. immigration officials were intrigued to the point she was detained just long enough that she missed her connection and had to spend the night in Toronto.

“It’s all a little bit weird,” said Mulaire, who also serves on the board of the Bank of Canada. “That kind of treatment was not really on my radar before, but you sure learn fast that things have changed.”

Mulaire agreed that many Canadian businesses must be feeling the same way as the Trump administration jockeys back and forth on imposing punishing tariffs. The conditions faced now by Canadians, Mulaire said, will demand we summon all of our courage and creativity to find ways of working around the suddenly hostile U.S. market.

In much the same way former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin did in the 1960s when he dug his famous ditch.

Mulaire said she has had opportunity recently to think a lot about the Red River Floodway — commonly known as “Duff’s ditch” — and how Roblin demonstrated so much courage in the face of adversity. That same kind of pluckiness is needed now to find ways to work around U.S. tariffs.

“When Duff created his ditch, he saw a threat and just decided he needed to do something. Not everybody supported him, but he insisted we have to dig this ditch, we have to invest in this right now, this big ditch, because if we don’t then more floods will come and the city will be underwater. People didn’t believe him but guess what, the floods came back many times.”

“We need to talk about investments to get into other markets, and finding resources now to help our businesses.”–Mariette Mulaire

Mulaire said the threat of flooding is an apt metaphor to use for a trade war. This isn’t the first time Canada has been subjected to tariff threats from the U.S, she noted, and it won’t be the last. “The American tariff flood is going to come back over and over again and that’s why we need to talk about investments to get into other markets, and finding resources now to help our businesses.”

Mulaire said Canadian businesses and the federal government have been talking for decades about expanding into markets other than the U.S. However, not enough progress has been made to this point and that has left us vulnerable to the whims of the Trump administration.

“I’ve been around long enough in Manitoba to know how integrated we are with the U.S.,” said Mulaire. “And I’ve been around long enough to know how many workshops we’ve held to look at expanding into this market and that market, and you know what? It’s really easy to say we should move into new markets, but it’s a full-on different business model, and it comes with a lot a lot of little details that need to be ironed out.

“The good news is I think now we are forced to do that. We’re a little bit cornered. It would have been great to have started that before, but we were so comfortable with our relationship with the U.S., so would why would you want to rock the boat? You know, ‘why fix something if it’s not broken?’ I feel we’re at the point now that we have to make management decisions and get this done.”

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Lloyd Axworthy

Lloyd Axworthy has a noticeable cringe in his voice when he talks about the inauguration of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo last October.

The federal government initially intended to send Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to represent Canada at the inauguration but at the last moment, she was told to stay in Ottawa. Instead, Canada sent Ontario Sen. Peter Boehm.

“That’s not quite the gesture you would expect at such an important event,” said Axworthy, who served in the cabinets of prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, finishing up with a lengthy stint in foreign affairs.

“Mexico is a country of 140 million people but we spend no time with them. We didn’t even send a cabinet minister to the inauguration. And they were terribly miffed. I’ve got good contacts in Mexico, but when I talk with them, they say, ‘Why does Canada pretend we don’t exist?’”

The missed opportunity at the inauguration is just one example of how Canada needs to up its game when it comes to identifying and cultivating new export markets for Canadian businesses, Axworthy said. But to really cement the diplomatic relationships necessary to galvanize freer trade deals, Canada has to start showing more interest in potential trading partners.

“I think all of a sudden, Canadians are waking up a little bit,” Axworthy said. “In a book I just wrote, I said Canada needs a good kick in the pants to kind of get itself thinking again. We got a kick in the teeth, which is a little higher up than I was suggesting, but I think it is a wake-up call that is helping us realize there’s a lot of things that we could be doing that we’re not doing, a lot of things we can be trading and purchasing or building or manufacturing that we’re not doing.”

“Because of Trump, all the bright scholars and scientists are going to flee the U.S. Others won’t even consider going there. Let’s put out the ‘open-sesame’ sign for them.”–Lloyd Axworthy

For example, Axworthy noted the conflict that has erupted between the Trump White House and top U.S. colleges and universities. Some, like Columbia University, have been told they may not receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal support because they allowed anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. This kind of threat is causing a lot of top researchers to consider moving to another country.

“Universities in the U.S. are crashing right now and that’s created a wonderful opportunity,” said Axworthy, who also served as president and vice-chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. “Because of Trump, all the bright scholars and scientists are going to flee the U.S. Others won’t even consider going there. Let’s put out the ‘open-sesame’ sign for them.”

Taking advantage of these opportunities — forging closer ties with non-U.S. trading partners, recruiting U.S. academics — will come once Canada acknowledges it has become way too dependent on our neighbour to the south for almost everything.

“We’ve became so conditioned to the idea that we’re such good neighbours, that we don’t have to worry about any kind of other sort of hiccup in this relationship,” Axworthy said. “We just go ahead and sell more to them and buy more from them. And I think Canada needs a big shake-up in terms of that attitude so we can start being a little bit more independent and less reliant upon the United States.”

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Gary Doer

When Gary Doer thinks about the raging trade war between Canada and the U.S., he thinks about Churchill. And Rotterdam.

The former premier of Manitoba and Canadian ambassador to the U.S. knows that if Canadian companies wanted to do more business with other parts of the world to ease our reliance on the U.S., it could be done by shipping more commodities through the Port of Churchill which is, remarkably, roughly the same distance from Europe’s largest seaport as Montreal, and closer than any of the major U.S. eastern seaboard ports.

“(Churchill) is closer to Rotterdam than most ports in North America,” Doer said. “That opens up all kinds of opportunity for opening up new markets. There is a rail line there and there is a port there and it’s close to big markets. And with climate change, you don’t need ice breakers as much. If we were going to increase exports to other countries, it could start with Churchill.”

Doer said he still thinks cracks will appear in Trump’s tariff assault on Canada and other countries. And he speculates many of those fissures will materialize in two years’ time when midterm elections take place in the U.S.

While leading Manitoba in the early 2000s, Doer said he was constantly involved in discussions with other Canadian first ministers about internal trade barriers and with western and mid-western U.S. governors about boosting trade, and also noted he maintained constant pressure on Washington to avoid falling prey to buy-American policies. Although the current threat from the Trump administration is more intense than ever before, the rules of the lobbying game remain the same.

“People didn’t vote for a trade war and they don’t want prices to go back up. If they do go up again, (Trump) is going to pay for it at the midterms.”–Gary Doer

In the past, the domestic blowback from U.S. tariffs weakened the resolve of leaders in Washington, Doer said. Farmers across the American West and Midwest are heavily dependent on Canadian potash, which is used in fertilizers, and they don’t necessarily want to pay more for it because there is no source in the continental U.S., he said.

Combine regional pressures on issues like potash with larger, country-wide issues like higher inflation — which will almost certainly be triggered by tariffs — and there will be tremendous pressure on Trump to backtrack, Doer said.

“Remember, he won the election last year on immigration and concerns about inflation. People didn’t vote for a trade war and they don’t want prices to go back up. If they do go up again, (Trump) is going to pay for it at the midterms.”

However, that does not mean Canadian businesses should just sit and wait for Trump to ease off, Doer added. And it does not mean turning our backs completely on the U.S. market.

“I mean, we’re never going to stop doing business with the U.S., but we do have to pursue more business with other parts of the world. It’s not an either-or situation; we need to maintain both. We need a future where we do business with other parts of the world.”

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca