US President Donald Trump’s latest tariff salvo against Canada landed just as Mark Carney was setting out on a mission to insulate his country from the fallout of the trade war.

As the US leader declared an additional 10% levy on Canadian goods this weekend — angered by a critical advertisement from the province of Ontario — Carney was starting his first trip to Asia as prime minister. The goal: repairing commercial ties and reducing Canada’s dependence on its unpredictable southern neighbour. 

Carney has spent recent days at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Malaysia, seeking to finalise a free trade deal between Canada and the 11-member bloc. He’s next heading to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in South Korea, where he’ll meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

As Canada counts the job losses from Trump’s punishing tariffs, Carney is urgently building relationships with Asian giants to forge an economic counterweight to the US, which buys three-quarters of the country’s exports. It’s a screeching U-turn from just a year ago, when relations with China and India were at their weakest in decades.

That new mindset has stretched beyond Ottawa, from Toronto’s financial towers to Alberta’s oil sands and British Columbia’s mines and ports. Canadian executives are reorienting their attention towards Asia and finding new ways to shuttle the country’s abundant natural resources across the Pacific. They’re betting that deeper integration will cushion the blow from Trump’s levies, which have sparked not only economic upheaval but a cultural backlash against American goods.

“The speed of the changes is very striking,” said Jeff Nankivell, head of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a government-backed, arm’s-length group that recently opened an office in Singapore. He was previously a senior diplomat for Canada in China and Hong Kong.

While almost every country is trying to diversify its export markets to counter US tariffs, it’s “an existential issue for Canadians,” Nankivell said.

Among residents, concern over Trump’s policies is so strong that more Canadians currently see the US as an “enemy or potential threat” than they do China or India, according to a recent poll from the Angus Reid Institute. Carney has laid bare his intentions to redirect his country’s trade focus, outlining plans last week to double exports to markets outside of the US over the next decade.

The shift is particularly apparent — and critical — in west coast trade centres such as the far northwest port of Prince Rupert, which promises an ocean journey to Shanghai nearly three days faster than from Los Angeles. The city of just 12,000 people is in the process of a yearslong expansion plan for rail bridges, freight handling yards, logistics parks and propane export facilities, ready to capitalise on a renewed Asia focus.

“We know that there are customers overseas for so much of what we produce here,” British Columbia Premier David Eby said in a May speech ahead of his own trade mission to Asia. “Our province will be the engine of the new Canada that is more independent, that is less reliant on the United States.”

Source: Bloomberg

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