Carney’s Pledge to Double Non-US Trade in a Decade a ‘Difficult Goal’ to Achieve, Study Finds

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with reporters in Tokyo, Japan, on March 7, 2026. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s goal to double non-U.S. exports within the next 10 years will be challenging to achieve, a new study by the think tank Fraser Institute says, based on previous governments’ efforts to diversify trade.

The federal government has maintained a focus on diversifying trade away from the United States in an effort to reduce reliance on its southern neighbour in the face of U.S. tariffs. Canada has been hit hard by sectoral tariffs targeting steel, aluminum, automobiles, and lumber.

The Carney government has set a goal to double non-U.S. exports over the next decade, which it expects to generate $300 billion more in trade.

The Fraser Institute study, released April 28, said that historical experience suggests the government’s “ambitious” goal will be difficult to achieve.

“This federal government is not the first to prioritize diversifying trade away from the United States, and it’s important to understand the limited successes of previous efforts by other governments to do so,” Jock Finlayson, a Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

The study looked at Canada’s trade dependence on the United States from 1999 to 2024 and found that it weakened “only modestly” over this period, despite previous Canadian governments’ efforts to diversify exports away from the United States.

The total share of good exports going to the United States decreased from 86.7 percent in 1999 to 76.3 percent in 2024, the think tank said. Similarly, the share of Canada’s services exports going to the United States decreased from 60.4 percent in 1999 to 51.6 percent in 2024.

The report found a number of potential factors that influence Canada–U.S. trade, including Canada’s proximity to the United States, the two countries’ shared language, similar legal standards and business practices, as well as the cross-border transportation networks.

“There are myriad reasons why so many Canadian exports flow to the United States, and counteracting those powerful factors to steer trade away from the U.S. has proven difficult in the past,” Steven Globerman, co-author of the study and Fraser Institute senior fellow, said in a statement.

The report notes that these findings suggest Canada will face “significant challenges” in reducing its export dependence on the United States moving forward.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has commented on the Canadian government’s approach to diversifying trade, saying that even if Canada does diversify, it is “still going to be doing a lot of business with the U.S.”

He said Ottawa can make “compelling” cases from industry to industry as to why Canada is the best partner for the United States to do business with, noting that the two countries are integrated, have personal relationships between suppliers, and have a shared customer base.

Trade With China

Part of the Carney government’s plan to double non-U.S. exports and reduce economic reliance on the United States has been to expand trade with China. The move has been criticized by opposition parties, China experts, human rights activists, as well as the U.S. administration.

The Fraser Institute report found the most prominent recipient of Canada’s non-U.S. exports is China, with goods exports to China increasing from an average of 4.2 percent between 1999 and 2011 to 10.4 percent between 2012 and 2024.

Ottawa signed several agreements with Beijing during Carney’s visit to China in January, including on electric vehicles, law enforcement cooperation, energy, and finance. During the visit, Carney said Canada and China were in a “strategic relationship” and relations between the two countries had entered “a new era.”

These remarks represented a shift in tone from when Carney called China the “biggest security threat” to Canada and “one of the largest threats with respect to foreign interference” during the election campaign last year.

The U.S. administration has criticized Canada’s move to get closer to China, with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying it could jeopardize the July 1 review of the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement on free trade.

Carney has said his government isn’t pursuing a free trade deal with China, and that the two countries are merely addressing some ongoing tariff and trade issues.

Canada’s pursuit to deepen relations with the Chinese regime threatens U.S. security and is creating a “strategically unsustainable situation” for the United States, former chief of staff of the U.S. National Security Council Alex Gray said in an interview with Jan Jekielek, senior editor and host of The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program, in February.

According to government data, 65.5 percent of Canada’s two-way trade in 2024 was with the United States, while only 5.2 percent was with China. Canada’s exports to China are about one-third the value of its imports from China.