This article was first published by The Hill Times.
For more than four decades, Canadian prosperity has rested on access to consumer markets in the United States. If it was made in Canada, it was probably headed south of the border. Canadian exports to the U.S. currently make up three quarters of our total exports, providing a basis for this country’s prosperity. However, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has repeatedly made clear, this era has come to an end. The hard reality is that U.S. is no longer the centrepiece of global trade, and its internal volatility has exposed Canada to a precarious dance of “trade talks” with no obvious solution.
For the Carney government, the task at hand is to align Canadian trade within a rising multipolar system. Rather than remaining a subordinate partner within a declining American empire, Canada is now beginning to pursue its own grand strategy. In this sense, Carney’s pivot away from the U.S. is less about trade, and more about geopolitical realignment. Where Canadians once sought security through regional alliances, we must now seek economic integration by building multilateral partnerships across Asia, Europe, and the Global South.
Washington’s inward turn and fevered jingoism is dividing the global order and reshaping the world’s supply chains. For Canada, this new century demands more than rhetorical engagement; it requires reorientation. As the U.S. order unwinds, the centre of global gravity is now shifting decisively to Asia. Together, China, India, and south-east Asia are emerging as the world’s largest consumer market. Driven by the twin engines of Chinese industrialization and Asian consumption, the region’s rise is not merely economic—it is geostrategic. Indeed, over half of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) now originates in the Indo-Pacific.
Using finance, energy, and technology as instruments of sovereignty rather than dependence, Carney is moving Canadian trade into global markets.
The Carney Pivot
Carney has been unusually busy on the global stage. Rather than deepening integration with the U.S., the Carney government is exploring new relationships abroad. His government has expanded defence ties with Britain and the European Union, intensified trade co-operation with nations in the Middle East and Asia, and re-opened dialogue with China. More than an empty gesture, these discussions represent a blueprint for expanding Canadian trade and establishing long-term alignment.
Using finance, energy, and technology as instruments of sovereignty rather than dependence, Carney is moving Canadian trade into global markets. Canada is a resource powerhouse with a capacity to set its own course while providing the needed supply chains for the future of the global economy. This future includes robotics, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, battery storage, nuclear power, and advanced defence technologies. By leveraging its natural resources, Canada is redrawing its place in the world.
The Carney government’s 2025 federal budget represents a bold attempt to begin a new era of national rejuvenation. Rooted in massive fiscal spending, ambitious industrial planning, and national co-ordination, Carney’s strategy is focused on global engagement. The federal government’s $486.9-billion spending blueprint rejects the complacency of incrementalism in favour of self-sufficiency and sustained international outreach. By channeling unprecedented investments into critical infrastructure, clean energy corridors, and defence modernization, Ottawa is catalyzing a paradigm shift: away from the comfortable vassalage of the past and toward the autonomy befitting a sovereign nation.
Canadian Grand Strategy
The truth is that the Carney government will need all the courage and support that Canadians can provide in order to compete on the global stage. This means more than speeches, it means capitalizing on Canadian energy, minerals, agriculture, and knowledge-based industries in order to integrate into Asia’s industrial and green transition, participating in technology standards-setting, and expanding our diplomatic and financial presence within major cities across the Global South. Put simply, we must treat emerging markets as more than an export destination, we must treat these new customers as an ecosystem upon which Canada’s future prosperity now depends.
So what are the challenges ahead? As many analysts have concluded, this country simply does not have a national innovation system. We have a patchwork of “programs.” This will need to change if Canadians want to compete in global markets. Canadian firms are global leaders in infrastructure, mining, digital services, clean technology, artificial intelligence, and sustainable finance. We have excellent research programs and first-class universities. But we lack a coherent, mission-oriented industrial strategy, and we struggle to scale companies into global champions. The result: strong idea generation, weak commercialization, and a steady diaspora of founders and capital into the U.S. and now Asia.
In an era in which the unipolar certainties of the post-Cold War world have collapsed, the Canadian economy now stands at an inflection point. Under Carney’s leadership, Canada may create a firm foundation to anchor itself as it seeks to become self-determining. Leveraging long-term investment and institutional reform will depend on establishing a distinctly Canadian approach to global trade—multilateral engagement without dogma, co-operation without subservience, globalization without militarization. Beyond the usual technocratic policy and planning, Canada will need to evolve from a proxy state within a fading American empire into an architect of its own grand strategy in a world undergoing geopolitical reconfiguration.
