Canada's push to diversify trade away from U.S. seeing mixed results: report

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OTTAWA — A small group of cities across the country drove Canada’s progress on diversifying trade in 2025, while others fell behind, says a new report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

The report says Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Saskatoon and Kelowna, B.C., are the cities that made the strongest gains in export diversification beyond the U.S. market last year.

Of the cities surveyed, Calgary and Ottawa-Gatineau posted the largest increases in exports to non-U.S. markets between 2024 and 2025 — 64.67 per cent and 64.04 per cent, respectively.

Toronto’s non-U.S. exports increased by 32.82 per cent, followed by Saskatoon (32.04 per cent) and Kelowna (28.63 per cent). Non-U.S. exports increased by 16.8 per cent countrywide.

“Together, this relatively small group of cities account for a disproportionate share of Canada’s recent export diversification gains, reinforcing how uneven the country’s trade adjustment remains across regions,” says the report.

The report says many other cities didn’t see the same gains. It says manufacturing regions in Ontario continued to face weaker overall trade performance and “limited diversification momentum.”

“Highly U.S.-integrated manufacturing regions, including Oshawa, London and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, are showing some of the clearest signs of trade-related economic stress,” says the report.

“These cities remain heavily tied to the U.S. market, while growth in exports outside the U.S. has been limited or insufficient to offset broader weakness in trade activity and local economic conditions.”

The report says the data points to a “growing divergence” in local trade performance across Canada.

“Some cities are successfully expanding into global markets and building more diversified export bases, while others remain more exposed to U.S. demand, trade disruptions and policy uncertainty,” it says.

The chamber released a report last year that said Calgary; Saint John, N.B.; and Windsor, Ont., were the Canadian cities that would be hit the hardest by U.S. tariffs. That report said some Canadian cities, including Victoria and Halifax, were less exposed to tariffs because they export more to Asia and Europe.

“A year later, that exposure is seemingly showing up in economic outcomes locally, although it was not an exact match with who we expected could have been worst hit,” says the new report. “As expected, Canadian cities with greater exposure to U.S. trade are experiencing more local economic stress.”

The federal government has set out to double non-U.S. exports over the next decade. The government’s spring economic update said non-U.S. goods and services exports increased by $33 billion in 2025 over 2024.

While the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade is due for a review this year, U.S. President Donald Trump has used different tools to hit countries around the world with tariffs. Canada is being hammered by Trump’s sector-specific duties on steel, aluminum, automobiles and cabinetry.

The chamber’s new report says recent Statistics Canada data on business responses to U.S. tariffs suggests many Canadian firms are “adapting cautiously” rather than fundamentally repositioning their operations.

The report says that while exports to non-U.S. markets rose sharply between 2024 and 2025, much of that growth came from existing exporters expanding their reach rather than new firms entering global markets. The number of Canadian exporters selling to non-U.S. markets increased by just six per cent year over year.

“While fewer businesses report taking no action compared to a year ago, relatively few are actively diversifying sales or suppliers outside the U.S.,” the report says. “Instead, firms are more likely to be raising prices, increasing domestic sourcing or delaying expansion plans.”

The report says data suggests many businesses still expect Canada-U.S. trade conditions to stabilize, despite signs that the global trading environment is “becoming more fragmented and less predictable.”

It says trade conditions are likely to remain more volatile, more uncertain and more uneven going forward. The ability to adapt, it says, depends on where firms operate, what they produce and how dependent they are on a single market.

The report also says about 90 per cent of non-exporting Canadian businesses still describe their operations as “local.”

“The risk is that Canadian firms may be underinvesting in longer-term diversification at precisely the moment when resilience and market expansion are becoming more important to competitiveness and growth,” says the report.

“If Canada wants diversification to become structural, more firms — especially (small and medium-sized enterprises) — will need to participate in global trade.”

Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said in a news release that Canada’s trade relationship with the United States will “always matter deeply” but the research shows resilience increasingly depends on the ability to diversify.

“Some Canadian cities are adapting quickly to this era of repeated global economic shocks, while others remain highly exposed to U.S. policy and demand uncertainty,” she said. “Canada does not just need more trade — it needs more traders.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 27, 2026.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press