“Power can close one door to show who is in charge. The problem begins when it discovers that, on the other side, someone has learned how to build five.”
WE HAD ALREADY WRITTEN ABOUT CANADA
We had already written about Canada when the trade dispute with the United States began to reveal something deeper than a debate over tariffs. In that first column, Canada appeared under U.S. pressure that used access to its market as a negotiating tool, while Ottawa responded and began looking more closely at other buyers, other routes, and other alliances. The thesis was simple: trade dependence could also become strategic vulnerability. Europe, China, India, and other markets began to acquire a different value, not because Canada was prepared to abandon the United States, but because it needed to demonstrate that it could choose. This second column continues from there. The difference is that this search for new doors no longer appears to be merely a temporary reaction: it is beginning to take political, economic, and strategic shape in a world where depending on a single exit is becoming increasingly costly.
“Canada did not just discover that other doors existed. What is new is that it has begun to see how much power a country gains when it can truly open them.”
THE NEIGHBOR THAT BEGAN LOOKING EAST
For decades, Canada enjoyed an extraordinary advantage and, at the same time, an extraordinary dependence. To the south stood the United States, the continent’s largest market, ready to buy oil, gas, minerals, lumber, automobiles, food, and much of what Canada’s enormous geography could produce. Integration went far beyond a simple relationship between seller and buyer, because entire industries were built as though the economic border mattered considerably less than the border drawn on the map.
But in 2026, that comfort began to reveal its other side. Canada did not suddenly discover Europe, because CETA has existed for years and transatlantic economic relations have a long history. What is new is the political speed of the rapprochement. Mark Carney arrived in Europe seeking to deepen the relationship, and Ursula von der Leyen publicly raised even the possibility of creating an unprecedented category of associate membership in the European Union for Canada. Carney and von der Leyen met on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, in Strasbourg, France.
The proposal still has a considerable political and legal road ahead, and no one should confuse it with Canadian accession to the EU. Nevertheless, the strategic message is difficult to ignore. Europe needs resources, energy, critical minerals, technology, and reliable partners. Canada needs alternative markets, investment, and greater capacity to determine its economic policy without having to look permanently toward Washington before doing so. We are not watching a move. We are watching a country begin to calculate the cost of having built too many rooms with only one exit.
“When the neighbor begins building a door toward the Atlantic, perhaps the problem is not that it discovered Europe, but that it began to remember that the world does not end at the U.S. border.”
THE TARIFF AS A HAMMER
The Trump administration has used tariffs as a central instrument of its economic policy. The logic is familiar. The United States possesses a gigantic market and can use access to that market as a negotiating instrument. From the American point of view, there are arguments involving domestic production, employment, the trade deficit, and economic security. The strategic problem appears when a tool designed to increase bargaining power also begins to change the behavior of those receiving the pressure.
Canada is not some distant economy shipping a few containers to the United States. For decades, the two countries built deeply integrated industrial chains. Automobiles, components, electricity, oil, gas, minerals, lumber, and food cross a border that functions simultaneously as a political boundary and an economic artery. Altering the conditions of that exchange does not simply mean changing a customs tariff, because it affects investment decisions that may last twenty or thirty years.
Ottawa responded to the trade tensions and, at the same time, accelerated its search for alternative markets. Here a consequence appears that deserves attention. A policy intended to remind Canada how much it needs the U.S. market may also end up reminding it how much it needs to stop depending on it. A tariff may obtain an immediate commercial concession, but a new port terminal, a European contract, or an alternative supply chain can remain for decades.
“The hammer remains formidable. The curious part begins when, after striking enough times, it discovers that the nail bought a toolbox.”
EUROPE OPENS A DOOR THAT DID NOT EXIST
On September 16, 2026, Ursula von der Leyen publicly proposed working toward a formula that could make Canada the first associate member of the European Union. The category, as it has been proposed, does not today exist in fully developed form within the EU architecture and would require resolving legal questions and obtaining political agreements among Europeans. Precisely for that reason, the statement carries an importance far greater than a diplomatic photograph in Strasbourg.
Europe is considering designing a new door because it considers Canada important enough to enter through it. Behind that door are trade, investment, defense, artificial intelligence, research, energy, critical minerals, economic security, digital trade, and cooperation in the Arctic. This is not a romantic declaration of transatlantic friendship. It is a convergence of interests between two economies observing an increasingly fragmented international system and seeking to reduce vulnerabilities.
Europe needs diversified suppliers of raw materials and energy. Canada needs diversified buyers for those raw materials and energy. Europe seeks security of supply, and Canada seeks security of demand. There is no need to write an excessively complicated geopolitical theory to understand what happens when someone who needs to buy finds someone who needs to stop depending on a single buyer.
“Brussels did not fall in love with the maple leaf. It simply opened the ledger, did the math, and discovered that Canada had considerably more than maple syrup.”
THE CANADIAN SUITCASE
Canada possesses a combination of resources that few developed states can bring together simultaneously. Oil, natural gas, uranium, potash, nickel, copper, gold, timber, fresh water, agriculture, and numerous critical minerals form part of an extraordinary material base. Added to that are universities, research, technological capacity, established institutions, and access to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. In a century preoccupied with energy, food, minerals, and security of supply, such an inventory takes on another dimension.
Europe needs precisely a significant part of that inventory. The energy transition requires enormous quantities of copper, nickel, and other minerals. Electrification increases the importance of grids and storage. Energy security requires politically stable suppliers. Technological development requires more resilient supply chains. And the Arctic, treated for decades almost as a vast frozen periphery, is acquiring growing economic, logistical, environmental, and strategic importance.
That is why Canada is not arriving in Europe asking someone to protect it from Washington. It arrives with resources Europe needs and with a developed economy capable of negotiating from a position considerably stronger than its proximity to the United States often allows people to appreciate. Europe is not engaging in charity either. It is looking for exactly what any major economic bloc seeks when the world becomes uncertain: options.
“Canada did not arrive in Brussels with its hand out. It arrived with oil, uranium, minerals, water, technology, and three oceans; the hand was extended to shake.”
ANOTHER LION IS GROWING
Canada continues to depend heavily on the U.S. market, and denying that reality would turn this column into propaganda. But confusing present dependence with permanent destiny would be equally mistaken. The Carney government has established the goal of considerably increasing trade with markets other than the United States, and recent data show significant growth in Canadian exports to other destinations, including Europe.
Canada also possesses something that the great economic transformations of the twenty-first century may make extraordinarily valuable. It has resources, territory, water, energy, food, technology, institutions, and a relatively small population compared with the physical and material magnitude of the country. If it succeeds in converting a greater share of its resources into industrial products, infrastructure, technology, and domestic value chains, its international weight could increase considerably over the coming decades.
That is why it is insufficient to describe it as a middle power seeking shelter. Canada can progressively become one of those countries whose weight will come not from militarily dominating a region, but from possessing what others need to keep their economies functioning. It is not yet one of the great lions capable of determining the rules of the international system, but it has several of the teeth that the next half-century will probably value.
“For decades everyone watched the enormous lion living to the south. Perhaps that is why no one noticed that the cub to the north had been growing for quite some time.”
THE TARIFF TRAP
Here Washington faces an interesting contradiction. If it maintains high trade pressure on Canada for too long, it strengthens the incentives for Ottawa to accelerate market diversification. If it substantially modifies that policy, it will have to explain why it is changing a tool it had presented as an effective mechanism for obtaining better conditions. Neither possibility necessarily means defeat, but both reveal the limits that appear when trade pressure becomes a structural part of the relationship.
Canada also does not need to completely replace the U.S. market with the European one tomorrow. That idea would be economically unrealistic. North American infrastructure, distances, pipelines, railroads, factories, and decades of industrial integration do not disappear because two leaders sign a document in Brussels. Diversification works differently. Ten percentage points less dependence already changes a negotiation; twenty can change a national strategy.
The real Canadian objective may be much simpler and, precisely for that reason, more important. Not to close the American door, but to open enough additional doors so that none becomes indispensable. The United States will probably remain a fundamental economic partner for a long time. The difference lies between being a fundamental partner and becoming a partner with no alternative.
“Canada does not need to stop selling to the neighbor. It only needs to find enough buyers for the neighbor to stop believing it is the only one with a wallet.”
THE STRANGE BUSINESS OF PRESSURING A PARTNER
One of the greatest historical sources of American power was not merely its military capacity. It was that millions of people, companies, and governments voluntarily wanted to enter its economic system. The dollar, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, universities, the consumer market, and institutional stability generated an extraordinary power of attraction. Much of that power worked precisely because it did not need to present itself every day as a threat.
Tariffs can be legitimate instruments of trade policy, and practically every major economy uses them. The problem appears when pressure on economic partners becomes persistent enough for them to incorporate diversification into strategic policy. Then a discussion about customs percentages begins producing ports, trade agreements, new shipping routes, industrial investments, and supply contracts that may survive long after the government that initiated the dispute.
The United States has the right to defend its interests. Canada and Europe have exactly the same right. The issue is not to moralize international trade, but to observe its consequences. When exercising power over a partner increases the economic value that partner assigns to becoming partially independent of you, perhaps it is worth reviewing the spreadsheet before celebrating the result.
“There are extraordinary business deals: pressure the customer until you obtain better terms, only to discover afterward that the customer used the meeting to ask your competitor for a business card.”
THE WORLD OF SECOND DOORS
Canada looks toward Europe while Europe seeks greater strategic autonomy. China expands commercial, financial, and industrial networks. India negotiates simultaneously with different centers of power. Countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East seek to maintain economic relations with multiple actors without becoming completely subordinate to any of them. What is emerging is not necessarily a world of two closed blocs, but one of multiple doors and intersecting dependencies.
This is particularly important for the United States because one of its great advantages for decades was occupying the center of numerous international networks. Losing that position does not require others to break relations with Washington. It is enough for them to build sufficient alternatives to reduce the cost of telling it no. Relative power can change without a single embassy closing and without a single military treaty being denounced.
Canada constitutes an especially interesting example because it shares geography, economic history, defense, and industrial chains with the United States. If even a country so deeply integrated begins to consider diversification strategically important, Washington should at least observe the phenomenon. Not because Canada is about to leave, but because it is discovering that staying does not necessarily mean depending.
“The problem with building too many walls is not merely what one keeps outside. It is that those left outside begin drawing maps in which one no longer appears at the center.”
THE MISUSE OF POWER
Power is not the problem. The United States uses its market and technology; China uses its industry and scale; Europe uses its market and regulatory capacity; India uses its economic and demographic size; Russia uses natural resources and military capacity. Every state with power will try to transform it into influence. The real discussion begins when that influence stops producing cooperation and starts manufacturing resistance.
The misuse of power appears when the ability to impose an immediate condition is confused with the ability to preserve a relationship over the long term. A power can win a negotiation while simultaneously planting the incentive for the other side to avoid finding itself in the same position again. It can obtain a trade concession and provoke a port investment. It can gain a percentage and lose a dependency.
Trust works differently from power. It cannot be imposed by decree, aircraft carrier, tariff, or threat. It is built slowly and can deteriorate much faster. When a partner begins to consider excessive dependence on another a strategic risk, the discussion has already ceased to be merely about trade. It has begun to be about autonomy.
“The misuse of power keeps a curious set of books: it immediately records what it obtained, but often forgets to register what it forced the other side to learn.”
THE LION AND THE SAVANNA
The United States continues to be one of the planet’s greatest economic, technological, financial, and military powers. To claim that it is isolated would be incorrect. It maintains extensive alliances, an enormous market, leading companies, world-class universities, abundant natural resources, and extraordinary innovative capacity. Precisely for that reason, it is worth asking what happens when such an accumulation of power is used in a way that encourages some partners to seek alternatives.
Canada allows us to observe the phenomenon without exaggerating it. It is not declaring an economic war against Washington or preparing a continental rupture. It is trying to expand markets, build alliances, and reduce vulnerabilities. Europe is not trying to immediately replace the United States in the Canadian economy either. It is taking advantage of an opportunity to strengthen relations with a country that possesses strategic resources Europe needs.
The result may appear modest at first. An agreement here, an investment there, another energy contract, a critical-minerals supply chain, port infrastructure. But that is often how economic relationships change. Not through one grand ceremony of rupture, but through hundreds of small decisions that one day make it possible to discover that what once seemed indispensable no longer is.
“The lion remains gigantic. Precisely for that reason, it is strange to watch it expend so much energy reminding the neighbor that it has teeth.”
IS THE LION FINDING ITSELF ALONE?
No. The facts do not allow us to say that the United States is finding itself alone. But neither do they require us to pretend that nothing is changing. Canada is seeking to reduce its relative economic dependence on the United States and deepen ties with Europe and other markets. Europe is seeking suppliers, investment, and strategic partners. These are concrete movements responding both to economic opportunities and to an international environment in which supply-chain security has acquired political importance.
The question in the title, therefore, is not intended to announce American isolation. It asks something more uncomfortable. Can a great power use its power in such a way that it ends up accelerating the autonomy of those most closely tied to it? Economic history offers numerous cases in which countries reacted to vulnerabilities by building alternative suppliers, buyers, and technologies. Canada also possesses the resources necessary to try.
Washington will remain a fundamental actor for Ottawa and will probably remain so for decades. But “fundamental” and “only” are completely different words. Canada appears interested in preserving the first while progressively eliminating the second. For a country accustomed to occupying an exceptional position within the Canadian economy, that distinction may prove considerably more important than any speech.
“The Lion is not finding itself alone. But some animals on the savanna are already discovering how much it costs to build roads that do not pass through its cave.”
WHEN THE LION TEACHES OTHERS TO ROAR
For decades, Canada prospered alongside the United States, and the United States also benefited enormously from Canada. Integration produced employment, energy, investment, shared industries, and one of the largest bilateral economic exchanges on the planet. Reducing that history to a relationship between dominant and dominated would be absurd. Precisely because of the depth of that partnership, the current tensions deserve particularly close attention.
The great irony is that American pressure may accelerate a Canadian transformation that probably would have occurred much more slowly. Canada possesses the resources, territory, institutions, and economic capacity to considerably expand its international presence. Europe offers it new strategic depth. Asia may offer another. The Arctic, another still. Each additional door reduces the relative weight of the one that for decades seemed inevitable.
Here, finally, the misuse of power appears. It does not consist simply of being strong or defending national interests. It consists of using an advantage in such a way that those who depend on it begin to regard that dependence as a problem. Then power achieves exactly what it did not intend to achieve: manufacturing autonomy in the other.
The United States wanted to remind Canada who the great lion of the savanna was. Perhaps the result will turn out to be considerably more ironic. Canada looked south, did the math, then looked toward Europe, the Pacific, and the Arctic, and began to remember something it had not needed to ask itself for decades: how much power it really possessed on its own.
“The great Lion wanted to show its teeth to the neighbor. The neighbor did not run away. It went to the mirror, opened its mouth, and discovered that it had teeth of its own.”
THE NUMBERS ARE CHANGING ROUTES TOO
The figures make it possible to measure what opening other doors actually means. Taking 2025 as a reference, Canada sold approximately USD 37 billion in goods to the European Union, while purchasing close to USD 55.1 billion in European products: around USD 92.1 billion annually in bilateral trade in goods alone.
From Canada to Europe go minerals, metals and precious products, nickel, iron ore, fertilizers, energy products, oilseeds, timber, agri-food products, machinery, and equipment; from Europe come mainly industrial machinery, chemical and pharmaceutical products, automobiles and components, transportation equipment, processed foods, and high-value-added manufactured goods.
Germany alone purchased approximately CAD 9.2 billion in Canadian goods during 2025. Canada still depends enormously on the U.S. market, but Europe demonstrates that the second door already exists: the real challenge is to make it wider.
“Diversifying does not mean abandoning the neighbor; it means making sure that no neighbor can close all the doors of the house by itself.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Statistics Canada. Canadian International Merchandise Trade. Data on exports, imports, commercial dependence on the United States, and market diversification.
• International Monetary Fund (IMF). Direction of Trade Statistics / World Economic Outlook. Comparative information on foreign trade, growth, and Canada’s economic relations with the United States, Europe, and Asia.
• European Commission – Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security. European Union Trade Relations with Canada. Official data on bilateral trade in goods, exports, and imports between Canada and the EU.
• Global Affairs Canada. Canada–European Union Trade and Investment Relations / CETA Statistics. Official figures on trade in goods and services, principal products exchanged, and the evolution of bilateral trade.
