Canada is looking for its second market

A year into the tariff era, the numbers have started to move. Export Development Canada reports that the US share of Canadian goods exports fell from 76 percent to 72 percent between 2024 and 2025, and from 70 to 67 percent across goods and services together. Growth in non-US markets offset the American decline. Ottawa has set itself the goal of doubling exports to non-US markets by 2035.

Read closely, though, and the diversification is thinner than it looks.

Gold is doing the heavy lifting

EDC notes that much of the non-US export strength came from higher gold shipments, not from a broad base of companies finding new customers. The average Canadian mid-market firm still sells where it always sold. The national numbers moved; most balance sheets did not. Which means the second-market question is still open at the level where it actually gets decided, one company at a time.

Asia is where the demand sits

In EDC's own confidence survey, exporters name Europe and the Asia-Pacific as the top regions for near-term diversification. We would put it less politely: Asia is where the growth is, and the companies that show up in person, early, will hold the relationships everyone else has to buy their way into later.

Diversification is a verb

From where we sit in Hong Kong, a real move into Asia is three concrete jobs, not a strategy slide. Finding the buyers who want what you already make. Sourcing product or components in the region on terms you have verified yourself. And building distribution so your goods reach Asian customers without a chain of intermediaries eating the margin. Each one runs on introductions, and introductions are a local trade.

Canada wants a second market. So does much of the world right now. The companies that get there first will not be the ones with the best memo.

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