OPINION: Carney courts India and Manila; he is buying insurance, not a spare America

A day of trucks heading south

September 22, in New York

Mark Carney set a deadline in New York on September 22, 2026. Trade negotiations with India should wrap up by the G20 summit on December 14 and 15, he said, according to the Associated Press.

Here is my prediction. He may well sign. And the map of our exports will barely move.

Not for lack of will. Because of arithmetic.

To see it, you need a unit. I propose this one: one day of exports to the United States.

C$1.6 billion a day

In July, Canada exported C$76.1 billion worth of goods, according to Statistics Canada. Countries other than the United States took C$25.6 billion of it.

The rest, about C$50.5 billion, went south. Over a 31-day month, that works out to roughly C$1.6 billion a day.

One day is a line of trucks at the Ambassador Bridge. The engine idling, the driver handing over papers, the gate going up. Thousands of times.

That is the unit of this piece. It will be used to weigh India, Manila, Jakarta and Mercosur.

Every day, C$1.6 billion crosses south.

Two and a half days of America

C$3.9 billion in a year

On September 21, Global Affairs Canada published the India numbers. They are honest. They need to be read to the end.

In 2025, merchandise trade between the two countries reached C$13.6 billion. Canadian exports to India: C$3.9 billion. Mostly vegetables, fuels and wood pulp.

Divide C$3.9 billion by C$1.6 billion a day.

A year of India, two and a half days of America.

Not a week. Not three days.

Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu also met in Mumbai with executives from Mahindra, JSW, Bajaj and CAE. He is announcing a Team Canada trade mission to India next month. The department adds that four rounds of negotiations have been completed.

I’ll say it early, because everything else flows from it. I am for this agreement. I am against the idea that it will replace anything.

C$70 billion by 2030

The stated goal is bigger. Sidhu wants to double bilateral trade to C$70 billion a year by 2030, goods and services included.

In 2025, that total trade stood at C$30.4 billion. Services made up nearly two-thirds of it. Service exports to India reached C$15.2 billion, mostly tied to education, the department notes.

In other words, the top product we sell to India is seats in our classrooms. Meanwhile, the number of study permit holders in Canada fell by 140,827 in a year, according to Statistics Canada.

This piece stands with those negotiating elsewhere, and against the American demand in August to keep watch over those negotiations. Because in July, the US share of our exports fell to its lowest level since 1997, pandemic aside.

A small customer, a big door. Keep the door.

Manila at more than 90%

September 22, in Manila

The same day, in Manila, Maninder Sidhu spoke to Reuters. Free trade negotiations with the Philippines and with ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, are more than 90% complete, he said.

Ottawa wants both agreements ready for Mark Carney’s visit to Manila in November.

The joint statement by ASEAN and Canadian ministers, dated September 22, points the same way. It aims for a conclusion by the ASEAN summit in November, and a signing in 2027.

It would be ASEAN’s first free trade agreement with a North American partner, the text notes.

Sixteenth partner

And yet the same statement gives the scale. In 2025, Canada was ASEAN’s 16th trading partner.

Sixteenth trading partner. Tenth source of foreign direct investment.

For ten countries. That’s not much. It is a door.

Sidhu is betting on energy. More than five liquefied natural gas projects are in development on the Pacific coast, all facing Asia, he told Reuters.

Plan A, he added, has always been diversification, whatever happens with our partners.

Sixteenth today. First North American partner tomorrow, maybe.

Jakarta signed, Mercosur revived

Signed, not in force

The third name on the list is already written. The comprehensive economic partnership agreement with Indonesia is signed. It is not in force, according to Global Affairs Canada’s registry of agreements.

Signed does not mean open. Between the pen and the dock lies ratification.

The fourth name has a long history. Negotiations with Mercosur, suspended since 2021, resumed in September 2025 after a meeting in Brasília between Maninder Sidhu and Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, according to the law firm Gardiner Roberts.

Eighteen countries at the table

The Public Policy Forum did the count on September 10. Canada is negotiating with six partners, eighteen countries in all.

It is already the only G7 country with agreements with every other G7 member. It has fifteen other agreements, covering 51 countries, writes the author, Steve Verheul, Canada’s former chief negotiator for CUSMA and for the agreement with Europe.

There is Indonesia, signed. There are the Philippines, past 90%. There is ASEAN, targeted for November. There is Mercosur, revived. There is India, promised for December.

Agreements, Canada has plenty of. Customers outside America, far fewer.

That is the real question of diversification. It is not legal. It is commercial.

Signing is easy. Selling, much less so.

What Washington wanted to watch

August, the talks collapse

There is one thing these agreements are already worth, though. Washington said so without meaning to.

During the August talks, the United States sought some form of oversight over Canada’s negotiations with other countries, the Public Policy Forum writes. The text calls it an “apparent” demand.

The talks failed in August. Washington then imposed new 50% duties on Canadian goods. Reuters, on September 3, saw a stiffer test ahead for our exporters.

The price of an option

Nobody asks to watch over something worthless.

Mark Carney put it his own way, quoted by the Forum. Our close ties with the United States “have become weaknesses we must correct.”

If India, Manila and Mercosur truly weighed nothing, nobody in Washington would want to read our drafts.

Washington understood that. So did we.

Diversification is worth something first as an option. The right to sign elsewhere. The right to say no without losing every customer.

The Forum calls these American efforts to limit our negotiations “particularly concerning.” It recommends preserving, above all, our ability to negotiate outside North America.

A right someone wants to take from you has value.

66.35%

Gravity, according to EDC

Now for the strongest objection, and it comes from serious people.

Geography always wins. “Sheer gravity alone pulls exporters to the U.S. market,” Export Development Canada’s chief economist, Stuart Bergman, told Reuters on September 3.

Verheul writes it too. Geography, history and the pull of the American economy will probably keep the United States our main destination.

That is true. And the July number says something new.

The lowest since 1997

The US share was 72.64% a year earlier, according to Reuters. The US share was 69.39% in June. The US share fell to 66.35% in July.

That is the lowest since 1997, pandemic aside, the Forum notes. Since the start of the year, the share has hovered around 68%, against 73% a year earlier.

Exports to other countries rose 7.4% in July. A third straight monthly increase. A record C$25.6 billion, according to Statistics Canada.

Gravity exists. And yet it has just lost six points in a year.

Bergman himself calls staying under the 70% mark encouraging.

Gravity holds. It is no longer standing still.

Iron, fuel and canola

The Netherlands, China, Germany

Now look at what made the record. This is where it costs.

The increases to the Netherlands came from iron ore, nuclear fuel and crude oil. To Germany, copper ores. To China, a range of products, Statistics Canada writes.

Canola jumped 43.2% in July. Aircraft and transportation equipment, 34.9%.

Resources. Mostly resources.

The rest of the table follows. The surplus with the United States shrank from C$10.3 billion to C$5.9 billion in a month. The deficit with other countries fell to C$5.1 billion, its lowest since January 2021.

Verheul says it bluntly: turning away from the American market will first mean selling more natural resources and fewer manufactured goods.

Sixteen days of America

Back to the unit. The record month outside the United States, C$25.6 billion, equals about sixteen days of exports to the south at the July pace.

Sixteen days is a lot more than two and a half. It is also a record carried by ore, fuel and oil. Not by autos.

The progress is real. It is mineral. Who will sell our auto parts in Manila?

So the unit changes meaning. It no longer measures only size. It measures who is left on the dock.

Ore finds buyers. The factory is still looking.

Eight border crossings

The car that keeps crossing

A car assembled in Ontario can cross the border up to eight times before final assembly, the Forum points out.

Eight times. Parts that leave, come back, leave again. A supply chain stitched together across the line.

No agreement with Manila re-stitches that chain. No agreement with Delhi. No agreement with Brasília.

Steel, aluminum and autos are the sectors most exposed to American measures, Verheul writes. They are also the ones diversification helps most slowly.

The ones who wait

I think of the night shifts in parts plants. The sound of a press shutting down early. The locker emptied on a Friday.

About 55,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared in Canada between January 2025 and January 2026, according to Bank of Canada data cited by the BBC.

Those workers would not be selling their parts in Jakarta next year, even with a signed agreement. They are waiting on America.

Diversification protects them poorly. It protects the country.

That is what I find hardest to write. I don’t know what to say to whoever is emptying that locker. Except that the country…

Diversifying protects the country. The worker keeps waiting.

The price of Delhi

Six diplomats expelled

There is another cost, and it has no price tag.

In 2023, Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead in British Columbia. The RCMP later said it had evidence linking agents of the Indian government to homicides and other violent acts in Canada, the AP recalls.

Ottawa expelled six diplomats from India. India denied any involvement. It accuses Canada of harboring Sikh separatists.

The first trip since 2018

Mark Carney rebuilt fast. His visit to India earlier this year was the first bilateral visit by a Canadian prime minister since 2018, according to the AP.

The Forum warns that some new markets will raise ethical and moral questions. The Canadian public will not stay indifferent to relationships that put our values at stake, it writes.

I would sign anyway. But I would want the Nijjar file to stay open while we sign.

A trade deal does not erase an investigation. How long can the two live side by side?

Trade can be negotiated. Justice cannot.

The third option, already tried

Pierre Trudeau, Stephen Harper

Canada has tried this before. Several times.

Pierre Trudeau’s Third Option. Stephen Harper’s Global Markets Action Plan. Both had only limited success, the Forum recalls.

The agreement with Europe offers a recent yardstick. Only 60% of its potential value is being used, according to Global Affairs Canada as cited by the Forum.

The beef that never left

The Forum cites beef. Despite preferential access in Europe, few Canadian producers switched markets. European rules on hormones and carcass washing were too costly to follow.

The American relationship was too well-oiled, too smooth, too profitable to justify the effort.

Access is not a customer. A customer is not a habit.

And yet the same author names what is different today.

Yesterday we diversified on principle. Today, out of necessity.

Over 30% of world trade

What has changed

The crucial difference, Verheul writes, is that the United States has become an unreliable, even hostile, partner. Hence unprecedented public support for diversification.

Pierre Trudeau did not have 50% duties on his back. Neither did Stephen Harper.

The European Union and the twelve countries of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership together account for more than 30% of world trade, according to the Forum. More than double the share that involves the United States.

Associate member

The week before, Mark Carney raised the prospect of Canada becoming the European Union’s first associate member, the AP reports.

Deeper ties with Europe would keep any single country from controlling our markets or undermining our sovereignty, he argued, according to the same dispatch.

That is the right argument. It is not commercial. It is political.

It does not promise a replacement customer. It promises that no customer will ever again dictate our other contracts.

Europe does not replace America. It keeps us from being locked in.

Insurance, not a spare

C$300 billion more

The government wants to double exports outside the United States in ten years. That means C$300 billion in additional trade, according to the Forum.

It is possible. July showed a record pace. But the road is measured in years. The factory counts in weeks.

Insurance does not replace the house. It lets you sleep.

The real math

The honest math fits in three lines.

India, in goods: two and a half days of America a year. The record outside the United States: sixteen days a month. The rest of the month: America.

It is not a spare America: India weighs two and a half days. It is not a customer for the factory: July’s record came from ore. It is not a whim: four rounds of talks with India are done. It is not a detail for Washington: it wanted to look over our negotiations. It is not free: the Nijjar file weighs between the two countries.

It is insurance.

Diversification does not free us from the United States. It frees us from needing their permission.

It is less spectacular than a spare America. It is sturdier.

You don’t buy a new neighbor. You buy an emergency exit.

The right to sign is worth more than Manila

November, December

November, Manila. December, the G20 and maybe India. Then 2027, the planned signing with ASEAN.

Each date will bring a photo and a handshake. None would bring, by winter, a new customer to the Ontario parts plant.

The workers will have to be told, without slogans. Told, too, why we should sign anyway.

No promises. Just the numbers.

Our share of it

Can our factory jobs wait for Delhi and Manila to become real customers?

The right to negotiate elsewhere is the one Washington wanted to watch over. We kept it.

It does not feed a factory yet. It keeps a factory from being shut on someone else’s orders.

Two and a half days of America, insurance, and the right to sign.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Statistics Canada — international merchandise trade for July 2026, September 3, 2026
• Global Affairs Canada — Sidhu and Goyal in Mumbai on the India agreement, September 21, 2026
• Associated Press — Carney targets an India deal by the G20, September 22, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Public Policy Forum — Steve Verheul on diversifying Canada’s trade, September 10, 2026
• Reuters — the US share of exports falls below 70%, September 3, 2026
• Gardiner Roberts (Legal 500) — Mercosur negotiations resume, September 10, 2025