Ottawa has created a Strategic Exports Office inside Global Affairs Canada and named a 14 member corporate advisory council, betting that state backed deal making can double non-U.S. exports before the next American tariff wall goes up on August 19
BRAMPTON, Ontario and OTTAWA, August 2, 2026 (Peacock Tariff Consulting) – Canada has moved its trade diversification ambition from rhetoric into institutional form, standing up a Strategic Exports Office charged with winning large foreign contracts for Canadian firms as Ottawa confronts a second summer of escalating American tariffs.
International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu announced the office in Brampton, Ontario, alongside the launch of a Strategic Exports Advisory Council drawn from the chief executives of 14 of Canada’s largest companies and business organisations. The office sits within Global Affairs Canada and will be run in close collaboration with Export Development Canada.
“We are launching Canada’s first-ever strategic exports office, working side by side to help our best companies win the biggest contracts in the toughest markets around the world,” Sidhu said, according to Global News.
“Think of the strategic exports office as your government-level dealmaker,” he added. “It brings strategic advocacy, government financing, and diplomatic support together in one place.”
The timing is not coincidental. In roughly two and a half weeks, on August 19, an additional 50 per cent United States tariff takes effect on nearly US$20 billion of Canadian goods under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a statute the United States has never before used to impose duties. Unlike most earlier American measures, those tariffs apply regardless of whether a good qualifies for preferential treatment under the Canada United States Mexico Agreement.
Against that backdrop, the export office is Ottawa’s answer to a question it has been asked repeatedly since 2025: what is the plan that does not depend on Washington changing its mind.
What the office is and how it will operate
According to the Global Affairs Canada news release, the Strategic Exports Office will “strengthen Canada’s ability to secure international business opportunities and coordinate senior-level commercial engagement in strategic sectors, including aerospace and defence, infrastructure and energy.”
Three functions are specified. The office will identify and advance large scale export opportunities critical to Canada’s economic interests. It will coordinate whole of government engagement in support of Canadian firms. And it will support targeted advocacy by senior government officials where that advocacy can be decisive.
The last of those is the operative one, and Sidhu was explicit about the deficiency it is meant to fix. Asked why Ottawa could not simply use existing bodies such as Export Development Canada to advocate for Canadian businesses abroad, he said Canada is “losing out on business because we’re not as coordinated as other countries.”
“They would get to the finish line, another state leader would swoop in, a trade minister would swoop in and make a call and billions of dollars of deals would be lost,” Sidhu said, describing the experience of Canadian firms competing for large foreign contracts.
That is a candid description of how large infrastructure, defence and energy procurements are actually decided in much of the world, and an acknowledgment that Canada has been structurally under equipped to compete on those terms. Global Affairs Canada described the mandate as requiring “a sophisticated blend of Global Affairs Canada’s trade diplomacy function and Export Development Canada’s market intelligence and export credit financing expertise.”
The office was announced in Budget 2025. Its establishment now, three weeks before the Section 338 deadline, converts a budget line into an operating institution at the moment of maximum political salience.
The advisory council
The Strategic Exports Advisory Council names a roster heavily weighted toward the sectors the office intends to prioritise. Its members are Ayman Antoun of OpenText, Lisa Baiton of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Matthew Bromberg of CAE, Sherry Brydson of De Havilland, Eric Desaulniers of Nouveau Monde Graphite, Ian Edwards of AtkinsRéalis, Tim Gitzel of Cameco, Daniel Goldberg of Telesat, Mike Greenley of MDA Space, Candace Laing of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Alexandre L’Heureux of WSP, Éric Martel of Bombardier, Scott Thompson of Scotiabank and Philip Witherington of Manulife.
Global Affairs Canada said the council represents hundreds of thousands of jobs across Canada and will provide “real-time feedback” on how best to support exporters, advising the minister on opportunities and challenges in trade diversification and on the operations of the office itself.
The composition tells its own story about where Ottawa believes the diversification upside lies. Aerospace and space are represented four times over, through CAE, De Havilland, Bombardier and MDA Space. Engineering and infrastructure appear through AtkinsRéalis and WSP. Energy and critical minerals are covered by CAPP, Cameco and Nouveau Monde Graphite. Telecommunications and software appear through Telesat and OpenText. Financial capacity is represented by Scotiabank and Manulife.
Consumer goods, agriculture and food processing, and the small and medium sized manufacturers that make up the bulk of Canada’s exporter base are not directly represented. That is a defensible design choice for an office focused on large contracts, but it defines the constituency the office will and will not serve.
The target and the numbers behind it
The stated objective is to double Canadian exports to markets beyond the United States by 2035. Prime Minister Mark Carney set that target in an October 2025 pre budget speech, framing it as generating an additional $300 billion in trade over a decade.
Global Affairs Canada offered several data points in support of progress toward the goal. Goods exports to non American markets rose roughly 17 per cent from 2024 to 2025. Exports of goods and services to non American markets increased by $33 billion in 2025 compared with 2024. And over the past year the federal government says it has supported more than $28 billion in international sales of strategic exports.
“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney, we have already secured more than $28 billion in international sales for Canadian companies,” Sidhu said in the release. “Today’s announcement builds on that work and accelerates it. That’s why we are bringing together leaders from some of Canada’s biggest companies, alongside diplomatic and financial specialists, as Team Canada. Canadian exports power our economy. They support millions of jobs and strengthen communities in every province and territory.”
The arithmetic behind the ten year target is demanding. Canada’s merchandise exports have historically run at roughly three quarters United States destined. Doubling the non American share in a decade requires sustained annual growth in overseas exports well above the long run trend, in markets where Canadian firms have thinner distribution, weaker brand recognition and longer logistics chains than incumbent European and Asian competitors.
The 17 per cent increase from 2024 to 2025 is a genuine result, and Sidhu is entitled to cite it. It is also a figure produced during a year in which the American market was being actively closed to Canadian goods, meaning some of that growth reflects diversion of supply rather than creation of new demand. Whether it persists once the bilateral relationship stabilises is the open question.
The pressure that produced the policy
The office arrives in the middle of the most disruptive period in Canada United States commercial relations since the Auto Pact era.
Three presidential proclamations signed July 20 impose an additional 50 per cent duty on specified Canadian products effective August 19, citing Canadian discrimination against American commerce in motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages and dairy. Each proclamation invokes a different Canadian policy: the provincial and territorial decisions to stop stocking American alcohol, Canada’s 25 per cent retaliatory surtax on American vehicles and parts, and the administration of dairy tariff rate quotas under CUSMA.
The scope extends far beyond the three named sectors. Legal analyses from Holland & Knight and Blake, Cassels & Graydon list covered goods including electronics, machinery, wood and paper products, industrial chemicals, textiles, plastics, furniture, leather goods, hockey equipment, cement and consumer products. USTR puts the coverage at nearly US$20 billion across hundreds of eight digit classifications.
That sits on top of an already heavy sectoral structure. Canada remains subject to 50 per cent Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminium and copper. Softwood lumber carries a 20.56 per cent antidumping duty and a 14.63 per cent countervailing duty, alongside a 10 per cent Section 232 tariff imposed in October 2025, producing an effective rate near 35 per cent for most producers pending a final Commerce determination expected in August. Canadian producers supply about 75 per cent of the softwood the United States imports, and softwood imports into the American market fell 28 per cent in the year to January.
Nor is the legal ground stable. The administration’s earlier emergency powers tariffs were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2026, prompting a shift to older statutes. A 10 per cent global tariff imposed under Section 122 expired July 24. Section 338 has never been used and is widely expected to be challenged in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
The CUSMA review offers no near term resolution. The fifth joint review of the agreement took place July 1, with Canada United States Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc pressing for movement on sectoral tariffs covering steel, aluminium, autos and lumber. The session produced no renewal. Analysts have warned the agreement is drifting toward what one group of Canadian trade experts called a zombie state, in force until 2036 but without the political commitment that made it useful.
Carney, meeting the premiers in Charlottetown in late July, kept the retaliation option open without triggering it. “If these tariffs or other measures come into force, there’s a full range of things that we can do,” he said, adding that “everything is on the table if there’s no agreement.” He declined to elaborate, saying retaliation talk would be counterproductive while negotiations continue.
Diversification is the strategy that does not require Washington’s agreement. That is its principal virtue, and it is why the office exists.
Reaction
Sidhu’s framing of the office as insurance against single buyer dependence drew on a straightforward commercial point. “If you have one customer buying your product, they will set the price,” he said. “But if we’re able to open up the market and have more customers, that gives our industry a competitive advantage.”
The corporate response has been supportive in the practical sense that 14 chief executives agreed to serve on the council, several of them from firms with direct exposure to the sectors most damaged by American measures.
Critics have raised two objections. The first, voiced widely in public commentary following the announcement, is that Canada already has an export promotion apparatus in Export Development Canada, the Trade Commissioner Service and the Canadian Commercial Corporation, and that adding a coordinating layer risks duplicating capacity rather than expanding it. Sidhu’s answer is that the problem is not capacity but coordination and speed of senior political intervention, which is a different diagnosis requiring a different fix.
The second objection is about timing and sufficiency. An office that helps Bombardier or AtkinsRéalis win an overseas contract in 2028 does nothing for a Canadian cabinet manufacturer, machinery supplier or specialty chemical producer facing a 50 per cent American duty on August 19. Diversification is a decade long structural project. The tariff problem is a three week operational one.
Both criticisms can be true simultaneously, and neither is a reason not to build the office. They do mark the limits of what it can deliver.
Economic impact and what it means for Canadian business
For the large firms represented on the advisory council, the office is likely to be genuinely useful. Competing for national infrastructure programmes, defence procurements, satellite contracts and nuclear fuel supply agreements is a process in which the buyer is often a government and in which the seller’s home government is expected to be visibly engaged. Canada has historically shown up late and at a junior level in those contests. A named office with a mandate to coordinate ministerial intervention and to pair it with Export Development Canada financing changes the presentation, and in close competitions presentation is not trivial.
For mid sized exporters, the value is more speculative. The office’s mandate is explicitly framed around large scale opportunities critical to Canada’s economic interests, which is not a description of a $4 million contract. Firms in that tier will continue to rely on the Trade Commissioner Service and on EDC’s standard products.
For exporters currently dependent on the American market, the honest assessment is that diversification is a multi year adjustment that requires new distribution relationships, new certification and regulatory work, new logistics and, in most cases, new working capital. Companies that begin that work now will not see revenue from it in this fiscal year.
Several practical implications follow.
Firms in aerospace, defence, infrastructure, energy and critical minerals should engage directly with the office. It is new, its pipeline is not yet full, and early participants are likely to receive disproportionate attention.
Exporters weighing diversification should look at the countries where Canada has preferential access that is currently underused. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Canada European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement both provide tariff advantages that Canadian firms have historically underexploited relative to their partners.
Any diversification plan should be costed against the tariff exposure it is meant to replace. For a firm facing 50 per cent on August 19, the relevant comparison is not diversification against the status quo. It is diversification against exit from the American market, absorption of the duty, or restructuring toward Section 232 covered lines that escape Section 338.
Firms should also plan for the possibility that the American measures are modified or struck down. Section 338 has never survived judicial review because it has never been tested. A diversification strategy that is only rational under a permanent 50 per cent tariff is a fragile strategy.
The domestic file the office cannot touch
One limitation deserves particular emphasis, because it is easy to miss in an announcement framed around foreign markets.
The most persistent constraint on Canadian export performance is not foreign market access. It is domestic capacity to move goods. Port throughput, rail capacity, pipeline egress, inland terminal availability and provincial regulatory divergence all shape whether a Canadian firm can physically deliver on a large overseas contract at a competitive cost. The Strategic Exports Office has a mandate to remove trade irritants and address infrastructure gaps, but it is a coordinating body inside Global Affairs Canada, not an infrastructure agency with a capital budget.
Carney has been pressing that file separately, arguing for expansion at the Port of Vancouver as necessary to boost exports and economic independence. Those two workstreams need to converge. An office that wins a $2 billion overseas contract for a Canadian firm that then cannot secure rail slots or berth time has moved the problem rather than solved it.
The same applies to internal trade. Ottawa’s 2025 and 2026 push on interprovincial barriers, including freight rate support for moving Canadian steel and lumber between provinces, is part of the same economic argument. A country trying to double its overseas exports while maintaining a fragmented internal market is competing with one hand tied.
What Canadian businesses should do now
For companies weighing how much attention to give the announcement, a short set of practical steps applies.
Firms in the five priority sectors, aerospace and defence, infrastructure, energy, critical minerals and space and telecommunications, should contact Global Affairs Canada and Export Development Canada directly and ask to be considered in the office’s opportunity pipeline. New institutions are receptive to early inbound interest in a way that mature ones are not.
Firms outside those sectors should not wait for the office to expand its scope. The Trade Commissioner Service, EDC’s insurance and financing products, and the Canadian Commercial Corporation’s government to government contracting channel all remain available and are better suited to mid market transactions.
Every exporter with United States exposure should complete a two part assessment before August 19. The first part is classification: whether any product line appears in the annexes to the three Section 338 proclamations. The second part is scenario planning across three outcomes, namely the tariff taking effect as written, a negotiated settlement that reduces or removes it, and judicial invalidation. Each produces a materially different 2027.
Firms exploring European or Indo-Pacific markets should audit their existing preferential access before investing in new market development. Canada has negotiated tariff advantages under CETA and the CPTPP that many Canadian exporters have never operationalised, largely because the American market was easier. Using access already paid for is cheaper than securing new access.
Finally, boards and management teams should be explicit with themselves about what diversification is for. If the objective is to escape a 50 per cent tariff arriving in 17 days, diversification will not deliver it. If the objective is to reduce the concentration risk that made a 50 per cent tariff so damaging in the first place, it is precisely the right project, and the right time to start is now.
The strategic question
The Strategic Exports Office represents a considered judgment about the nature of the problem Canada faces. Ottawa is not treating the current tariff environment as a cyclical dispute to be waited out. It is treating it as a structural change requiring a structural response.
That judgment is probably correct. It is also expensive in a specific sense. Redirecting Canadian export capacity toward Europe, the Indo-Pacific and other markets means accepting higher transport costs, longer payment cycles, thinner margins and less integrated production than the American relationship offered at its best. Diversification is not a superior outcome. It is insurance against a relationship that has stopped functioning as designed.
The measure of the office will not be the announcement or the council. It will be whether, three years from now, Canadian firms are winning contracts they would previously have lost, and whether the non American export share has moved in a way that survives the eventual normalisation of trade with the United States.
August 19 will arrive before any of that is knowable. The office’s first task is to give Canadian exporters a reason to believe there is a plan for the decade after it.