@TrueNorthSpice Not ignore completely, but perhaps not make them our sole focus.

The EU alone is nearly as big an economy as the U.S., and that's before you factor in the UK, Canada, Australia, and other larger rich countries. Then take the emerging economic power of the Global South as well, and there's no reason that the latest whims of the U.S. leader should dominate every news cycle, with pundits trying to guess what he really "intends."

(Answer: Nothing. He intends nothing. He's the human embodiment of a random walk, and we're fools to keep trying to figure him out as if he could actually reason out a plan.)

@david_megginson
We have been moving away from trading with the US.

@TrueNorthSpice Yes, we're trying, but logistically, it's tough when we share a nearly 9,000 km border and centuries of deeply-entangled cross-border family and business ties. It's also going to be the work of many years (or decades).

@david_megginson

Negotiations with other countries were underway long before Trudeau stepped down, so I doubt it will take decades before we can avoid trade with the US.
I doubt the connection will ever be entirely cut off, but I can envision a dramatic decline in trade to the point of it becoming negligible.

@TrueNorthSpice I hope so, but geography and logistics are challenging. Trading with the U.S. means a short, cheap truck or train ride; trading with any other country means loading up ships or airplanes and sending them across the ocean. From Ottawa, for example, it takes 1 hour to get to the U.S. by road (vs 2 hours to Montreal or 5 hours to Toronto), which is why we've traditionally traded north-south so much.

Our best hope. honestly, is continuing to dismantle our own internal trade barriers across provincial borders (which is well underway).

@david_megginson

I agree about provincial barriers and those are going down.

As for the rest, China seems to have no problem transporting exports.
Just because something is less convenient, or a situation becomes more of a challenge, doesn't mean it is unworkable, instead it requires a change in mindset, and we need to use imagination and innovation.
Canada has a large pool of intelligent and resourceful people, our government should be drawing from it.

@TrueNorthSpice Canada is one of the world's top suppliers of food, minerals, and hydrocarbons, and also a big member of integrated, just-in-time supply chains on the manufacturing side.

China is a consumer of raw materials (Australia is a big supplier, and, I imagine, Indonesia as well) and of manufacturing with cheap labour — although they're starting to outsource to Vietnam now, as their own wages rise.

The Asia-Pacific is too far away for us to participate in their just-in-time supply chains, and shipping manufactured goods to them from central Canada (where most of the population is) requires thousands of km of overland transportation first, and (IIRC) just two major usable ports.

We might manage better with Mexico, since they're just a short hop (even if we go by sea instead of land).