Canada Pitches 'Fortress North America' to Force Its Way Back Into US Trade Talks

Canada is trying to rejoin trade talks from which it was excluded, proposing the idea of a "Fortress North America" to the Trump administration, the Financial Times reported. Ottawa was left out of negotiations over a new pact between the United States and Mexico. Its response is to argue that an integrated continental bloc, with shared supply chains and coordinated policy against outside competition, serves Washington's own goals.

The maneuver comes as the United States rebuilds a broad tariff regime, reshaping trade relationships across dozens of economies. For Canada, which sends most of its exports to the United States, exclusion from the framework that governs North American commerce is an existential commercial threat, and its argument borrows the language of economic nationalism that the current White House favors.

The episode shows how the revival of American tariffs is forcing trading partners to renegotiate their position one by one rather than through the multilateral arrangements that defined the previous era. Access to the United States market has become a concession that Washington negotiates country by country.