Part 1: Is Canada’s canola business a pawn in the U.S.-China trade dispute?

Part 2: Pulled Export Permits

Part 3: China Leading Customer for Canadian Canola

Is Canada’s canola business a pawn in the U.S.-China trade dispute? Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks so.

Several components of Canada’s large agricultural industry, including its world-class canola sector, have been caught in the middle of the explosive US-China trade conflict marked by escalating tariffs on each other. The impact is being felt not only on farming communities but could also soon become pronounced at the Port of Vancouver, which handles the great bulk of Canadian commodity trade with China and canola shipments from western Canada. An estimated 40% of canola seed exports last year went to China, worth about C$2.7 billion.

Storage bins are never far from canola crop areas.
Storage bins are never far from canola crop areas.

“The US has thrown Canada under the bus with President Trump’s trade war with China,” a Canadian China trade analyst commented with some bitterness.

For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused the Chinese government of using Canadian canola as a pawn in its ongoing global wrestling match for supremacy with the United States.

“We know that Canadian canola is the best in the world, is unimpeachable in terms of its quality, and China is simply using phytosanitary concerns as an excuse to prolong what is fundamentally a conflict, not even with Canada but between the two largest economies in the world,” Trudeau said earlier this month. He did not say whether Canada planned to formally challenge the issue at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva.