Vietnam Gives Canada’s Trade Diversification Another Connection
Canada’s new Strategic Partnership with Vietnam connects existing trade access with transportation, energy, agriculture and technology cooperation. It is another step towards a broader trading network—and a chance to sell more into a relationship currently dominated by Canadian imports.
Canada already trades billions of dollars in goods with Vietnam. The challenge is getting more of that trade moving east.
On September 24, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Vietnamese President and Communist Party General Secretary Tô Lâm elevated the relationship to a Strategic Partnership. Its scope stretches across commerce, transportation, energy, agriculture, technology and security. Taken together, those commitments show how Canada’s diversification strategy is developing: existing trade agreements are being connected to the transport links, regulatory cooperation and commercial relationships needed to make them more useful. www.pm.gc.ca
Vietnam is Canada’s largest merchandise trading partner within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. Two-way goods trade reached C$20.6 billion in 2025, while Canadian exports exceeded C$1.3 billion, rising about 30% from the previous year. That growth deserves attention. So does the substantial imbalance behind the headline total. www.canada.ca
Canada has established a sizeable trading relationship with Vietnam. The next task is to turn that connection into a stronger market for Canadian products, services and investment.
A trading relationship Canada can build on
According to Global Affairs Canada, Canadian goods sold to Vietnam include agricultural and agri-food products, metals, fertilizers and wood products. Goods travelling the other way include electronics, clothing, furniture and footwear, alongside seafood, coffee, fruit and nuts. Canadian merchandise imports from Vietnam reached approximately C$19.3 billion in 2025. international.gc.ca
That mix explains both the relationship’s existing value and its unevenness. Canadians already buy extensively from Vietnamese producers. Increasing Canadian sales requires businesses to find customers, meet local requirements and deliver competitively into the same market.
The institutional groundwork has been developing for years. Canada and Vietnam established a Comprehensive Partnership in 2017, and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, entered into force between them on January 14, 2019. Canada’s wider Indo-Pacific Strategy followed in 2022. This week’s upgrade builds on that earlier work. www.pm.gc.ca
The CPTPP already provides concrete advantages. Canada’s tariff guidance identifies duty-free access at implementation for Vietnamese imports of Canadian honey, canola seeds and certain food preparations. It also identifies the elimination of Vietnam’s tariffs on Canadian wheat products when the agreement entered into force. Tariff elimination
Those are useful commercial conditions, although a lower tariff cannot find a distributor, arrange financing or resolve a shipment’s inspection requirements. The practical value of a closer partnership lies partly in addressing what remains after the tariff has been reduced.
Vietnam inside a wider regional network
The announcement arrives as Ottawa works towards broader Southeast Asian agreements. On September 22, Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu told Reuters that separate negotiations with ASEAN and the Philippines were more than 90% complete. Canada is pushing to have both ready around Carney’s planned November visit to Manila. That remains a negotiating target; neither agreement has been completed. www.reuters.com
The regional relationship is already growing. Global Affairs Canada’s September 23 update puts Canada–ASEAN merchandise trade at C$52.5 billion in 2025, up 23.7% from C$42.4 billion in 2024. These figures measure imports and exports combined, so they should not be mistaken for a 23.7% increase in Canadian export sales. www.canada.ca
An ASEAN agreement would sit alongside Canada’s existing CPTPP relationships. For Vietnam, where preferential access already exists, the eventual agreement’s additional benefits will depend on its negotiated terms. Across the region, Ottawa is seeking a wider commercial framework for Canadian goods and services.
This is where the network argument becomes tangible. A Canadian company’s ability to operate abroad depends on more than one treaty: it needs market access, transport, commercial support and predictable rules. Canada’s regional initiatives also include establishing Export Development Canada offices in Southeast Asian markets and an Indo-Pacific Agriculture and Agri-Food Office in Manila. Such support brings the strategy closer to the day-to-day work of finding and serving customers. international.gc.ca
Connecting market access to movement
The expanded Canada–Vietnam air transport agreement is one of the clearest practical changes announced this week. It permits direct flights for the first time, allowing each country up to 14 weekly passenger-combination flights and seven weekly all-cargo flights. Cargo carriers also gain rights to carry freight between foreign countries on services beginning or ending in their home country. www.canada.ca
Permission creates an opening for airlines; it does not establish that scheduled direct service is operating. Nevertheless, the agreement removes a constraint on future connections for passengers and freight. Business travel, tourism and commercial shipments all depend on routes that carriers can operate economically.
Energy provides a more established example of physical infrastructure changing Canada’s options. LNG Canada loaded its first export cargo at Kitimat, British Columbia, in June 2025. Its first phase has a stated capacity of 14 million tonnes annually, giving Canadian natural gas an operating route to overseas markets through the Pacific. LNG
The new Canada–Vietnam energy memorandum includes liquefied natural gas, hydrogen and renewables, while the joint statement also identifies potential civil nuclear cooperation. No Vietnamese LNG purchase contract is announced in that statement. The significance is that energy discussions now take place alongside Canadian export infrastructure that is operating. www.pm.gc.ca
Sidhu described energy as Canada’s biggest offering to Southeast Asia and pointed to additional Pacific LNG projects at various stages of development. www.reuters.com Whether individual projects and sales proceed will depend on commercial decisions, but the connection between western Canadian supply and Asian markets is already more substantial than a policy aspiration.
More ways to trade—and a clear test of progress
Agriculture offers another practical route. The joint statement records nearly C$1.7 billion in two-way agri-food and seafood trade in 2025. It welcomes a bilateral agriculture dialogue and renewed cooperation on food safety, plant and animal health, and the regulatory requirements governing agricultural trade. These measures concern the conditions under which products can actually enter a market. www.pm.gc.ca
The relationship also extends to services and expertise. Global Affairs Canada identifies education, information and communication technologies, and clean technology among Canada’s commercial priorities in Vietnam. The new partnership adds support for research and innovation cooperation involving artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and semiconductors. These are identified areas for collaboration, with commercial results still to be demonstrated. international.gc.ca
Together, these activities give diversification several routes: goods exports, services, investment and business partnerships. Their value should ultimately be measured in sustained commercial activity and the Canadian jobs and income it supports.
The scale of the task remains considerable. The United States received 71.7% of Canadian merchandise exports in 2025, down from 75.9% in 2024. That decline shows a changing distribution of trade, but U.S.-bound goods exports also fell. A smaller American share alone cannot establish that Canadian businesses are becoming stronger; growth in other markets matters too. www150.statcan.gc.ca
Vietnam gives Canada an existing relationship to expand, with trade access already established and additional connections taking shape. The strongest case for this partnership is the practical one: more opportunities to sell, more ways to move goods and people, and closer cooperation on the rules that govern commerce.
Canada’s trading network is becoming broader. The next measure of success is how much more Canadian business moves through it.
Sources
- Canada–Vietnam Strategic Partnership joint statement, September 24, 2026
- Transport Canada: Expanded Canada–Vietnam air transport agreement
- Global Affairs Canada: September 2026 ASEAN trade update
- Reuters: Canada targets November completion of ASEAN and Philippines trade talks
- Global Affairs Canada: Canada–Vietnam trade figures and products, French-language update
- LNG Canada: First export cargo and initial production capacity
- Statistics Canada: December and full-year 2025 merchandise trade