Three-quarters of what Canada sells goes to one country. That was a convenience for forty years. This year it became the problem.
Canada already has signed trade agreements covering the European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — deals that cut tariffs to zero or near-zero on the great majority of goods. Most Canadian business owners have never used any of them. They are the least-exploited asset in the country.
Nobody starts a business planning to be dependent on a single customer. It happens because one customer is easy and the others are work. The American market was close, rich, English-speaking and familiar, so for most of us it became not just the biggest customer but effectively the only one.
That is now a strategic weakness that a single foreign government can act on whenever it likes. And whatever happens next with these particular tariffs — whether they are lifted, expanded, renamed or struck down in court — the lesson does not change. A business with one market has one point of failure.
Start with the honest part
Diversifying is not a rescue and it will not save your quarter. Canada and the EU have had a trade agreement since 2017, and in that time our exports to Europe moved from roughly 4.4% of the total to about 5.5%. Nearly a decade of duty-free access produced about one percentage point.
Anyone who tells you a new market replaces a lost one within a year is selling you a trade mission. What a second market actually does is make you harder to hurt — and that compounds. The businesses that started five years ago are the ones sleeping well this month.
So the right frame is not “replace the US.” It is: this year there is unusual pressure, unusual government money, and unusual willingness inside your own company to change how things work. Use it.
Four doors that are already open
Selling to Europe
98% of EU tariff lines are duty-free for Canadian goods under CETA, plus $3.3 trillion a year of public contracts you are entitled to bid on. The barrier is standards and visibility, not duties.
Selling to Japan
About $10 billion a year already, almost all of it raw commodities. Beef tariffs falling from 38.5%, seafood and worked wood already at zero. The opportunity is selling one step further along.
Australia & New Zealand
The easiest first export there is: same language, familiar law, opposite seasons. Freight is the only real obstacle — and for software there is not even that.
Getting found there
A market you cannot be found in is not a market. The unglamorous, reliable work of existing in another language — and why translation plugins fail at it.
What usually works, in order
- Claim what you already qualify for. Before spending anything on expansion, find out what federal support you can access — and whether relief or remission applies to your inputs. Money you are owed beats money you borrow. The programs, in plain English →
- Sell direct before you sell into procurement. Public tenders in any country are slow, procedural, and biased toward incumbents. A single distributor relationship will teach you more in three months than a year of bidding.
- Pick one market and finish it. One country, properly done, beats four started. The most common failure in export is spreading a small budget across a map.
- Sell things that do not cross a border. Services, software, licensing, design, remote work. No freight, no duty, no customs form, no biosecurity. If any part of what you do could be delivered this way, that is the fastest export you will ever make.
- Fix the machine while it is open. Every business has a list of things it would improve if there were ever time. Disruption is the only moment anyone actually gets that time. Use it on the website, the funnel, the manual admin, the reporting you do not have.
How we help
The offer
The New Markets Review
A deep, AI-assisted dive into your business — products, inputs, suppliers, competitors and the markets that might want what you make — checked by a human against the actual tariff schedules and trade agreements. You get the written review, a private AI knowledge base trained on your own business, a deck, an infographic, and a video and audio overview.
Then the part that matters: a scoped plan of what to build, with real hour estimates. Useful whether or not you hire us to build it.
Start your review → · See a complete worked example first
Questions people ask
Which trade agreements can a Canadian business actually use?
CETA covers the European Union. The CPTPP covers Japan, Australia, New Zealand and several other Pacific economies, and has since expanded to include the United Kingdom. None of them involve the United States, which is why they are worth attention this year.
Is it too late to start diversifying?
For this quarter, yes — a new market will not rescue a bad month. For the next five years, this is the best moment in a generation, because the pressure to change is real and the support money exists.
What is the fastest export for a small business?
Anything that does not physically move. Software, services, licensing and design cross borders with no freight, no duty and no paperwork.
Do I need to speak the language?
You do not. Your website does.
InfiniteUp is a four-person software studio in Nanaimo, BC. 40+ apps shipped, 60,000+ installs, 117 countries. See our work.
Operational and strategic guidance from a software studio, not legal, customs, or tax advice. Confirm tariff treatment, origin rules and product approvals with a licensed customs broker before shipping. Last reviewed 10 September 2026.