What's physically locked, and what can ship today
Diversification is an infrastructure problem before it is a trade-policy problem.
Locked to US infrastructure
- Crude oil (90% US-bound): the Enbridge Mainline (~3 Mb/d) and Keystone run south only. The sole tidewater outlet is Trans Mountain (890 kb/d).
- Natural gas (100%): every export pipeline feeds the US grid. LNG Canada (operating since June 2025) is the first alternative in Canadian history.
- Electricity (100%): ~33 TWh/yr flows over fixed interconnects to New York, New England, the US Midwest and Pacific Northwest. It cannot be re-routed — it must be converted to exportable molecules.
- Autos & parts (~93%): just-in-time North American supply chains; parts cross the border 6–8 times per vehicle. This sector does not divert — it restructures over decades.
- Softwood lumber (~74–87%): mill and rail logistics are tuned to US homebuilding; overseas markets use different specifications.
Globally shippable today (port-limited, not market-limited)
- Potash — already >50% to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia. Canada is the world's swing supplier.
- Uranium — genuinely global; world reactor demand roughly doubles by 2040.
- Grain, canola, pulses — Asia is already the majority customer; the constraint is prairie rail and west-coast terminal capacity.
- Crude via Trans Mountain — China went from 7,000 to 207,000+ barrels/day of Canadian crude within roughly a year of the expansion opening. Proof the demand exists the moment the pipe does.
- LNG — from zero to 14 Mtpa in 2025; European and Asian buyers are signing 20-year contracts for the next wave.
- Aluminum — hydro-powered, among the lowest-carbon in the world; the EU's carbon border tariff (in force 2026) gives it a structural price edge over Chinese and Gulf metal.