![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-4.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s not to suggest there\u2019s rapprochement. Business leaders agreed the damage to Canada-U.S. relations is not irreparable\u2014but there is damage, and it will take time to heal. Trust comes back slowly. Uncertainty recedes slowly, too. But the economic logic of closer Canada-U.S. ties remains strong. One Canadian portfolio manager said that no matter how they run their risk models, they end up with a 50-60 percent allocation to the U.S. The two governments now have the summer, and likely part of the fall, to find a way forward on trade. They\u2019ll also have to recognize how much their economies are changing at the same time. This isn\u2019t your parents\u2019 trade zone anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. The visible hand: Industrial policy is back in both countries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
As hopes for free trade fade, a new age of state capital is evolving. Both Washington and Ottawa are now explicitly using government spending, tariffs, procurement and regulation as tools of economic strategy\u2014and the era of assuming that politics would leave globalization alone is over. Daleep Singh of asset manager PGIM put it plainly: we are in a world of fiscal dominance, with industrial policy in the midst of renaissance. Every cross-border linkage\u2014trade, capital, energy, technology\u2014is now at risk of being weaponized for geopolitical leverage. The result is more government debt, higher trend inflation, more political risk and a stronger case for physical assets connected to economic security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Will this also mean a return to mercantilism? If governments try to gain economic favour by diminishing and constraining others\u2014competitive strength over comparative advantage\u2014Canada will need to play its many cards more assertively: low-carbon natural gas, critical minerals, food and fertilizer, nuclear fuel and a stable rule-of-law environment that capital increasingly prizes. It presents material opportunities for business, too, as governments create incentives to reshore economic sectors and underwrite the scaling of companies, from AI to life sciences. Annesley Wallace of pension manager HOOPP captured the investor mood: Canada now has the attention of global investors in a way it didn\u2019t a few years ago. But capital wants to see execution and policy certainty, not just ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Data centres are the new factories\u2014the physical infrastructure of the AI economy. And Canada is largely absent from the map. Hamid Moghadam of Prologis, one of the world\u2019s leading logistics companies with $5 billion invested in Canada, was direct: companies building data centres go where it is easiest. Canada is not on that list. Prologis currently has no AI data centre capacity in Canada, with the Netherlands and the United States dominating. The culprit is a \u201cquirky provision\u201d in Canadian tax law that imposes a 15 percent burden on U.S. tax-exempt capital invested in Canadian properties\u2014a friction that doesn\u2019t apply in reverse. That could be the greatest cross-border risk as enterprise users (unlike the hyperscalers) turn more to inference models that can use low-latency infrastructure. Bell Canada is seizing on that with a new data centre in Regina that is, initially at least, expected to rely on U.S. users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The slower pace of AI adoption in Canada\u2014fewer than one in five companies, and fewer public sector users have deployed the technology\u2014is starting to show up in economic and business performance. Canada is trying to catch up with a new national AI strategy that aims to invest in AI awareness and skills, as well as business adoption. Jenny Johnson of investment management firm Franklin Templeton put it starkly: the pace of AI is moving so quickly that companies that get it right will leave others in their sector behind permanently. She told her own executives: if you aren\u2019t building agents yourself, you\u2019re already behind. Trouble is, citizens in both countries are increasingly anxious and skeptical about AI. That\u2019s leading to more grassroots pressure, including in this year\u2019s midterm election campaigns in the U.S., to regulate AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Canada and the United States are navigating a crisis of public trust in technology\u2014but they are responding in ways that could put them on a collision course over regulation, data and digital trade. In the U.S., the AI boom is turbocharged by private capital, hyperscalers and a permissive regulatory culture. The concern is less about governance and more about falling behind China in the AI arms race, although local resistance to data centres, especially over their use of electricity and water, could change the conversation. Canada, by contrast, is pursuing a more rights-based, sovereignty-first approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In both countries, and across their borders, the AI revolution is moving so quickly that governments seem destined to react. Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group\u2019s founder and president, warned of a deepening crisis in which no political leader could overcome a structural gap between technological transformation and outdated governance systems. Technology companies, he said, increasingly act as functional sovereigns in their own domains\u2014and the absence of governance around AI is one of the most urgent risks on the horizon. Canada\u2019s AI Minister Evan Solomon acknowledged the paradox: Canada\u2019s best and biggest AI partner remains the United States, and access to frontier models, compute and capital still flows primarily north-south. But as Canada builds its own AI sovereignty framework\u2014and as the Safe Social Media Act, new privacy rules and the AI for All strategy take shape\u2014conflicts over data flows, platform regulation and digital trade are increasingly likely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Defence is again central to the relationship, and central to emerging divisions. One big one: what technologies will dominate the battlefields and defensive lines of tomorrow? Case in point: three days before the summit, an Iranian drone shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter, and then an American sea drone rescued the two downed airmen. The U.S. is investing heavily in AI systems, robotics and autonomous war machines, as well as bio- and cyberweaponry. Canada is trying to catch up on advanced military technology, and at the same time restore and restock bigger hardware like fighter jets and submarines. The Canadian strategy is driven by economic policy as much as defence strategy, to build trade ties with European and Asian allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have rewritten defence doctrine. Scalable production and resilient supply chains have proven as decisive as firepower. MDA Space CEO Mike Greenley put it this way: defence and space remain areas of full collaboration and full integration, even amid trade tensions. \u201cThe stronger we are, the better partner we are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That may require an intricate matrix of supply chains and partnerships in which Canada could continue to play a role in the F-35 fighter jet program while also building the GlobalEye partnership between Sweden\u2019s Saab with Bombardier to make surveillance aircraft for Arctic defence. Energy and critical minerals will be a critical component of this new chapter. Vivek Lall of defence firm General Atomics identified a technology triad linking AI, nuclear energy, and autonomy as the defining framework for the next generation of defence capability\u2014and argued Canada-U.S. collaboration has significant potential across all three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Arctic is no longer a remote policy afterthought. It has become a global economic, geopolitical and strategic battleground\u2014and one where Canada and the United States have no choice but to work together, and quickly. Olafur Grimsson, former president of Iceland, framed the challenge: the past decade has seen a flood of new arrivals into the Arctic, as China, Russia and a constellation of Asian economies sought access. The old notion of sovereignty, where lines on a map settled the question, no longer applies in an environment that is rapidly becoming both economically accessible and strategically contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thomas Dans, Chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, was direct about Washington\u2019s view: both countries have \u201ca lot of room both to catch up, but also to surpass and to really lead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said North America needs to look over the North Pole and also toward the North Star. First challenge is Russia. Even though there may be room for cooperation over fisheries and shared resources with the Kremlin, Grimsson warned the West risks losing sight of what Moscow is doing in its own Arctic, particularly as Russia deepens energy, pipeline and mining links with China, India and other Asian powers. The same sort of resource development is possible on the North American side. Then there\u2019s the skyward trajectory. Continental defence may rest in the ionosphere, but it doesn\u2019t stay up there. The two countries need to develop land and sea-based systems in the Arctic to connect with their growing space-based defence operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada has always punched above its weight in space\u2014but largely as a junior partner to NASA. That posture is shifting. Canada is now trying to carve out a distinct space identity, rooted in its own strengths and connected to a broader set of international partners, while remaining deeply integrated with the U.S. It may pose the greatest challenge to continental cooperation. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said the two countries will find the most opportunity by playing to their strengths, rather than for diplomatic reasons. For Canada, those strengths include Earth observation, space-based communications, robotics and onboard computing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Countries are increasing spending rapidly, creating a 2.5x economic multiplier for space manufacturing and technology. But leaving the so-called final frontier to commercial firms may underestimate the geopolitical tensions up there. In the race to return to the moon, China is partnering with 11 nations, the U.S. with 60. Canada is in the latter coalition and contributing meaningfully. Hansen compared the challenge to the ethos of a space crew: \u201cpeople who can point out what\u2019s broken and stop there is not acceptable in our space culture.\u201d Canada\u2019s space ambition requires the same discipline\u2014specific proposals, not just aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada is seeking to diversify its economic and security relationships, without undermining its integral relationship with the U.S. Industry Minister M\u00e9lanie Joly said Canada has trade agreements with 52 countries. Discussions with the EU are deepening\u2014not just as a response to tariffs, but to create genuinely integrated Canadian-European companies, and align industrial policies. Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council, was equally clear: Canada\u2019s U.S. strategy and its broader global strategy are mutually reinforcing. \u201cWe are not decoupling. We are diversifying.\u201d On China, his framing echoed U.S. language precisely\u2014de-risking, not decoupling\u2014with clear guardrails defining where Canada can and cannot engage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But diversification is not free, and the infrastructure required to redirect Canadian trade is largely not built yet. West Coast pipeline capacity remains critically constrained, limiting Canada\u2019s ability to sell oil and gas at premium prices in Asian markets. Port infrastructure in Vancouver and other Pacific gateways\u2014rail connections, bridge capacity, terminal throughput\u2014lags badly behind the ambition of a serious Pacific trade strategy. And permitting timelines for new infrastructure projects remain a systemic bottleneck. Those are solvable problems. Sabia\u2019s closing argument was that Canada holds a genuinely strong hand\u2014low-carbon gas, food, fertilizer, critical minerals, AI capabilities and a trust premium that flows from values and history. \u201cThis is not a time for national anxiety. This is a time for confidence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Four](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-3.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n3. The data deficit: Canada\u2019s struggle to compute (at scale)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-1.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n4. Trust and algos: A diverging tech sovereignty race<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-2.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n5. Fortifying the continent: National defence as economic offence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Wide-angle](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-5.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n6. The Contested North: The Arctic as a continental lynchpin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-7.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n7. New frontiers: The longest undefended border moves to space<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Close-up](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-6.jpg?w=1024\")
8. The long way around: Diversification without decoupling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.rbcwealthmanagement.com\/en-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/02\/RBC-US-Canada-Summit-1380x920-8.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n