The Prime Minister Flew to Mumbai This Morning While Canadian Steel Faces 50% Tariffs and the CUSMA Review Looms in 127 Days

At some point this morning, a government aircraft carrying the Prime Minister of Canada lifted off and pointed itself toward Mumbai. Mark Carney will be in India, Australia, and Japan until March 7. Ten days. 240 hours.

The official rationale, published by the Prime Minister's Office on February 23, reads as follows: Carney is traveling "to unlock new opportunities for Canadian workers and businesses across trade, energy, technology, and defence."¹ He will meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He will address both houses of the Australian Parliament — the first Canadian Prime Minister to do so in twenty years.² He will sit down with Japan's Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae on critical minerals and clean energy.³

None of these meetings are inherently unreasonable. The argument for trade diversification is strategically sound and this publication has said so before. Canada sends 77 percent of its goods exports to a single market currently governed by a president who has described the Canada–United States border as "an artificial line drawn with a ruler"⁴ and whose administration has spent the past year applying and then partially removing tariffs that have already reduced Canada's GDP by an estimated 1.5 percent⁵ and cost Canadian households between $1,700 and $2,000 in higher annual costs.⁶

Diversifying away from that exposure is not a Liberal idea or a Conservative idea. It is a rational idea, and Carney is pursuing it with more energy than his predecessor managed in nine years of government.

That is the full extent of what this publication will concede. The questions that follow are harder.

The CUSMA Clock Nobody Is Talking About

The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement — the trade deal that governs $700 billion⁷ in annual cross-border commerce and that replaced NAFTA in 2020⁸ — is scheduled for a formal joint review beginning July 1, 2026. That is 127 days from today. The review is not a formality. It is (one of) the single most consequential trade negotiation Canada will face, occurring with a U.S. administration that has already demonstrated its willingness to use trade as a geopolitical weapon, that fought a Supreme Court battle to maintain broad tariff authority, and that immediately pivoted to a 10 percent global tariff.⁹

Canada's steel and aluminum tariffs remain at 50 percent under Section 232,¹⁰ unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling. Those tariffs have not moved. The automotive tariff framework remains unsettled. The CUSMA review will ask whether all three countries wish to continue, amend, or exit the agreement. Every day between now and July 1 is preparation time for that negotiation.

Carney's office has provided no public timeline for when Canada's CUSMA review preparation will be complete, who is leading it, what Canada's opening position is, or how the Prime Minister's absence for the next ten days affects the pace of that work. Those are not unreasonable questions for a country with 127 days until one of the most important trade file of the decade opens formally.

The India Trip: What Is Actually on the Table

The centerpiece of Carney's Mumbai stop is a proposed 10-year uranium supply agreement with India, potentially worth US$2.8 billion¹¹ — a deal that would make Canada a long-term supplier of nuclear fuel to the world's most populous country and fastest-growing major economy.

Beyond that, the two countries are pursuing a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) intended to more than double two-way trade from $30.8 billion to $70 billion by 2030.¹² Canada and India have been "formally launching negotiations" on a trade agreement since 2010. The CEPA framework was effectively suspended between 2023 and 2025 following the diplomatic rupture over the killing of Sikh-Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar¹³ near Vancouver, an event for which Canadian police have alleged a link to the Indian government — an allegation New Delhi has consistently rejected as, in its words, "absurd."¹⁴

The Argument For The Trip — And Its Limits

The strongest version of the case for Carney's Indo-Pacific tour runs as follows: the CUSMA review does not begin until July 1, and preparation work is proceeding in parallel through the Department of Finance and Global Affairs regardless of the Prime Minister's location. The uranium deal alone justifies the India leg. Australia and Japan represent established security and trade relationships that need ministerial attention in a period of global realignment. And the alternative — a Prime Minister sitting in Ottawa waiting for Washington to behave predictably — is not a strategy.

That argument holds up as far as it goes. It does not go far enough to answer the questions above.

Specifically: ten days is a long time for a Prime Minister to be outside the country during an active economic emergency of the scale Canada is managing. The 2025-26 tariff cycle has already reduced Canadian GDP by 1.5-2 percent, and Canadian households are absorbing an estimated $1,700-$2,000 in higher annual costs. Section 232 steel tariffs remain at 50 percent. The CUSMA review clock is running.

A uranium supply agreement potentially worth $2.8 billion over ten years is approximately $280 million annually.¹⁹ Canada's exports to the United States are approximately $600 billion per year.²⁰ The arithmetic of which relationship deserves the Prime Minister's personal attention in February 2026 is not complicated.

What Carney Owes Canadians Before He Returns

Mark Carney is a more competent Prime Minister than his predecessor, and the bar for that assessment is not high. His trade diversification instinct is correct. His handling of the Carney-Trump dynamic, including his performance at Davos in January, was substantively stronger than what came before it.

None of that insulates him from accountability on the specific questions this trip raises.

He owes Canadians a clear answer on what Canada's position is heading into the July 1 CUSMA review, and why the preparation for that negotiation is sufficiently advanced to permit ten days of travel elsewhere. And he owes Canadian manufacturers, steelworkers, and autoworkers, who are still absorbing a 50 percent tariff on the country that buys most of what they make, a timeline for when the Section 232 situation gets resolved.

These are not hostile questions, not at all. Rather, they are the questions a press gallery should be asking at every briefing until they receive answers. They are the questions a Parliament should be asking when Carney returns on March 7.

They are the questions that distinguish a trade trip from a photo opportunity. Let’s begin building a Canada that truly supports Canadians, subscribe to TCL today.

Sources: Prime Minister's Office press release, February 23, 2026 (pm.gc.ca); The Globe and Mail, February 23–24, 2026; Global News, February 24, 2026; The Fulcrum, "The Facts on U.S.-Canada Tariffs Nearly One Year Into Trump's Plan," February 2026; Canadian Federation of Independent Business Canada-U.S. Trade tracker, February 2026; Tax Foundation Tariff tracking, updated February 23, 2026; Associated Press, February 24, 2026.

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌

‌