Canada

I'm really mystified by this lack of awareness of work done in the past on international diversification. There have been great strides made in where we were even 20 years ago for international trade excluding the US. I've been on unpaid boards (non-profit, industry) where that's been the primary focus for my entire term. We've worked with all levels of government to try to streamline trade barriers between Canada and other countries because nobody, private or public, trusts the US to not swing their dicks around, even with sympathetic administrations in place.

Honestly, it's kind of deflating to see that work ignored.

Every province and industry has been holding trade missions for decades to diversify markets. It's not that it's easy to disconnect the US apron strings, but it's certainly been at the top of any trade organizations mind since at least the 70s.

Since we've had disputes like softwood lumber and BSE, local value-added chains have been also a massive push to incentivize and fund. Things like packing plants, lumber mills, canola crush plants, mixed product pipelines to the coast, and all the shipping terminals that make that product go away take decades to plan and implement but are another piece of the puzzle of trade independence. Those things have been in the works for a long time and every dispute with the US in the last half century have added momentum to that push.