The conclusion of the India-European Union free trade agreement is the “perfect example” of rejecting “hegemons who use tariffs as leverage”, Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson said Tuesday. Although Hodgson did not specify who he was referring to, his comments appeared to be a criticism of US President Donald Trump’s weaponisation of trade tariffs.
According to the Canadian minister, who is seeking to deepen energy and critical minerals trade with India, building multilateral relationships and diversifying supply is necessary in the current global trade scenario. In a bilateral meeting between Hodgson and Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday, the two sides agreed to deepen energy trade between the two countries.
“What you just did with the EU, signing the ‘mother of all deals’, was a perfect example of how to say…‘We’re not going to live in a world where the strongest puts tariffs on everyone else. We’re going to live in a world where we believe in free trade, where we believe in trusted relationships’,” Hodgson said at the India Energy Week here.
Hodgson termed the US’s tariff wars against numerous countries as a “rupture” in the way the global trading system works, and not a gradual economic transition. “The rules based order that we all have been building our economies around, one that was based on multilateralism, one that was based on free trade. The hegemons of the world have decided that’s not the way the world’s going to work anymore. They’ve decided the world will work in a much more mercantilist way,” he said.
“I don’t need to tell India what it means when people use their economic integration with your country for coercion. I don’t need to tell you what it means when hegemons use tariffs as leverage. It is a changing world we live in, and energy is at the centre of that. I’m here because, like you, the way to resist that change is to build multilateral relationships and to double down on diversification of supplies,” the Canadian energy minister said.
Ottawa’s relationship with Washington, which has traditionally been one of close allies, has soured over the past one year of the Trump presidency in the US. This has led to a rethink in Canada on its heavy reliance on the US as a market for its energy exports. India, among the top consumers and importers of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), has now emerged as a key potential buyer of Canadian oil and gas. Ottawa is also interested in supplying uranium and critical minerals to India.
“Canada used to provide 98% of its energy to one customer. We are committed to diversifying our supply. We see the opportunity to work with India,” Hodgson said. He added that to power its energy transition, India’s needs access to critical minerals and Canada “is a great supplier of those critical minerals”.
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Following the meeting between Puri and Hodgson, a joint statement by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) and Canada’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources said that the two ministers agreed “to deepen bilateral energy trade including supply of Canadian LNG, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), and crude oil to India, and supply of refined petroleum products from India to Canada”.
“Recognizing that there exists a huge potential for cooperation in clean energy value chains, the Ministers noted the opportunities for collaboration in renewable energy, including hydrogen, biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel; battery storage; critical minerals; clean technologies; electricity systems; energy supply chain resilience, and the application of artificial intelligence in the energy sector,” the joint statement added.
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