No Easy Exits: Canada, the Map and a World Beyond the U.S. 

Canada wants to diversify. But diversify what, exactly? 

Exports? Customers? Suppliers? Technologies? Capital? Risk? And how would we know when we had actually done it? 

In the first episode of Canada’s Economy, Explained after the summer break, host Marwa Abdou sits down with Simon J. Evenett, Professor of Geopolitics and Strategy at IMD and founder of Global Trade Alert, for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the most consequential questions facing Canada: how much economic choice a country so deeply integrated with the United States can realistically create for itself. 

From geography and supply-chain vulnerabilities to resilience, economic security and weaponized interdependence, they examine where diversification is worthwhile, what it requires and when interdependence turns from an economic advantage into a source of leverage. 

And as the Canada-U.S. confrontation escalated in the days after the interview was recorded, some of those questions became considerably less theoretical. 

This episode was researched and editorially directed by host and executive producer Marwa Abdou, and brought to life in close collaboration with producer Nick Nikitaras, who led its creative direction and editing.