Eby, Carney chat U.S. trade war, CUSMA agreement and pipeline

The near-term market implication is not a headline-level tariff shock, but a slow re-pricing of Canadian investment optionality. When trade rules are uncertain, capital usually shifts away from long-duration, cross-border projects and toward assets with faster payback, domestic demand, or export optionality that can be rerouted. That tends to favor rail, ports, and some industrial service names with local backlog, while penalizing firms exposed to North American parts interdependence and just-in-time inventory models.

The more important second-order effect is on energy and heavy infrastructure sequencing. Any deterioration in U.S.-Canada trade relations raises the discount rate on major pipeline and midstream expansions, not because volumes disappear, but because permitting, financing, and political execution risk rise together. That creates a stealth benefit for existing toll-road assets and a relative disadvantage for greenfield capital spend, especially where returns depend on a multi-year regulatory window.

This also creates a policy-callable setup: the most likely catalyst for reversal is not a court ruling but a negotiated carveout tied to manufacturing, energy security, or border compliance. Time horizon matters here — the next few weeks should be headline-driven and volatility-prone, while the bigger signal arrives over months if procurement teams begin reshoring suppliers or delaying capex. The consensus risk is underestimating how quickly procurement behavior changes even before tariffs are formally broadened; once suppliers re-source, that shift can persist well beyond any temporary détente.