Build a Canadian strategic-resources portfolio that could benefit from deteriorating Canada-U.S. trade relations, Canadian export diversification, defence/energy security and the Western world's need for non-Chinese resource supply.

 

starting from a blank sheet today—August 26, 2026—and the mandate were simply:

Build a Canadian strategic-resources portfolio that could benefit from deteriorating Canada-U.S. trade relations, Canadian export diversification, defence/energy security and the Western world's need for non-Chinese resource supply.

My "Know Nothing About the Investor" portfolio

Rank	Company	Ticker	Strategic resource	Weight	Thesis
1	Nutrien	NTR	Potash	20%	Exceptional Canadian leverage over U.S. agriculture
2	Cameco	CCO	Uranium	20%	Nuclear/energy-security winner
3	Canadian Natural Resources	CNQ	Oil & gas	15%	Massive reserves + global diversification
4	Suncor	SU	Oil	12.5%	Integrated oil + export diversification
5	Teck Resources	TECK.B	Copper	12.5%	Electrification/defence/AI infrastructure
6	Cenovus	CVE	Oil & refining	10%	Heavy crude + integrated downstream
7	Enbridge	ENB	Energy infrastructure	10%	Owns the pipes rather than betting on commodity price

That is a considerably better risk-adjusted portfolio for an unknown Canadian investor.

Canada is actively pursuing exactly the broader strategy behind this portfolio: expanding global market access for Canadian oil, accelerating critical-mineral production and processing, and reducing excessive dependence on the United States. Ottawa's July agreement with Alberta and the oil-sands producers explicitly calls for expanded global market access and production growth.

But which companies could actually benefit from the trade war?

This is the more important distinction. Being strategically important doesn't automatically make a stock a trade-war winner.

#1 — Nutrien:

If forced to select one Canadian resource company whose strategic importance increases because of this dispute, I would pick Nutrien.

Canada is the world's leading potash producer. And the current U.S. tariff regime specifically exempts potash—an important signal that Washington recognizes how difficult it would be to disrupt that supply.

Nutrien therefore possesses something unusual:

pricing power + scarce resource + enormous U.S. dependence + global alternative customers.

If Canada diversifies additional potash toward Brazil, India and Asia, Nutrien isn't trapped by the American market.

That is genuine geopolitical optionality.

Trade-war beneficiary score: 9/10.

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#2 — Cameco: perhaps the best long-term strategic asset

Cameco is somewhat different.

I wouldn't buy it because I expect Canada to restrict uranium exports. I don't.

I'd buy it because this trade conflict reinforces the value of secure, allied, non-Russian/non-Chinese nuclear fuel supply.

Canada is already the world's second-largest uranium producer, and Cameco's mines produce the purest uranium on the planet, by a factor 10

The enormous buildout of electricity generation required for AI/data centres plus Western nuclear restarts and energy-security concerns creates a structural uranium story independent of Trump.

The trade war merely strengthens the strategic premium attached to Saskatchewan uranium.

Trade-war/geopolitical beneficiary score: 9/10.

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#3 — CNQ: my preferred Canadian oil producer

I would slightly favour Canadian Natural Resources over Suncor and Cenovus for this particular portfolio.

The key reason isn't retaliation.

It's market diversification.

Canada's long-standing problem was:

enormous oil reserves + essentially one customer.

TMX materially changes that equation, and Ottawa is now explicitly pursuing additional West Coast export capacity. The July federal-Alberta-oil industry agreement calls for expanded and diversified global market access and substantial oil-sands production growth.

That potentially increases the strategic value of enormous long-life Canadian reserves.

CNQ owns an extraordinary amount of them.

Score: 8.5/10.

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#4 — Teck: the one I might overweight

Copper is an interesting case because it doesn't require Canada to weaponize anything.

Canadian copper exports to the United States have actually surged—running about 40% above their 2024 average, according to the Bank of Canada.

Meanwhile copper sits at the intersection of:

AI data centres + electrical grids + EVs + robotics + defence + renewable energy + conventional infrastructure.

That's exactly the sort of commodity I want exposure to regardless of whether the Canada-U.S. dispute gets better or worse.

And that gives Teck an attractive characteristic:

The thesis doesn't require the trade war to continue.

If Canada-U.S. relations improve, copper demand remains.

If relations deteriorate and Canada accelerates trade with Europe and Asia, Teck has global customers.

If Western countries accelerate strategic-resource investment, copper benefits again.

Score: 8.5/10.

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What about Microcaps like Ucore and Canada Nickel?

This is where knowing nothing about the investor makes the biggest difference.

I wouldn't put either into the seven-stock core portfolio.

Not because I dislike them.

Because they represent something fundamentally different.

Ucore (UCU) is essentially a venture-style bet on successful commercialization and scaling of rare-earth separation infrastructure.

Canada Nickel (CNC) is substantially a project-development/execution/financing bet.

Neither belongs in the same risk category as CNQ, Nutrien or Cameco.

Canada is unquestionably pushing this sector aggressively. Ottawa announced more than C$3.6 billion of new critical-mineral programs and investments this year, while its Critical Minerals Strategy now has roughly C$3.87 billion allocated and explicitly contemplates equity investments, loan guarantees, offtake agreements and strategic stockpiling.

That creates potentially enormous upside for the right development-stage company.

But enormous strategic importance doesn't eliminate:

financing risk, dilution risk, construction risk, technology risk, permitting risk and execution risk.

So I'd put Ucore/CNC into a separate 5–10% speculative satellite allocation, rather than pretend they're equivalent to Nutrien or Cameco.

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There's also a company I'd reconsider: Enbridge

ENB isn't going to produce enormous alpha merely because Canada and the United States quarrel.

In fact, its integrated North American footprint makes a serious trade rupture undesirable.

But that's precisely why I like it in the portfolio.

If the thesis turns out to be wrong—Trump and Carney reach an agreement and the trade war largely disappears—Enbridge doesn't suddenly lose its investment case.

It gives the portfolio ballast.

Think of it as:

NTR/CCO/TECK = strategic-resource growth

CNQ/SU/CVE = energy/resource diversification

ENB = infrastructure/income stabilizer

That's a much more coherent construction.

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What changes my perspective

I would stop thinking about this as a "stocks Canada can weaponize against America" portfolio.

That's too narrow.

I'd instead invest in:

"Resources the world increasingly needs that Canada can sell to more than one customer."

That distinction is crucial.

Canada's weakness isn't lack of resources.

It's historically been customer concentration.

Even today, the United States takes approximately 57% of Canada's critical-mineral exports, worth about C$28.8 billion in 2025.

The emerging Canadian strategy is therefore not simply retaliation against America. It's:

produce more → process more in Canada → build Pacific/Atlantic infrastructure → diversify customers → develop allied supply chains → reduce U.S. dependency.

Natural Resources Canada's current 2026–27 plan explicitly calls for vertically integrated critical-mineral supply chains, strategic stockpiling and partnerships with G7 and NATO countries.

That is a much more durable investment thesis than betting on tariffs.

Therefore, knowing nothing about the investor, my top five would be:

1. Nutrien — NTR ★★★★★
2. Cameco — CCO ★★★★★
3. Canadian Natural Resources — CNQ ★★★★½
4. Teck Resources — TECK.B ★★★★½
5. Suncor — SU ★★★★

And if someone told me, "Forget diversification; give me the three Canadian stocks with the best combination of strategic importance, secular growth and potential upside from Canada's economic realignment," I would narrow it further to:

NTR + CCO + TECK.B

That's actually the three-stock Canadian strategic-resource basket I find most interesting right now. It gives you food security + nuclear/energy security + electrification/industrial security without requiring the Canada-U.S. trade war to get worse for the investment thesis to work.

China - not playing by international rules could ignite trade war with the west.

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China's home-grown innovation drive stirs unease

Sept 27-2010 by Thomson Reuters

By Alan Wheatley, China Economics Editor
BEIJING, Sept 27 (Reuters) - In the 1860s, Chinese labourers laid track over the treacherous terrain of California's high Sierras to help complete America's first transcontinental railroad.
Fast forward, and California wants Chinese technology and capital to construct the country's first high-speed rail system.

"We look to China to build our high-speed rail, to be part of the bidding process that we are going to go through," the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said on a visit to Shanghai this month.
Acceleration of the industrial upgrading that puts China on par with the likes of France and Japan to compete for the Californian contract will be a centrepiece of the country's five-year plan for 2011-2016 now being finalised.

As well as introducing more automation into traditional industries, the government has identified a cluster of strategic sectors that it wants to develop, including nanotechnology and new materials.
China already has in place five of a planned array of 35 satellites that will provide a navigation alternative to the U.S. Global Positioning System by 2020.

By the same date, China expects to be converting more coal into oil, gas and chemicals than any other country, according to industry officials quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.
Embracing cutting-edge technologies will help further raise living standards in a country where 150 million people still live below the poverty line.

But there is growing criticism in the West that China owes its rapid ascent to a mercantilist strategy of coercing foreign firms to transfer technology; favouring local companies in its domestic market; and now launching a new breed of national champions overseas to undercut foreign rivals who gave them a technological leg-up to start with.

Feelings are running so high that the heads of German industrial giants Siemens and BASF publicly complained about an uneven playing field in China in the presence of Premier Wen Jiabao back in July.

General Electric <GE.N> Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt made similar comments in private that found their way into the press.

"I don't condemn China. It's very smart policy to look out for yourself. However, China has joined the world's rules-based system, and these things are not acceptable in this system," said James McGregor, a senior counselor in Beijing for APCO Worldwide, a public affairs and communications firm.

SIGNS OF SHIFTING POWER
China is no different from many countries that set product standards tilted to their own firms or promote home-grown innovation. But Beijing is striking a combative stance at a time when the West, especially the United States, has a sinking feeling that power is leaking away to Asia in the wake of the global financial crisis. Unemployment is high, confidence is low.

"All we're asking China to do is play by the rules. Get your thumb off the scales. Let us go in and compete equally," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said last week. While Congress is preoccupied with America's big bilateral trade deficit with China, which it blames on the yuan's exchange rate, many Western investors are more exercised by the difficulty of doing business in China. Rules drafted last November that in effect barred Western firms -- even those with long-established operations in China -- from competing for government contracts badly undermined goodwill in sections of the international business community.

Beijing has since withdrawn the offending regulations, and Wen, the premier, has repeatedly reassured foreign firms that they will be treated equally. But the damage has been done. "I talk to a lot of foreign technology executives and they may come to Beijing smiling, but behind closed doors they are rethinking their China plans. This has woken them up," said McGregor, author of a critical study of the array of industrial policies underpinning China's drive for 'indigenous innovation'.

BRITTLE ATMOSPHERE
Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, an investment consultancy, said China was displaying "high IQ, low EQ" on the issue. The natural rise of domestic competitors was psychologically threatening to foreign companies that have prospered in China.But he said Beijing needed to acknowledge that Western complaints were genuine in many cases; protectionism was a reality in sectors from wind turbines to smart cards.
"We're just not seeing many people queuing up to enter into the market given the perceived barriers," Clark said.

The danger for the world economy is that attitudes are hardening even though China is just setting out on its high-tech odyssey. Without mutual trust, the potential for friction is vast as Chinese firms make inroads into high-end Western markets.China, for instance, exported medical equipment worth $6.6 billion in the first half of 2010, up 27 percent from a year earlier.A recent study by Deutsche Bank said China's technical competence in the equipment manufacturing sector was now at a "golden stage" that would enable it to grab export market share from Japan, South Korea and Germany.

China was likely to undergo an upgrading of its export industries in the next decade similar to that seen in Japan 30-40 years ago -- but on a scale three times larger, the bank said. "The huge domestic market and localisation policy mean that China is best placed to enjoy economies of scale, which will likely offer growing cost advantages to domestic producers against global competitors," Deutsche said. In short, the tinder is dry and nationalist winds in both the United States and China risk fanning any fires that break out.

The need to strike a new balance is urgent, McGregor said. "At the end of the day China has to find a way to build its own innovation system to create its own strong companies. But it's going to have to play by global rules, otherwise we're going to have trade wars," he said. (Editing by Mathew Veedon)

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• Analysis: China's home-grown innovation drive stirs unease (reuters.com)
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