Malaysia declared its agreement null and void. Indonesia says its deal never entered into force. Japan told the WTO the deal isn’t legally binding. Canada spent the same period doing something less exciting and considerably more durable.
There is a difference between announcing an agreement and having one, and it is not a technicality. It is the difference between a press release and a law.
Since early 2025, the Trump administration has announced trade agreements with more than twenty countries and described them in consistent terms. Historic. The largest ever made. Things no president had achieved before.
The July 2025 Japan announcement was the high-water mark. In Trump’s own words, perhaps the largest deal ever made: 550 billion dollars of Japanese investment, ninety per cent of the profits to America, hundreds of thousands of jobs. There has never been anything like it.
The Cato Institute went through the whole list. Cato is a free-market think tank in Washington, and it has spent years arguing for freer trade, not less of it. This is not a critique from someone with a Canadian stake.
The ones that were never finished
India was described by the Trade Representative’s own team as ninety-nine per cent done in June. It remains on hold.
Brazil’s negotiations collapsed, and it received tariffs instead of an agreement.
South Africa’s talks are stalled. Kenya is starting over, again. New Zealand, one of the most enthusiastically free-trading economies on earth, got nothing at all. Neither did Chile.
The ones that were announced as finished and then weren’t
This category is stranger, because these were presented as completed.
Malaysia’s trade minister declared his country’s October 2025 agreement null and void after the Supreme Court struck down the emergency tariffs it was built on.
Indonesia signed one day before that ruling. Jakarta now says the deal never entered into force.
The Philippines and Pakistan never confirmed the terms Washington announced on their behalf.
Bangladesh signed three days before a national election, and the incoming government has placed the agreement under review.
Vietnam, Taiwan and Argentina remain unratified.
Japan
The largest deal ever made deserves its own section, because of what Japan has since said about it.
Washington implemented the July framework by executive order. Japan ratified nothing. Earlier this month Japan told WTO members that it has made no tariff concessions and that the agreement is not legally binding.
The 550 billion dollars is what Tokyo describes as an administrative understanding. Japan can terminate it at any time.
The Gulf deals, which have no text
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar were announced as trade agreements. There is no treaty text and no signed framework, let alone approval by the countries’ own advisory councils.
What exists are White House fact sheets citing non-binding investment pledges totalling roughly four trillion dollars. That is close to double those three countries’ combined GDP, and vastly more than they have ever invested in the United States before.
There is precedent for how this goes. The Saudis announced enormous American investment figures in 2017 as well.
Now the same period, in Canada
None of what follows was announced as historic. Most of it was barely covered outside trade publications.
Indonesia
Negotiations concluded December 2, 2024. Signed September 24, 2025 in Ottawa during President Prabowo Subianto’s visit. Canada’s Parliament completed ratification and granted royal assent. It enters into force by the end of this year. It is Canada’s first bilateral trade agreement with any ASEAN country, and once implemented it cuts or eliminates tariffs on over ninety-five per cent of Canadian exports to Indonesia, including wheat, potash, wood and soybeans.
Japan
A sequence rather than an event. The Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty signed December 13, 2025. The Security of Information Agreement in force January 16, 2026. The Defence Equipment and Technology Transfer Agreement signed January 28. Then on March 6 in Tokyo, Carney and Prime Minister Takaichi signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership covering defence, energy, critical minerals, trade and technology, with three bilateral memorandums of cooperation beneath it.
The commercial logic is not abstract. Japan imports about eighty-seven per cent of its energy, and Canada has seven LNG export projects at various stages of development. Meanwhile Honda and Toyota now build seventy-seven per cent of all light vehicles manufactured in Canada, up from forty-four per cent in 2016.
South Korea
At the APEC summit in Gyeongju on November 1, 2025, Canada and Korea announced a Security and Defence Cooperation Partnership, the first of its kind for Canada in the Indo-Pacific, and concluded negotiations on a General Security of Information Agreement. The defence agreement was signed February 25, 2026, alongside a memorandum covering Korean battery and automotive manufacturing in Canada.
China
Carney in Beijing on January 16, the first Canadian prime minister to visit since 2017. China cuts canola seed tariffs from eighty-four per cent to roughly fifteen by March 1, and removes duties on canola meal, lobster, crab and peas. Canada admits 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles a year at 6.1 per cent, down from the 100 per cent imposed in 2024. Chinese visa-free entry for Canadians.
Ten days later, Trump threatened one hundred per cent tariffs on Canadian exports if Ottawa dealt with Beijing. Carney confirmed Canada is not pursuing a free trade agreement with China and would not do so without notifying its CUSMA partners.
The United Kingdom
Canada was the first CPTPP member to support Britain’s accession in 2021 and the last to ratify it, on July 3, 2026. It came into force September 1. The bloc now covers 598 million people.
Australia
Carney in Sydney and Canberra from March 3 to 6, the first bilateral visit by a Canadian prime minister since 2007, announcing partnerships in investment, defence, critical minerals, energy and AI.
The United Arab Emirates
A Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement signed in November 2025, tied to a C$70 billion pledge covering minerals and port projects.
India
On March 2, 2026 in New Delhi, Cameco formalised a C$2.6 billion uranium supply contract, alongside the launch of formal trade negotiations.
Germany
Two twenty-year LNG supply agreements with the Ksi Lisims project on the northern British Columbia coast. SEFE in May for one million tonnes a year, Uniper in July for two million, first deliveries 2032.
Poland
Canada’s first procurement under the EU’s SAFE defence programme. Marconi Technologies of Montreal building made-in-Canada tactical radios for the Polish Cyber Command, drawing on roughly 100 Canadian suppliers, deliveries running to 2030.
Still in negotiation and not signed: Ecuador, Mercosur, ASEAN as a bloc, the Philippines, India, Morocco, CARICOM and the Dominican Republic.
The honest caveats
Three of them, and they matter.
China’s tariff relief on canola runs only to the end of 2026, and it is unclear whether it extends. Pork tariffs remain in place.
Pierre Poilievre attacked the Beijing agreement directly, asking how Carney went from describing China as the biggest threat facing the country during the spring campaign to signing a strategic partnership with it. That is a fair question and it has not been answered well.
And several of Canada’s agreements are partnerships and memorandums rather than free trade agreements. The Indonesia CEPA is the only comprehensive bilateral FTA in the list. Calling the rest “trade deals” would be doing exactly what this piece criticises.
What the difference actually is
It is not enthusiasm, and it is not competence in any general sense.
It is process.
One government announces agreements on social media and implements them domestically by executive order, which means the other party never has to ratify anything, and frequently doesn’t. That is why Japan can tell the WTO that an agreement the United States has implemented is not legally binding on Japan. Both statements are true.
The other government tables the text in Parliament for twenty-one sitting days, passes implementing legislation, and obtains royal assent before anything takes effect. That is slow, it is unglamorous, and it produces almost no headlines.
It also produces agreements that survive a change of government, a court ruling, or a bad week.
Twenty announcements have produced at least ten failures. Eleven quieter ones have produced eleven agreements.
Sources
- Trump’s Vaunted ‘Trade Deals’ Are Much Less Than Meet the Eye, Cato Institute
- Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, Global Affairs Canada
- Prime Minister Carney forges new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Japan, PMO
- Prime Minister Carney advances new trade, economic, and defence partnerships with Indo-Pacific nations, PMO
- What to know about the Canada-China tariff deal on EVs and canola, The Globe and Mail
- Presidential 2025 Tariff Actions: Timeline and Status, Congressional Research Service