Economic diplomacy, decarbonized?: Latin America and Canada’s critical mineral ambitions

This article explores potential impacts of Canada’s National Critical Mineral Strategy on existing trade and aid dynamics with Latin America. Building on a historical analysis of Canada’s “extractives turn” in economic diplomacy with Latin America since the 1990s, we ask how emerging imperatives to secure extractive and downstream industries associated with global decarbonization are often at odds with hemispheric trade priorities, development agendas, and geopolitical ends. We make two primary interventions. First, there is a high degree of continuity across administrations in the commercial and extractives sector focus of Canadian economic diplomacy to the Americas since the 1990s. Second, the recent “buzz” around critical minerals illustrates the tension between foreign policies promoting domestic reindustrialization and sustainable development abroad. We argue that shifting geopolitics and worsening climate crises will likely only intensify these dynamics. Energy transitions and their material demands thus provide useful vantage points for examining Canada–Latin America relations, development amid decarbonization, and the opportunities and risks of profound geopolitical and ecological reconfigurations.