China and Canada announced on January 16 that they have reached a preliminary trade agreement. Both sides agreed that starting March 1, 2026, China will lift the retaliatory tariffs on Canadian lobster and crab, a move expected to reopen a key export market for Canada.
Previously, in March 2025, China imposed an additional 25% retaliatory tariff on Canadian lobster and crab, pushing the combined tariff on lobster to as high as 32%. This significantly undermined the competitiveness of Canadian products in the Chinese market.
Data shows that due to the high tariffs, Canada’s lobster exports to China fell by 26% year-on-year in Q2 2025, followed by a further 20% decline in Q3. In contrast, Chinese demand for lobster continued to grow: during the first nine months of 2025, China’s lobster import volume increased by 13%, while import value rose by 22%. As a result, Canada was forced to relinquish market share in a high-demand market, which was largely taken over by suppliers from the Caribbean region and Vietnam.
China is currently Canada’s second-largest seafood export market, after the United States. Both countries have set a goal to increase Canada’s exports to China by 50% by 2030, and have signed cooperation memoranda covering food safety and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, laying a solid foundation for long-term growth in bilateral agricultural and seafood trade.