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Markets, Makers and Middle Powers: What a Mexico City market taught me about Canada’s next trade chapter

Markets, Makers and Middle Powers: What a Mexico City market taught me about Canada’s next trade chapter

By Miriam Kramer, Executive Director, Government Relations & Public Policy, OCAD University 

Colorful fabrics at Mercado de Artesanías de la Ciudadela, Mexico City

Last month, I represented OCAD University as part of Canadian Heritage’s creative industries delegation with the Global Affairs Canada's Team Canada Trade Missions to support new partnerships and renew existing ones. We visited Mexico City and Guadalajara and were side-by-side with firms and institutions from many sectors (including agriculture and tech) signing deals, scoping coproductions, planning exchanges and opening sales pipelines.  

During the trip, I visited Mercado de Artesanías de la Ciudadela. It’s a maze of handmade textiles, clay, silver, wood and colour, a living archive of Mexico’s cultural identity and its small-business engine. The market was first convened during the 1968 Olympic Games to showcase artisans from across the country to millions of global visitors, and it has remained a magnet for cultural exchange and commerce ever since. In other words: Mexico has put art and culture to work—confidently and visibly—as instruments of national identity and economic sovereignty.  

What I saw at La Ciudadela reinforced the critical role that culture plays in global trade. As I’ve written previously, cultural exports are a huge part of Canada’s global game. In 2022, Canada’s cultural exports reached $24.5 billion. Key sub-domains such as visual and applied arts ($10.3 billion) and audio-visual and interactive media ($7.9 billion) accounted for 74% of cultural exports that year. As a middle power with a global agenda, Canada could be leveraging culture to push forward its diplomatic objectives. However, as they stand now, Canada’s policy and program mechanisms are not in place for it to do that.

 

The federal levers (and why they matter)

Canada has a strong tradition—but an uneven institutional record—of integrating culture into its trade agenda. Cultural diplomacy programs like PromArt and Trade Routes helped artists and organizations build markets and relationships abroad before being discontinued nearly two decades ago.  

With the Export Diversification Strategy, Canada pushed to broaden exports beyond the U.S. set a 2018 target to lift non-U.S. exports by 50% by 2025: this target was reached in 2024. That’s good news, but the sectoral mix has been uneven and doesn’t substitute for a clear, sector specific plan for creative industries.

Meanwhile, the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) will undergo its first joint review later this year, creating both risk and opportunity for the rules of North American trade that Canada’s cultural and creative exporters rely on. Canada rightly defends a general cultural industries exception to protect cultural sovereignty. The 2026 review is a critical moment to safeguard and modernize that protection, while also improving day-to-day conditions for cultural exporters (mobility, customs, IP and service trade frictions).  

Finally, the Creative Export Strategy was launched in 2018 to help Canadian creative industries “maximize their export potential.” It was renewed in 2023 for $57–62M over three years across trade missions, market services and the Creative Export Canada (CEC) program. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tallies $125.9M in spending in 2018–23, with CEC and the Frankfurt Book Fair as the largest initiatives. The Creative Export Strategy has been the federal backbone helping Canada’s creative firms get to market, but it is slated to sunset on March 31, 2026.  

 

The role of culture as a multiplier for middle power influence

Canada’s trade diversification push has delivered progress, but cultural exports need a durable lane in whatever comes next. Prime Minister Carney’s government is actively reestablishing trade relationships and pursuing Team Canada missions to key markets like Mexico. As we’ve seen with Heated Rivalry, culture can be a force multiplier for middle power influence. It opens doors, builds trust, and anchors commercial and educational partnerships. As economic and foreign policy planners look toward a new multiyear growth agenda, the message is simple: no serious plan for productivity, diversification or global influence can succeed without culture.  

 

Considerations for Canada to move forward

Canada’s policy toolkit has pieces of the puzzle. As we rethink economic strategy and prepare for the CUSMA review, we need a specific, durable carve in for culture. Here are five ways Canada could achieve that:

1. Renew and expand the Creative Export Strategy:

  • Make the Creative Export Strategy permanent, with indexed funding and a predictable calendar of trade missions, accelerators and market services;
  • Keep the two-stream approach for companies at different stages of export readiness (Export-Ready and Export Development) and scale it to reflect demand, with dedicated targets for Indigenous and equity-deserving creators and companies.  

2. Embed a culture chapter inside trade diversification:

  • Whether operating under an updated Export Diversification Strategy or its successor, include a “Creative Industries & Cultural Services” pillar with KPIs for market access, services trade and IP commercialization—aligned with Canadian Heritage and Trade Commissioner Service sector teams.  

3. Introduce a next-generation, digital‑first cultural power platform that coordinates visibility, capital and community to convert Canadian cultural success into sustained economic and diplomatic value:

  • Adapt proven features of successful cultural‑export systems (e.g., Québec’s SODEC and the U.S.’s Gold House) and provide the connective infrastructure Canada needs to advance cultural and economic sovereignty, while positioning Canada’s creators on the global stage;  
  • Provide additional visibility supports to Indigenous and equity-deserving creators.

4. Leverage the 2026 CUSMA review to modernize cultural provisions and mobility:

  • Consider updating the cultural exception for the digital era;
  • Seek simplified artist/technician/business mobility, clearer rules on temporary entry for services and streamlined customs for cultural goods—the frictions that make-or-break small firms crossing the border. (Government consultations on the review are underway; the cultural sector has already stressed the stakes, as has the Cultural Policy Hub.)

5. Reinstate a funded cultural diplomacy program:

  • Build on the previous program architecture (e.g., PromArt, Trade Routes) to deliver sustained, strategic cultural diplomacy—codesigned with Canadian Heritage and the sector—and tie it directly to trade, education and security objectives.  

 

At La Ciudadela, the policy case was on full display: hundreds of small firms, each anchoring identity in craft, each making an economy more resilient. Canada’s creative entrepreneurs and businesses—from designers and digital creators to performing artists and craft makers—can and should be doing even more of this work abroad. They’re already telling our story; we owe them the policies, programs and support to scale it.