Glacier FarmMedia — China has effectively shut the door on purchases of Canadian canola by announcing a preliminary anti-dumping duty of 75.8 per cent on imports of the oilseed to start on Thursday, Aug. 14.
China’s Ministry of Commerce launched an anti-dumping probe into Canadian canola last September, largely in response to Canada’s imposition of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Tariffs on Canadian canola oil and meal have been in place since March. The anti-dumping investigation is set to formally end this September, and an adjustment to the final duty is possible.
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Effect on Canadian farmers
“With this preliminary determination of dumping for canola seed together with the existing 100 per cent anti-discrimination tariffs on canola meal and oil, the Chinese market is effectively closed to the Canadian canola industry,” said Chris Davison, President and CEO of the Canola Council of Canada (CCC) in a news release.
“This tariff will have an immediate and substantive impact on farmers’ marketing opportunities for the 2025 canola crop,” added Rick White, president and CEO of the Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA) in the joint release with the CCC. “Canadian farmers are globally competitive and if a solution is not found swiftly, the impact will be quickly felt on our farms and in our rural communities,” White added.
Both CCC and CCGA will continue all efforts to resolve this issue for Canadian canola farmers and the broader value chain, said the release. The groups were calling for immediate support from the federal government as the industry navigates the market closure.
Exports already expected to be pulled back
“As a headline, it’s awful,” said analyst Mike Jubinville on the latest news. However, he noted that with diminished supplies in 2025/26, “we were going to have to pull back exports to some extent anyways.”
Canada has experienced trade issues with China in the past, with those previous limits on direct business leading to shifts in trade flows like increased sales to the United Arab Emirates, who crushed the seed and sent the processed oil and meal to China. Jubinville noted that other exporters like Australia can’t replace all the lost Canadian business and expected to see similar adjustments in the global trade.
China had accounted for roughly half of all of Canada’s canola exports in 2024/25, taking 4.6 million tonnes out of the total 9.1 million tonnes exported in the 11 months of data through June.
Phil Speiss, senior commodity futures specialist with RBC Dominion Securities, said the trade was already penciling in a 2.5 million-tonne reduction in canola exports in 2025/26 from the 9.5 million tonnes expected to have moved in 2024/25, and noted that values were looking overbought at levels prior to the China news.
The market needed a readjustment, added Tony Tryhuk, director of trading with RBC. He said the resulting downturn in prices should prompt more selling from farmers who had been holding out for higher prices despite improving crops, while also bringing in more commercial buying interest.
November canola had settled at C$680.80 per tonne on Aug. 11 — one day before the Chinese anti-dumping announcement. Prices dropped their C$45 per tonne daily limit in immediate response to the Chinese duties but settled well off that level with November down C$30.50 on the day at C$650.30 per tonne on Aug. 12.
With China out of the market, Canada can expect to sell more to other customers like Europe, Japan, Mexico and the United States. However, “all of those guys know that without China the price is going lower, so they don’t have to be aggressive on their bids,” said Speiss.
