Sylvain Charlebois
Professor
Dalhousie University
Agri-Food Analytics lab
During his lecture at the international seminar of the Business Science Institute held on March 27 and 28, 2025, Professor Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Analytical Sciences Laboratory in Agri-Food at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada), paints a worrying picture of the geopolitical reorganizations at work in the agri-food field. In a dense presentation, he bluntly warns of the upheavals caused by Donald Trump's return to the presidency of the United States, particularly for North America, but also for the global food balance as a whole.
Far from purely technical analyses, this conference offers a political reading of food, considered as a strategic instrument in the recomposition of economic power relations. The tone is measured, but the message is unambiguous: according to Professor Charlebois, we are witnessing a major turning point, which could call into question the multilateral framework inherited from the Second World War and undermine decades of commercial and environmental cooperation.
For Canada, the situation is paradoxical. As an immediate neighbor of the United States, it has long benefited from this geographical proximity, to the point of developing a highly integrated economy with its American partner. But this interdependence, once perceived as an asset, is now becoming a vulnerability. Professor Charlebois refers to a country that is “trapped by its geography”, exposed to an American strategy based on the implementation of tariff barriers and the massive repatriation of value chains.
The agrifood transformation, a key link in any food sovereignty, could thus shift southwards, with serious consequences for Canadian producers. Some industrial groups are already considering relocating their operations to the United States, anticipating growing instability and an increasingly unpredictable trade policy. In this context, Canada's food sovereignty is no longer a simple agricultural issue, but a major strategic challenge.
More broadly, Professor Charlebois's intervention highlights the extent to which the current American stance calls the multilateral order into question. The implicit denunciation of the Bretton Woods agreement, the mistrust of the World Trade Organization, the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement: all these are signs of a voluntary withdrawal from the cooperative framework that had made it possible, for more than seventy years, to build a system of shared regulation. The bilateral and transactional approach promoted by Donald Trump gives immediate interests priority over collective commitments.
The European Union, although only mentioned in passing at the conference, is not spared by these reorganizations. Trade tensions, debates on environmental or health standards, and the rise of protectionist logic call into question its own ability to defend an agricultural model that is sustainable, competitive and inclusive.
The conference is based on the latest book by Professor Sylvain Charlebois, entitled La part du gâteau, which maps out the major global agri-food issues: North-South relations, food security, biotechnologies, climate change, the growing role of data and artificial intelligence. The professor develops a clear thesis: food has become a vector of power in the same way as energy or technology. As such, it deserves increased strategic attention.
The speech ends with a more forward-looking reflection. By reducing the size of the state, deregulating massively, and disengaging the United States from collective efforts in the area of sustainability, the Trump administration could slow down the development of green innovations in the agri-food sector. This would raise the question of the medium-term viability of an agricultural model based on ecological transition, whether it is supported by the European Union, Canada or other emerging powers.
Through this conference, the Business Science Institute is pursuing its mission of opening up management knowledge to the major issues of the day. Sylvain Charlebois' rigorous and uncompromising analysis shows how much the agri-food sector is now at the heart of the geopolitical issues of the 21st century.
