The number that gets overlooked
While buyers and analysts spend most of 2025 and 2026 talking about US tariff exposure, Canada quietly became the second-largest CPTPP destination for Vietnamese pangasius, behind only Japan, accounting for roughly a fifth of the bloc's total pangasius import value from Vietnam. Vietnam's overall seafood exports crossed an estimated USD 11.3 billion for 2025, up around 13% year-on-year, with shrimp and pangasius doing most of the lifting. Canada's share of that is modest in absolute dollars, but it has been one of the fastest-growing lanes inside CPTPP, and I think most buyers still treat it as an afterthought market rather than a strategic one.
Why CPTPP tariff treatment matters more in Canada than it looks
Canada eliminated most tariffs on Vietnamese seafood under CPTPP on a staged schedule, and for pangasius fillet, frozen shrimp, and several value-added lines, duties are now at or near zero. That matters because Canada's retail and foodservice import market for whitefish and shrimp is dominated by suppliers paying full MFN duty or sourcing from countries without a comparable trade agreement. A Vietnamese exporter selling CPTPP-qualifying pangasius into Toronto or Vancouver is landing product at a structural cost advantage that a Chilean or Chinese competitor without the same agreement can't easily match on price alone. I've seen this tariff gap be the single biggest factor in a buyer's landed-cost model when they finally run the numbers side by side with their existing non-Vietnam supplier.
What the growth pattern actually shows
Verified export records tracked by industry associations show pangasius shipments to Canada posting double-digit, and in some periods stronger, year-on-year growth across 2024 and 2025, with the strongest gains concentrated in frozen fillet and breaded/value-added formats rather than whole-fish or unprocessed cuts. That shift toward processed formats is consistent with what I see across other CPTPP markets: buyers in developed economies with high labor costs increasingly want secondary processing done in Vietnam, not at destination. Shrimp exports to Canada haven't grown as fast as pangasius in relative terms, but they're coming off a larger base and remain a meaningful share of Vietnam's total shrimp export mix into North America outside the US.
Where buyers get the sourcing decision wrong
The most common mistake I see from Canadian buyers new to Vietnam sourcing is assuming the CPTPP tariff benefit is automatic. It isn't — it requires a valid certificate of origin under the agreement's specific rules, and the exporting factory has to be able to document that the product meets the rules-of-origin threshold (which for pangasius and shrimp generally means the fish or shrimp was farmed and processed in Vietnam, not just packed there). Buyers who skip this documentation check at the sourcing stage sometimes find out at the Canadian border that their shipment doesn't qualify for preferential treatment, which erases the cost advantage that justified switching suppliers in the first place. The second mistake is treating Canada as a smaller, lower-priority version of the US market and applying the same specs and cold-chain assumptions — Canadian import inspection and labeling requirements (CFIA) have their own documentation chain that's distinct from FDA requirements, even though the product itself may be identical.
What this means for buyers evaluating Vietnam as a source
If you're a Canadian importer currently sourcing whitefish or shrimp from a non-CPTPP origin, the tariff differential alone is worth quantifying before you assume Vietnam is only competitive on labor cost. If you're already sourcing from Vietnam, confirm your supplier can produce a clean CPTPP certificate of origin for every shipment, not just the first one — this is a compliance detail that's easy to get right once and then let slip. Either way, Canada's growth trajectory inside CPTPP suggests this lane will keep getting more competitive over the next two to three years, which is the window where locking in a reliable factory relationship and documentation process is worth more than chasing the lowest quoted price.
Sourcing pangasius fillet from Vietnam?
I work with international buyers on sourcing, supplier evaluation, and factory inspection. If you're evaluating Vietnamese suppliers for this category, I can help you avoid the common pitfalls.
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