In president-elect Donald Trump’s black-and-white world view of trade, a deficit with any country is something that must be eradicated. America’s trade deficit with Canada may have shrunk in recent months, but it’s still far higher than it was during Mr. Trump’s first term, leaving Canada exposed as he prepares to take office again.
In October, Canada exported $6.2-billion more in goods to the United States than it imported from that country, Statistics Canada reported Thursday. For Canada, that was the smallest trade surplus with the U.S. since mid-2023. (A surplus for Canada is a deficit from the U.S. perspective.)
Despite that decline, on an annual basis America’s trade deficit with Canada stood at $100.9-billion, well above the annual average of $41.2-billion from 2017 to 2020.
When Mr. Trump met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in late November, he claimed Canada was “ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100-billion.” It’s unclear which currency Mr. Trump was using, but presumably he was speaking in U.S.-dollar terms, in which case he overstated the size of the trade gap. New numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show the trade deficit with Canada was US$63-billion over the past 12 months.
Nor does it seem to matter to Mr. Trump that America’s trade deficit with Canada is relatively small compared with that of China. On an annual basis, the U.S. trade deficit with China was US$290-billion, the Census Bureau reported. Similarly, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was US$168.5-billion.
Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.
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Publish date : 2024-12-05 16:30:00
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