Canada/US Trade
15th July 2010 by Andrew Needs, Ottawa | No Comments
This week we are having a family holiday. We are only a 90 minute drive from Ottawa. We have rented a cottage in the 1000 Islands on the St Lawrence River. We are in sight of the bridge system that provides the Canada/US border crossing for this part of Canada. It is not the busiest crossing by a long shot – the Windsor/Detroit corridor and crossings in BC dwarf this one. We can see however a steady stream of heavy vehicles in both directions, a testament to the massive two-way trade between the US and Canada which runs at over US$1.6 billion per day.
New Zealand is a nation with a huge export focus but this figure puts our relative size as an exporter into perspective. Annual two-way trade between New Zealand and Canada is less than one day US/Canada trade. Annual two way trade with our most important partner Australia is NZ$ 17 billion, for China NZ$ 10 billion and for the US NZ$8 billion. While we export most of what we produce in New Zealand and it is the life blood of our economy, it remains minute in world trade terms.
