The Trump tariffs are starting to affect trading patterns.
StatsCanada has just released the March numbers for imports and exports showing a significant tightening of the nation’s trade deficit. It went from $1.4 billion in February to $500 million in March, a reduction of roughly 60-percent.
It’s also interesting because the tariffs kicked in mid-month so we have a bit of a dichotomy where buyers and sellers were doing extra business in the days leading up to the tariffs and then the slowdown that came after they were imposed.
Canada’s trade with the US was different than what happened with the flow to the rest of the world. We were generally down on the US side and up elsewhere.
We also saw a reduction in imports to Canada as our retaliatory tariffs began to kick in.
And the monthly report also revealed that Saskatchewan’s reliance on the US market as an export destination remains at the lower end of the scale. We now stand third among the provinces when measuring the least reliance on American purchasers of our goods.
