US-Canada Trade Who's on Top?

The list of Canada's top trading partners is provided here. Canada is seen as a Canada's reliance on baller markets and its biggest trading partners have always been contentious political issues. Because of the tight historical, cultural, and institutional ties within the British Empire, the United Kingdom was by far Canada's largest commercial partner at the time of Confederation in 1867. In contrast to imports of $307.6 billion, U.S. exports totaled $320.1 billion. In 2016, the US and Canada had a $12.5 billion trade surplus.[1] In terms of net trade of products, excluding services, Canada has historically had a trade deficit with the United States every year since 1985.[2] Since both countries are among each other's biggest trading partners, the trade relationship between them spans many industries and is essential to the prosperity of both. Trade between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario alone, over the Ambassador Bridge, equals total trade between the United States and Japan.

Prior to NAFTA

Since 1866, politicians in Canada have discussed free trade. The Liberal Party of Canada proposed trade with the United States, while the Conservative Party opposed it. This issue also dominated the Canadian federal elections of 1984 and 1988, when the Progressive Conservative Party pushed a free trade agreement and the Liberal Party opposed it. A free trade deal was not achieved until the Canada–United States Free Trade deal in 1987, despite numerous bilateral agreements lowering barriers.

Agreement on Free Trade across the Americas (NAFTA)

The North American Free Trade pact (NAFTA), a multinational and multicultural pact involving the US, Mexico, and Canada, was made possible by the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and has contributed to an increase in trade between the three parties. Even while there is some dysfunction among the nations, particularly in the auto and agricultural sectors, the trends are small because the agreement has undoubtedly benefited all of the participating countries.

Conflicts

A number of disagreements stem from the two countries' bilateral trade. Canada was included in the United States' Special 301 Report about intellectual property rights enforcement, but with the mildest "rebuke" possible. Aside from softwood timber, other products disputed to be from Canada are meat, tomatoes, and other agricultural products.

Concerns about increased border security following the terrorist attacks of 2001 have been raised by companies in both nations. Since the assaults, the problem has been less of a concern thanks to the advancement of new technology, registration, training, and lax regulations. However, trade has been impacted by delays and unclear travel times, estimated to have cost corporations US$10.5 billion at midpoint.

The importation of less expensive prescription medications into the US from Canada is one persistent and complicated trade issue. Prices for prescription pharmaceuticals can be far lower than what consumers would pay in the unregulated U.S. market because of price limitations implemented by the Canadian government as part of their single-payer healthcare system. State and municipal governments in the United States have enacted laws of their own to permit the trade to continue, despite federal prohibitions prohibiting such transactions.

Culture and the media

High culture and mass media are freely exchanged since English is the primary language in both nations, and because accents and dialects on both sides of the border are (relatively) similar and represent a form of North American English (as opposed to the British or Australian English). Cultural exchange primarily involves English-language media, but both nations have minority-language media—the United States' huge Hispanophone community, and Canada's big Francophone population—as well as immigrants and speakers of indigenous languages.

The main distinction is that Americans benefit from stronger economies of scale because their media market is over 15 times larger. This has historically always been the case since the 19th century, when American books were widely available in Canada. However, the start of Canadian cultural protectionism can be traced to the 1920s, when American broadcasts dominated the country's radio industry. Cultural nationalists then formed the Canadian Radio League, advocating for a publicly funded broadcaster to rival American stations. A similar conflict over U.S. content running on Canadian television stations and U.S. stations transmitting into Canada in the 1950s gave rise to CBC Television. Canadian radio and television stations have been obligated by law to broadcast a minimum percentage of Canadian content since the 1970s.

One point of contention stems from divergent ideologies: Canadian negotiators view media as merely another commodity, while American counterparts contend that media protection requires Canada's culture, which is why it should be kept out of free trade accords. This distinction was revealed in the 1990s during the controversy over "split-run" magazines. Split-run magazines create a slightly altered version (for example, for the Canadian market) and then sell a large portion of the advertising space to Canadian companies. Publishers in Canada said that Americans were stealing all of their advertising money without creating any original Canadian content. In response, American publishers and the US government argued that international commerce law prohibited "split-runs" and so was unlawful. Conflicts have also arisen around the substantial tax breaks that Canadian movie and television productions receive from the national and local governments. In the 1990s, American filmmakers complained that "runaway productions" were affecting American jobs in the film business, particularly in California. This was compounded by a cheaper Canadian dollar.