WINNIPEG — The federal government has done its homework.
Following his first election as president in 2016, Donald Trump demanded that Canada and Mexico renegotiate the NAFTA free trade deal.
Since then, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has assembled a boatload of data explaining why free trade is beneficial for farmers and the agri-food industry on both sides of the border.
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If president-elect Trump decides to renegotiate the new version of NAFTA, the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, the agriculture and agri-food industry in Canada will have data at its disposal.
The information, available on the AAFC website, says that bilateral trade in agricultural products was worth US$72.5 billion in 2023.
Top U.S. exports to Canada
- Grain alcohol, $1.7 billion
- Food preparation, $1.5 billion Baked goods, $1.3 billion
- Pet food, $1.2 billion
Top Canadian exports to the U.S.
- Baked goods, $5 billion
- Canola oil, $4.8 billion
- Beef and pork, $3.6 billion
- French fries, $1.7 billion
Of note, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has slightly different data. It includes commodities, like fruit and vegetables, and biofuel in its export data to Canada for 2023:
- Fresh vegetables $1.97 billion
- Fresh fruit
- $1.7 billion
- Ethanol $1.74 billion
The 2023 data from AAFC shows the balance of trade is tipped in favour of Canada. About $32 billion worth of goods were shipped to Canada from the U.S. and $40.5 billion worth went south.
“Canada is a reliable customer that buys more U.S. agricultural goods than Japan, Korea and Taiwan combined,” says an AAFC document.
That sounds like a winning argument, but a trade imbalance of $8.5 billion could trigger alarm bells inside the Trump White House.
To counter the possible narrative that ‘Canada is ripping us off’, AAFC has a massive amount of economic data on the benefits of free trade for individual U.S. states.
It’s possible on the AAFC website to click on any state, for example Iowa, and see how much it exported to Canada in agri-food products.
Iowa’s big export items:
- $471 million in grain alcohol
- $148 million in oil cakes (soybean meal)
- $134 million in pork
- $71 million in pet food
The numbers make it clear that Canada is the No. 1 market for agricultural products in about 30 states.
Agriculture Canada has also created visuals of supper, lunch and breakfast plates to illustrate how ingredients from the two countries are combined to produce meals for Americans and Canadians.
An image of pork ribs, barbecue sauce, corn on the cob and coleslaw shows which state and province the ingredients came from to produce supper. It includes a glass of beer, noting it was brewed in Colorado with malt barley from Saskatchewan.
