The number of commercial trucks crossing over to the U.S. from Canada is falling.Lauren Petracca/The Canadian Press
It’s often said that no one wins in a trade war, but not everyone loses equally, either.
As U.S. President Donald Trump hammers his country’s two closest trading partners with tariffs, the blows are landing much harder on Canada than Mexico.
The number of commercial trucks entering the U.S. from Canada fell 10.5 per cent in May from the year before, according to new data on border traffic released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
That was roughly in line with the 11.4-per-cent annual drop in Canada-to-U.S. truck traffic in April, when Mr. Trump’s first tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico came into effect.
By comparison, the number of U.S.-bound trucks from Mexico declined by a more modest 2.8 per cent last month, which was a smaller annual decline than the 6.4-per-cent drop in April.
A similar pattern has played out in trade flows. In April, U.S. imports from Canada fell 14.4 per cent from the same month in 2024, versus a 2.7-per-cent decline in imports from Mexico.
The pain imbalance likely comes down to the different mix in goods flowing into the United States from the two countries, specifically Canada’s dominance of U.S. steel and aluminum imports, said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at Bank of Montreal.
Canada accounted for 25 per cent of U.S. steel imports last year, and roughly half of all U.S. aluminum imports. Snd shipments of both products from Canada to the U.S. plunged in April.
Of course, that was before Mr. Trump doubled the U.S. tariff on steel and aluminum imports this month to 50 per cent, pointing to an even more disproportionate fallout to come for Canada.
Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.