By Promit Mukherjee <\/p>\n
OTTAWA, July 7 (Reuters) – Canada’s merchandise trade surplus widened to a four-year high in May, rising for the fourth consecutive month, as exports to the United States top its highest level \u200csince February last year, data showed on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Canada clocked a trade surplus of C$4.24 billion in \u200cMay, up 0.9% from a revised C$3.41 billion posted in the prior month, Statistics Canada said. <\/p>\n
This was the third consecutive month of trade surplus for \u200bCanada and was led by a 1.5% jump in exports to the U.S., its largest trading partner. <\/p>\n
Analysts polled by Reuters had estimated the trade surplus to be at C$2.85 billion. <\/p>\n
As President Donald Trump’s tariffs slammed some critical sectors in Canada, businesses have been trying to diversify away from the U.S., which usually bought almost three quarters of Canada’s total exports. <\/p>\n
But trade \u200cexperts have said that while diversification is \u2060important, it might take time for many to unwind decades-old supply chain from the world’s biggest market. <\/p>\n
Exports to the U.S. rose 1.5% to C$53.72 billion, a fourth consecutive monthly increase, \u2060taking the share of exports to south of the border to almost 70% in May. Imports from the U.S. fell by 1.4%. <\/p>\n
As a result, Canada’s trade surplus with the United States widened to C$11.6 billion in May from $10.3 billion in April, posting \u200bits \u200blargest surplus since the record high observed in January 2025, the \u200bstatistics agency said. <\/p>\n
This could be mainly due to \u200chigher price of energy exports, StatsCan said. <\/p>\n
Exports to countries other than the U.S. continued to shrink, although at a lower rate in May than April, and imports from non-U.S. countries rose. This widened Canada’s trade deficit with countries other than the U.S. to C$7.4 billion in May. <\/p>\n
CRUDE OIL EXPORTS FALL <\/p>\n
The major contributor to the monthly increase in exports was led by outbound shipments of metal ores and non-metallic minerals which rose by 16.1%, data showed. <\/p>\n
This was largely \u200cdriven by sulfur exports as its shipments passing through the Strait \u200bof Hormuz slowed since the conflict in the Middle East began. <\/p>\n
The war \u200bin the Middle east had choked crude oil \u200band fertiliser shipments, leading to higher demand and prices of the products from elsewhere. <\/p>\n
Since around \u200cof June, there is a ceasefire in the Middle \u200bEast with reports of shipments \u200beasing. <\/p>\n
Other product sections also saw notable gains in May, with widespread increases observed in consumer goods, industrial chemical, and farm and fishing food products, StatsCan said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Promit Mukherjee OTTAWA, July 7 (Reuters) – Canada’s merchandise trade surplus widened to a four-year high in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,14958,1672,14855],"class_list":["post-119743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-energy-exports","tag-statistics-canada","tag-trade-surplus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}