Can Canada sell beyond the United States?
Roughly three of every four Canadian export dollars have gone to one customer for a generation. Selling more to everyone else has been a stated national ambition for fifty years, and since the broad United States tariff actions became legally effective it has been the declared strategy. Whether it is actually happening is checkable, month by month, in the official trade record — and the answer decides which industries carry policy risk, what diversification plans are worth, and how much of the economy moves when the United States does.
If your job, your town, or your province depends on exports — vehicles, energy, lumber, metals, food — it almost certainly depends on the American buyer, and on whether any other buyer can be found at scale. The gap between announced diversification and measured diversification is where plans fail quietly.
The current reading
Fourth dated reading, and the first since the trade figures themselves moved. Statistics Canada published the July 2026 reference month on September 3, 2026, and the share fell to the lowest level this record holds -- ending the position the two previous readings described, in which the share sat just above a low it kept not quite setting. The record low is no longer a near-tie inside the issuer's own revision movement: one window holds it, half a percentage point clear. The five-month run of rises in the United States-bound level ended.
The current reading: the United States bought 68.50 per cent of Canada's goods exports over the twelve months through July 2026, against 74.08 per cent a year earlier -- the lowest United States share in the twenty-nine-year monthly record, and this time a single window rather than a near-tie, half a percentage point below the next lowest. The single month is sharper than the window: exports to the United States fell 6.6 per cent from June to July, ending a run of five straight monthly rises, while exports to every other country together rose 7.4 per cent to the highest monthly level this record holds, taking the non-United States share of that month's goods exports to 33.7 per cent. The reallocation is still narrow. The United Kingdom alone is 52.7 per cent of the twelve-month rest-of-world rise, the all-countries unwrought gold, silver and platinum-group-metals series is up 43.9 per cent window on window, and motor vehicles found almost no other buyer: a 9.7 per cent fall in United States-bound sales against a rest-of-world gain worth 5.6 cents of every dollar lost. About seven of every ten export dollars still come from one customer. Both governments have acted since the previous reading's trade record closed. Three United States proclamations under section 338 of the Tariff Act each impose an additional 50 per cent duty on certain products of Canada set out in that proclamation's own Annex II, on discrimination findings specific to alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motor vehicles respectively, with no exemption in the transcribed operative text for USMCA-qualifying goods. The duties became legally effective on August 22 under the proclamations. This record has not yet observed duties assessed or collected on shipments. Canada's own counter-tariffs of 15, 25 and 50 per cent, covering $27.6 billion of United States goods, become legally effective on September 8 under the Department of Finance Canada's published schedule. The July reference month read here ends before both dates, so no effect of either can be observed in it.
Basis: Share-and-level arithmetic over official published series, each pinned from archived source bytes and re-derived automatically, plus primary-document facts read verbatim from archived proclamation and Government of Canada text; the shares locate where trade went and the documents state what each says, neither locates why. A legal effective date is what a document states; a duty assessed or collected on a shipment is a separate observation this record does not have.
- The twelve-month U.S. share and its window-on-window fall, computed by the Brief's disclosed formula from the Balance of Payments record, with the record low now held by the single window ending July 2026.
- The single-month movement behind that window: the U.S.-bound level's fall ending a five-month run of rises, against a record-high monthly level of exports to every other country.
- The customs-basis record showing the United Kingdom's rise sitting almost entirely in the section that carries unwrought gold, beside a U.S. metals fall of similar size.
- The motor-vehicles section's U.S. fall with a near-zero rest-of-world change.
- The three Section 338 proclamations' own stated rate, predicate and exclusions, the operative text's own statement that no exemption for USMCA-qualifying goods appears in it, and the fourth proclamation's own statement that the effective date of all three shall be August 22, 2026.
- The Department of Finance Canada's own 2026-08-25 news release and backgrounder: the counter-tariff rate tiers, the $27.6 billion scope figure, and the September 8, 2026 effective date.
Next: The August 2026 trade record, scheduled for October 6, 2026 -- the date the issuer's own July release article states, captured and pinned in this record. That August reference month is the first with any day on or after August 22, 2026, the date the United States duties became legally effective, but only its last ten days fall on or after that date: it is only partly after the duties, not entirely after them. Canada's own counter-tariffs become legally effective September 8, 2026, the Department of Finance Canada's own stated date. The September 2026 reference month is the first that falls entirely after the United States duties' effective date and the first that could cover any period under both sides' measures; this record holds no issuer-stated release date for it. Trigger: Any month that materially moves the twelve-month share, the U.S.-bound level, or the bullion channel's direction; a revision that changes a prior window's reading; an amendment, revocation or supersession of any tariff document pinned on either side; or the first official record of duties actually assessed or collected.
Limit: All values are nominal and partner shares are gross shipment values, not domestic value added; no figure separates price from volume, and no causal share is attributed to any tariff action. Every monthly value behind the window remains revisable, and this release itself restated June. None of the three proclamations states a total dollar value for the goods newly subject to its duty, and neither the $27.6 billion nor the $7.5 billion figure carries an explicit currency designation in the document that states it. This record does not transcribe the item-level counter-tariff schedule; the page that carries it states it is 'prepared for information purposes only and has no official sanction'. Neither government publishes a continuously updated account of which exports are actually taxed and at what effective rate, so no coverage share is stated here. Expiry: Expires at the next monthly trade release, scheduled for October 6, 2026, or sooner if a pinned tariff or support document is amended, revoked, or superseded.
The Brief behind this reading → · See the Receipt — sources, method and limits →
Where institutions disagree
What cannot yet be known
What share of Canada's exports to the United States is actually subject to tariffs right now, and at what effective rates?
What is missing: No official source on either side of the border publishes a continuously updated, machine-readable statement of the tariff status of Canadian exports. The operative documents state rates, scopes, and effective dates, but the duty actually applied to a shipment depends on USMCA qualification, product classification, exclusions, stacking rules, and later modifications — determinations spread across executive orders, proclamations, agency notices, and rulings, with no consolidated official series.
Consequence: The U.S. Exposure Brief shows the export record beside the dated tariff actions, but it cannot state what fraction of U.S.-bound exports is tariffed or at what effective rate — any such coverage percentage would be an outside model, not a reading of the record. Public claims about 'x per cent of exports now face tariffs' rest on estimates whose assumptions are rarely published.
The projection record
A record, not a ranking: this entry states what was published and how it compares to what followed. It never says who was right, which institution performed better, or grades a forecaster's competence. See the full public Resolution record →
Where the shift landed: Canada's customs-basis domestic exports by commodity section, by province, by each province's leading United States-bound section, and the unwrought precious-metals channel, twelve-month windows through July 2026
Canada's customs-basis domestic exports (goods produced or substantially transformed in Canada) by North American Product Classification System summary section and by province, to all countries, the United States, and the United Kingdom -- together with, for each of the ten provinces, the commodity section carrying the largest share of its United States-bound exports, and the detailed-commodity series for unwrought gold, silver, and platinum group metals. This is the record that locates which products, which provinces, and which channel carried the 2025-26 movement in Canada's export destinations, and the record from which each province's scale, intensity, shift and composition of United States exposure are derived. All values are twelve-month window sums, as published at capture. The current windows run through July 2026 and were captured 2026-09-04; the twelve-month windows through June 2026, captured 2026-08-04, and through May 2026, captured 2026-07-17 for the national, sectional and provincial-total series and 2026-07-21 for the provincial commodity-section series, are both retained as prior vintages.
comparable · difference -49858567.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 26524264.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -14625706.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 14451988.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -7695797.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -7385914.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -12422931.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 16044.1 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -32238060.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 27944813.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -11865756.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 20246098.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -6524215.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -6178513.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -3790098.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 20100.6 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -23767696.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 31069286.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -11528532.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 24892144.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -7113493.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -6716596.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 2163820.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 21795.9 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in the values' own unit; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
- Customs-basis domestic exports and Balance-of-Payments total exports are different quantities on different bases: domestic exports exclude re-exports, and the BoP basis adds balance-of-payments adjustments. Levels from this entry are never compared with levels from the U.S. export-share entry anywhere in the Brief; each basis carries its own changes.
- All values are nominal (current dollars); a window-on-window change mixes price and volume movement. The energy fall in particular sits beside lower benchmark oil prices in the later window, and nothing here separates price from volume.
- The NAPCS summary section 'Metal and non-metallic mineral products' is broader than precious metals: it also carries steel, aluminum, and other fabricated mineral products. The unwrought gold, silver, and platinum group metals series pinned from table 12-10-0163-01 is an all-countries total on a total-exports basis; the two statements (the section's partner-level movement, and the commodity's all-countries movement) are pinned separately and never multiplied into an unpublished bilateral commodity flow.
How Canada's monthly export figure moves after it is published: the issuer's own revision archive, December 2023 through July 2026
Statistics Canada publishes a table whose whole purpose is to keep its own earlier answers. Table 12-10-0165-01 carries a Release dimension: every monthly merchandise-trade release since December 2023 survives inside it as a separate member, so the value a reference month was given on the day it was first published can be set against the value the same month carries today. This entry pins that movement for the aggregate export series -- exports, balance-of-payments basis, seasonally adjusted, total of all merchandise, Canada -- which is the same series the U.S. Exposure Brief already reads through a different table. It states how far first-published monthly export figures have moved, in which direction, and over how many releases. It does not adjust any figure, does not project where a current figure will settle, and does not treat the size of a revision as a statement about the issuer.
comparable · difference -943.1 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the value the 7 July 2026 release gives January 2025 minus the value the 6 March 2025 release first gave it, in millions of Canadian dollars. One series, one reference month, one issuer, one accountin…
comparable · difference -2743.8 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the value the 7 July 2026 release gives March 2025 minus the value the 6 May 2025 release first gave it, in millions of Canadian dollars. Of the thirty-one reference months in this window that have at…
comparable · difference 1708.6 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the value the 7 July 2026 release gives March 2026 minus the value the 5 May 2026 release first gave it, in millions of Canadian dollars. Only two further releases have touched this month, so this is …
comparable · difference -3524.6 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the sum of the twelve reference months of calendar 2025 as they read at the 7 July 2026 release, minus the sum of the same twelve months as each was first published, in millions of Canadian dollars. B…
comparable · difference 0.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the May 2026 export figure carried by the revision archive's latest release member minus the figure carried by the ordinary monthly trade table, in millions of Canadian dollars. Two Statistics Canada …
- This is the aggregate export series, not the United States series. Table 12-10-0165-01 carries one geography -- Canada -- and no partner dimension at all, so it holds the revision history of total merchandise exports to every destination combined. It says how much the total that the U.S.-bound figures sit inside moves after publication. It does not say how much the U.S.-bound figures themselves move, and no issuer publishes a partner-level revision archive that would.
- A revision is not an error. The cube exists because the issuer plans to revise: preliminary figures are replaced as respondent data arrives and again at annual and historical revisions, and the footnote says so. The sizes recorded here are the ordinary working of a monthly statistical programme, stated so that a reader knows how firm a fresh monthly figure is.
- There is no correction factor here, and none can be derived from this entry. Of the thirty-one reference months in this window with at least one later release, eighteen were revised up and thirteen down, and every one of the thirty-one was revised by something. A first print cannot be adjusted toward its settled value by any fixed amount or direction the record supports.
The United States' share of Canada's goods exports: the monthly Balance-of-Payments record, 1997 through July 2026
Canada's monthly goods exports on the Balance of Payments basis, seasonally adjusted, to all countries, to the United States, and to the United Kingdom, as Statistics Canada's table 12-10-0011-01 publishes them. The current vintage covers reference months March 1997 through July 2026, as published at capture on 2026-09-04; the June 2026 extent from the 2026-08-04 capture and the May 2026 extent from the 2026-07-17 capture are both retained as prior vintages. Until 2026-09-06 the capture window was a fixed count of the latest published months, so it advanced at its recent end and receded at its early end with each vintage; that is why this vintage begins in March 1997, and why the earliest months of 1997 are held on the retained earlier captures and not on this one. That is now fixed. From 2026-09-06 the capture asks for the whole published series instead of a fixed count of months, so no capture from here on loses its oldest month. A full-extent capture taken on 2026-09-06 is archived beside these bytes; it reaches back to January 1997 and agrees with this vintage on every one of the 353 months the two share, value for value. This is the record behind the United States' share of Canadian exports and its 2025-26 movement.
comparable · difference -36296.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window. Both windows are sums of the same published monthly series.
comparable · difference 13602.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 27392.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -19657.8 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window. Both windows are sums of the same published monthly series.
comparable · difference 33110.2 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 29082.3 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference -9411.2 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window. Both windows are sums of the same published monthly series.
comparable · difference 50133.1 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
comparable · difference 31397.1 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later twelve-month sum minus the earlier, in millions of Canadian dollars; percent difference relative to the earlier window.
- Balance-of-Payments monthly values are seasonally adjusted and remain subject to Statistics Canada's standard revisions; every figure on the current vintage is as published at capture on 2026-09-04, and each superseded vintage's figures stay as published at their own capture.
- All values are nominal (current dollars). A change in a window sum mixes price and volume movement; nothing here separates the two, and no figure on this page is a volume statement.
- Partner-level exports are gross shipment values, not domestic value added: a dollar of exports can carry imported content, so partner shares measure where shipments go, not where the income stays. Statistics Canada's value-added trade estimates are on a separate, slower basis and are not part of this record.
The 2025 United States tariff actions on Canadian goods: the operative rates and dates, from the primary documents
The ad valorem duty rates and effective dates the 2025 executive orders and section 232 proclamations state for imports from Canada: the general additional duty (25 percent, effective March 4, 2025; USMCA-preference goods excepted March 7; raised to 35 percent August 1), the 10 percent energy rate, and the separate automobile (25 percent), steel and aluminum (50 percent), and softwood timber and lumber (10 percent) actions. Dated context for the export record -- what changed, and when, in the primary documents' own words.
comparable · difference 10.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference in percentage points between the two documents' stated ad valorem rates for the same class of articles (products of Canada subject to the general additional duty, USMCA-preference goods excepted throug…
- This Resolution states what the named documents say -- rates, scopes, and effective dates -- and nothing about the resulting duty actually paid on any shipment. Coverage depends on USMCA qualification, product classification, exclusions, and subsequent modifications; no official source publishes a continuously updated statement of the tariff status of Canadian exports, and that absence is recorded as the published evidence gap this entry links.
- The documents pinned here are the principal 2025 actions named by the Brief's export record; they are not a complete tariff chronicle. Later modifications, exemptions, court proceedings, or revocations are outside this entry until a value here is superseded, at which point the record gains a dated correction rather than an in-place edit.
- Nothing here attributes any specific movement in Canada's export record to any specific action. The Brief shows the record beside these dated actions; alignment in time is shown, causation is not claimed.
The 2026 United States Section 338 tariff escalation on Canadian goods: the operative rate, predicates, and dates, from the primary documents
Three presidential proclamations under section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, signed 2026-07-20, each imposing an additional 50 percent ad valorem duty on certain products of Canada set forth in that proclamation's own Annex II, on a discrimination predicate specific to each proclamation (alcoholic beverages, dairy, motor vehicles respectively), the section 232 and WTO civil-aircraft exclusions each proclamation states, each proclamation's own Annex I -- named once, in each proclamation's own additivity clause, as a possible exception to the rule that these duties stack with other duties, its contents not in the transcribed prose -- the scheduled-to-actual effective-date divergence a fourth proclamation created, and the Government of Canada's own 2026-08-21 and 2026-08-22 statements of retaliatory intent. This entry follows this record's earlier Resolution on the 2025 United States tariff actions on Canadian goods, and does not edit or supersede it Extended 2026-08-25 with the Department of Finance Canada's own concretization of Canada's retaliatory intent: the counter-tariff rate schedule (15, 25, and 50 percent, which the government states matches the corresponding U.S. rate for each product), its own $27.6 billion scope figure -- the release's own precise restatement of the earlier 'roughly $28 billion' figure, and, by the same announcement's dollar-for-dollar design, the matching value of the U.S. goods Canada's own counter-tariffs will apply to -- an effective date of 2026-09-08, and a $7.5 billion support package for tariff-affected workers and businesses, on top of the government's own stated nearly $25 billion in supports over the prior 18 months.
comparable · difference -581.0 · same issuer. Numeric and percentage difference in US$ millions between the two 12-month windows (March through February, one year apart) Proclamation 11046's own text compares for Canadian imports of U.S. alcoholic beverages.
comparable · difference -5.6 · same issuer. Numeric and percentage difference in US$ billions between the two 12-month windows (April through March, one year apart) Proclamation 11048's own text compares for imports of U.S. motor vehicles into Canada.
not yet comparable · same issuer. This entry records that these two Government of Canada dollar figures were considered for comparison and deliberately NOT resolved into a numeric difference. The Prime Minister's figure is an approximate ('roughly'), dif…
- This Resolution states what the six named documents say -- rates, predicates, exclusions, and dates -- and nothing about the resulting duty actually paid on any shipment, the total value of Canadian trade affected, or the tariff status of any specific product today. No official U.S. or Canadian source publishes a continuously updated statement of the tariff status of Canadian exports, the published evidence gap this entry links.
- None of Proclamations 11046, 11047, or 11048 states a total dollar value for the goods newly subject to these duties. Each proclamation's own dollar figures describe a separate quantity, pinned above: the decline in Canadian imports of the named U.S. product category (alcoholic beverages, motor vehicles), used as that proclamation's own discrimination predicate -- not the scope of the new tariff. The one scope figure pinned in this entry, 'roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods', is the Government of Canada's own statement (Prime Minister Carney, 2026-08-21), not a U.S. document, and its currency is not explicitly designated in the statement itself (see the value's own basis for how this record units it against the U.S. figures). No United States document captured here states a total dollar value for the goods newly subject to these duties, and no primary source this record captures states any other dollar scope figure; this Resolution does not state or repeat a figure it has not captured, and does not assert that the Government of Canada's own figure and any other reported figure describe the same population of goods.
- Each proclamation's operative text names an Annex I exactly once, in the sentence immediately after the sentence imposing the duty: 'Except as otherwise provided in this proclamation and in Annex I to this proclamation, the duties imposed in this proclamation are in addition to any other duties, taxes, fees, exactions, and charges applicable to such products.' That sentence makes Annex I a possible exception to the rule that these duties stack with other duties, taxes, fees, exactions, and charges -- nothing in the captured text states Annex I's subject matter, states what it contains, or identifies it among the capture's own unlabelled graphics. This record has not read Annex I and does not establish where or whether it appears within the capture at all. Every 'no exemption' statement in this entry, and on any public surface that cites it, states what the transcribed operative prose says -- no exemption for USMCA-qualifying goods appears in it -- and does not assert that no exemption exists anywhere in Annex I.
What would change the record
- Either government publishing a continuously updated, openly licensed series of duty collections or tariff coverage on Canada–U.S. trade at product grain — or customs releasing duty-assessed values beside trade values on a compatible classification.
Investigation
The Tariff Ledger
The United States has raised tariffs on Canadian goods more than once, Canada has announced counter-tariffs of its own and new support for workers and businesses, and the government's own fiscal plan rests on a forecast taken before the latest round existed.
The maintained reading
US Exposure Monitor
How exposed is Canada's trade to the United States — and is that exposure changing?
This Big Question organizes the evidence: the commitments, the disagreements, the projections, and the gaps — and it states plainly where the evidence cannot yet reach. When Countability has a current answer, it appears separately on this page with its date, basis, limits, Brief and Receipt. The question stays open; the evidence keeps moving.
This page holds the current public record for this question. For a more specific question, see Work with Countability.
Work with Countability