By Promit Mukherjee<\/p>\n
OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada’s merchandise trade deficit widened in June to C$5.9 billion ($4.24 billion) as imports grew faster than exports due to a one-time high-value oil equipment import, data showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The deficit observed in June is the second highest on record after the deficit expanded to its largest in history in April to C$7.6 billion, when the impact of U.S. tariffs first started to weigh.<\/p>\n
Canada’s exports to the U.S. as a share of total exports shrank to 70% in June from 83% in the same period a year ago while its surplus with the U.S. contracted by a half in the same period, data showed.<\/p>\n
Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted the trade deficit to increase to C$6.3 billion in June from a downwardly revised C$5.5 billion in May.<\/p>\n
Total imports were up 1.4% in June to C$67.6 billion from a drop of 1.6% in the prior month, Statistics Canada said, the first increase in imports after three consecutive monthly decreases. Excluding the one-time oil product import, total imports were down 1.9% in June.<\/p>\n
Canada’s total exports grew 0.9% in June to C$61.74 billion following an increase of 2% in May, its second consecutive increase, Statscan said, led primarily by an increase in crude oil exports.<\/p>\n
In volume terms, however, exports were down 0.4% in June.<\/p>\n
The U.S. President Donald Trump cranked up the tariffs on Canada to 35% from this month from 25% on goods which were non-compliant with a free trade deal. Canada is also struggling with a slew of sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles.<\/p>\n
This has chewed into its massive trade surplus with the U.S. as exporters drove away from what the world’s biggest market to other regions from Europe and Middle East to as far as the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n
Exports to the U.S. in June, however, increased by 3.1% in June, mainly led by higher crude oil prices due to tensions in the Middle East. But on a year-over-year basis, exports to the U.S. were still 12.5% lower when compared with the same period a year ago.<\/p>\n
Overall exports of aluminum were down 11.3% and iron and steel products by 11.4% in June, coinciding with higher tariffs on these products from the U.S., data from StatsCan showed.<\/p>\n
After reaching a record high in May, exports to countries other than the United States were down 4.1% in June, representing the first decline since February, Statscan said, but still hovered around near record levels.<\/p>\n
“The headline story really is the impacts of the tariffs,” said Stuart Bergman, chief economist at Export Development Canada.<\/p>\n
The Canadian dollar slightly weakened further after the data and was trading down 0.2% to 1.3804 against the U.S. dollar, or 72.44 U.S. cents. Yields on the two-year government bonds were up 0.6 basis points to 2.703%.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Dale Smith and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Promit Mukherjee OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada’s merchandise trade deficit widened in June to C$5.9 billion ($4.24 billion) as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,32848,50],"class_list":["post-47267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-export-development-canada","tag-statistics-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}