Trade balance Canada in Canada

Measures Canada's balance of trade in goods with the rest of the world, that is, the difference between what the country exports and what it imports in a given month. It is published by Statistics Canada.

Calculated as merchandise exports minus imports on a balance-of-payments basis and seasonally adjusted. A positive figure is a surplus and a negative one a deficit, expressed in billions of Canadian dollars.

The trade balance feeds into GDP and reflects the competitiveness of Canada's economy, heavily exposed to energy and commodities sold to the US. A wider-than-expected surplus tends to support the Canadian dollar, while a large deficit tends to weigh on it.

The figures are preliminary and revised in later releases; the balance is volatile owing to its commodity exposure and does not on its own separate price effects from volume effects.