Historically, the United States has been Canada’s biggest trading partner. They buy refined natural resources that we pump from the ground, harvest from the land or cut down. In my opinion we used to sell wood, oil and gas and agriculture products to the USA for a few reasons:
1) They were really close and it was cheap to send things there.
2) People had lots of money and therefore wanted more stuff, so we sold it to them.
3) We were worried if we stopped selling stuff to them we would be invaded and would become North Montana.
4) They felt sorry for us and bought our stuff.
A few things have changed since the economic crisis and near depression we’ve experienced.
1) It got cheaper to send stuff across the globe.
2) Other county’s economies recovered faster than that of the USA.
3) The American’s got busy attempting to stop terrorism.
4) We still have lots of natural resources and now our dollar is kicking butt.
I wrote this blog with the sole purpose of using this awesome picture.
All these things (plus many others) have meant Canadian industries have had to diversify their markets and sell stuff in countries other than the USA, so much so that China is now second largest consumer of Canadian exported goods. So although the United States still gets more than half of our exports, other countries are catching up. The forest industry especially has had to diversify and expand to other markets in order to survive. We’ve come out of economic crisis lean, mean and ready to compete on a global scale like never before. With increased business and economic recovery world wild will come more jobs for young-ins like us. What’s going to happen when the American housing market recovers? VERY good things for people working in the forest industry is what. We love our big brothers to the south and when they need to build houses we’ll be there with the finest lumber products money can buy. But we’re still going to beat their hockey team.
