Canada and the United States: The numbers on a unique relationship (2024)

Canada and the United States share the world’s longest land border, which handles daily over $2 billion in trade and the thousands of people who cross it for business or pleasure.

Here are a few key numbers that highlight the close ties that bind our two countries:

• The United States was again Canada’s largest trading partner in 2022, with over $960.9 billion in total trade (on a customs basis), accounting for close to two-thirds (63.4%) of the more than $1.5 trillion in worldwide trade.
• Energy products made up one-third (33.5%) of the $598.0 billion worth of exports to the United States in 2022.
• Motor vehicles and parts made up nearly one-fifth (19.4%) of the $362.9 billion in imports from the United States.
• The direct investment position from the United States in Canada was $500.7 billion in 2021, accounting for nearly half (46.9%) of the total direct investment in Canada. Canada’s direct investment position in the United States was $744.9 billion, or 47.9% of its total direct investment abroad.
• The 14.0 million US residents that visited Canada in 2022 was four times the number of US arrivals recorded in 2021 and over half (55.9%) of that recorded in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In February 2023, US residents took 618,900 trips by automobile to Canada and Canadian residents made 1.3 million return trips by automobile from the United States. Both were roughly three-quarters of such trips taken in pre-pandemic February 2020.
• In 2021, two out of three Canadians (66%) lived within 100 kilometres of the southern Canada-US border.

To learn more, visit the International trade statisticshub.