US President-elect Donald Trump. — Reuters
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has pledged tariffs on the United States’ three largest trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – detailing how he will implement campaign promises that could trigger trade wars.
Here are commodities and energy sectors which may be affected:
Oil
Canada exported some US$177.19bil in energy products to the United States in 2023, according to government data.
Canada’s crude imports make up more than a fifth of all the oil that US refineries process.
About 70% of imported Canadian barrels go to mid-west US refiners that supply an area that includes Chicago and Detroit.
Many of the mid-west refiners are configured to run heavier oil and would either struggle to find a direct replacement for Canadian oil or face paying a higher price if that oil is subject to tariffs.
That could drive up fuel costs in the mid-west.
The United States imported about 5.2 million barrels of crude and petroleum products per day (bpd) from Canada and Mexico in 2024, with more than four million bpd of that from Canada, data from the US Department of Energy showed.
In 2023, Canadian crude oil exports to the United States were above US$110bil, according to the Canadian Energy Regulator.
Gas
The US imported about 8.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas during the first eight months of 2024 from Canada and Mexico, according to the latest data available from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Total natural gas exports were about US$6bil in 2023, according to data from the Canada Energy Regulator.
Most of this year’s gas imports – about 8.4 bcfd – came via pipelines from Canada. That compares with an annual average of 8.0 bcfd of gas imports from Canada in 2023 and an average of 7.6 bcfd over the past five years (2018 to 2022).
The remaining roughly 0.1 bcfd of gas imports so far this year came from pipelines from Mexico, liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, and compressed natural gas from Canada.
The United States, meanwhile, exported about 20.8 bcfd of gas during the first eight months of 2024, including about 2.7 bcfd going to Canada via pipeline, 6.4 bcfd going to Mexico via pipeline and roughly 11.7 bcfd going to various countries via LNG, according to the EIA.
The value of those US gas exports during the first eight months was around US$11bil, according to Reuters calculations using the US Henry Hub benchmark as the spot price of the gas.
Agriculture
The United States imported US$40bil of Canadian agricultural products last year, making Canada the second-largest origin of US agricultural imports behind Mexico, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The United States imported nearly US$3bil of Canadian beef last year, US$1.1bil of pork and another US$2bil of live animals as part of an integrated, cross-border livestock producing and processing industry.
Canada also supplies the United States with nearly half of its imports of vegetable oils and lumber and other forest products.
In 2023, the United States imported US$45.4bil of agricultural imports from Mexico.About two-thirds of all US vegetable imports and half of fruit and nut imports come from Mexico, according to the USDA: nearly 90% of its avocados, as much as 35% of its orange juice, and 20% of its strawberries.
US imports of Mexican tequila and mezcal – both used for making cocktails, such as margaritas – totalled US$4.66bil in 2023, up 160% since 2019.
Each year, Mexico exports more than one million cows across the border to become part of the US beef supply.
Sugar
The United States imported 521,000 short tonnes of sugar from Mexico in the 2023-2024 season (October to September), under a bilateral trade deal that reduces the import taxes on sugar from Mexico. It was nearly 15% of all US sugar imports of 3.76 million short tonnes in the last season.
Potash
The United States imported about 13 million tonnes of potash last year, of which 85% came from Canada, according to data from the USDA. — Reuters
