Canada’s Merchandise Trade Performance with the EU after the Entry into Force of CETA

On September 21, 2017, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), Canada’s most ambitious trade agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), provisionally entered into force. The 27 European Union members and the United Kingdom (referred as the EU hereafter), as a group, represent Canada’s second largest merchandise trading partner after the United States. In 2019, the EU accounted for over 8 percent of Canada’s merchandise exports and nearly 13 percent of Canada’s merchandise imports.

This report aims to present Canada’s merchandise trade performance in the two years since the implementation of CETA. It provides historical comparisons of trade performances before and after CETA and comparisons between the products that directly benefit from CETA concessions (affected products) and products that were already duty-free, and for a limited number of agricultural products that were exempted from concessions (non-affected products).

However, this presentation of post-CETA trade performance should not be considered a causal effect of CETA. Given the short time series of trade data available since CETA was implemented, the analysis does not use advanced econometric techniques to establish causality and to control for macroeconomic fluctuations and other industry- and product-specific factors that also influence post-CETA bilateral trade flows. A more sophisticated analysis would be undertaken to isolate CETA’s effect when a longer time series becomes available.

The analysis is presented in three parts: 1) Canada-EU trade performance based on Statistics Canada’s trade data; 2) Canada-EU trade performance based on respective import statistics from Statistics Canada and Eurostat, which allows for splitting trade according to tariff concessions under CETA; and 3) the utilization of CETA preferences.