ABSTRACT
Few countries are more closely integrated economically than the United States and Canada. Historically, in terms of trade, each has evolved as the other’s largest partner since the early twentienth century, despite the presence of protective tariff structures on both sides of the border that began to be attenuated shortly before World War II. The negotiation of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990s accelerated this process, even in the context of a dramatic growth of global trade for both countries. In 1999, 85 per cent of Canada’s exports went to the United States and 76 per cent of its imports came from that source. Similarly, Canada was the largest single-country source of imports (20 per cent) and market for exports (22 per cent) in 1999, larger than all of the western European countries.
