Does the United States ‘Need’ Canada? What to Know.

President Trump had a big question in his mind when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Washington last week.

“I am a lot because to work with him, but I can’t understand a simple truth,” Trump said in a publication on social networks, reiterating several of the ways in which he believes that Canada unfairly benefits from his commercial relationship with the United States.

The president also repeated his incorrect statement that the United States is “subsidizing” Canada to a sum of $ 200 billion, referring to the country’s commercial deficit with Canada, which is the value of what the United States imports less exports.

In fact, the commercial deficit last year was $ 63.3 billion, according to the United States data. And if Canada’s energy exports were eliminated, it becomes a commercial surplus.

For Mr. Trump, everything is reduced to one point: Does the United States need Canada?

Trump’s resounding response is no, and has imposed tariffs on many Canadian goods.

“We do not need your cars, we do not need energy, we do not need your lumbar, we do not need anything they have, apart from their friendship,” he said on social networks.

But industry and government groups say differently.

The United States needs Canada to make cars

The automotive industries in Canada and the United States have interconnected in the last three decades, especially between Detroit, Mich., And Windsor, Ontario, the most occupied commercial crossing along the border, while the countries demolished commercial barriers.

Therefore, supply chains are supply chains that car parts can cross the edge of up to eight times the duration of the manufacturing process. That has hindered the definition of what constitutes an automatic import.

In 2023, the United States imported around 1.24 million vehicles in Canada, the fourth highest account behind Mexico, Japan and South Korea.

The United States needs Canada’s energy

The United States is the main oil producer in the world, but many of its refineries depend on crude oil, a variety that Canada specializes in extraction. Performing US refineries to eliminate the need for crude oil would cost billions and companies are not willing to make these investments, especially due to uncertainty about Mr. Trump’s commercial policies.

The sixty percent of the crude oil imported from the United States in 2022 Wine from Canada, chording the United States Energy Information Administration.

In addition to oil, Canada, in 2023, supplied almost 100 percent of natural gas and 85 percent of the electrical energy imported by the United States, according to the Canada Energy Regulator. Canadian electricity is an important important one to feed New England.

Canada also provides more than a quarter of the uranium that the United States imports to execute nuclear reactors, according to federal data, a higher participation than any other nation.

The United States needs Canada’s wood

Howard Lutnick, the United States Secretary of Commerce, is investigating whether wood imports are a threat to national security.

In 2021, the figures of the most recent year were without birds, the United States bought wood worth $ 28 billion of Canada, which represents almost half of wood imports.

American industry groups have estimated that Trump’s wooden rates will have increased housing costs by approximately $ 9,000.

For now, the United States wood industry cannot meet the demand for housing builders, according to a recent analysis of Fastmarkets, a research company, and the country would take at least 10 years to reduce its need for imported lumba.

American farmers need Canada to plant their crops

Farmers who started this year’s planting season on the agricultural industry of the United States in Canadian imports of key chemical ingredients used in fertilizers, such as potassium -rich minerals called potassium called Potash.

The United States imports 85 percent of its Canada potassa, which is the largest world exporter of minerals.

But Mr. Trump’s tariffs in Canada will make potassa more exhaustive for farmers to import it and the increases could be transmitted to buyers of the grocery store, according to the fertilizer institute, a group of the US industry. The next world exporters in potassa are Russia and Belarus.

Trump says that the United States needs Canada’s friendship. Many Canadians say they forget it.

The generally warm relationship between the two countries is in Jirones, with Canada invoking a defensive tactic used in the hockey, “elbows”, as their position against the economic attacks and threats of Trump to make Canada an American state.

Canadians have tasks of boycotting products made by the United States and avoiding summer trips to the United States, with the amount of flights scheduled for the country from Canada by 21 percent, according to an analysis of the New York Times.

He has also suffered a peculiar symbol of the special link of the countries. The United States has restricted Canadian access to the Free Free and Opera House Library of Haskell, a historic site that extends to horcajadas on the border between Quebec and Vermont. American officials said the measure was necessary to stop the “drug traffickers and smugglers.”

Despite frost relationships, Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump had a cordial exchange in front of the media cameras in the Oval office last week.

Trump described his “love” for Canada and the desire for a continuous friendship. Even so, he repeated his desire for Canada to be part of the United States.

Mr. Carney quickly withdrew to make it clear that his country was not on sale.

Mr. Trump did not give in: “Never say!”