CUSMA laid the groundwork for Canada to feed house-bound Americans

This is the second of two posts covering Canada’s agri-food trade performance after the coming into force of three multilateral agreements with major global markets: the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2017, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2018 and the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA) in 2020. Our first post looked at cereal and oilseed exports; this covers Canada’s food exports.

The importance of meat exports to overall Canadian trade performance is hard to overstate. In 2023, Canada exported $47.6 billion worth of food and beverages to 176 countries. Pork and beef accounted for 17% of total export values. They’re also subject to a wide array of tariff and non-tariff barriers, underscoring even more the significance of agreements that open access to global markets.

CUSMA has been a boost to meat and non-meat food exports

Overall, CUSMA has been good for Canada’s food exports, with faster growth since the start of the pandemic when the deal came into force (Figure 1). The agreement allowed Canada to respond to the increased U.S. demand for foods used in home cooking during COVID. Last year, Canadian non-meat food exports reached 14.8 billion kilograms, growing, on average, 4.9% each year between 2020 and 2023. CUSMA, as NAFTA had before, has provided access for Canadian exports at a time of increasing demand, and has been particularly useful in exports of fats/oils.

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