Canada’s Oil, Metals Export Boom Masks Manufacturing Weakness Under Trump
November 5, 2026 | Economy
Auto manufacturing, forestry decline 7% year over year
Canada’s latest merchandise trade data hints at more resilient exports than was imagined when Donald Trump assumed the Oval Office last year. But the apparent boom is hiding a much weaker performance across major manufacturing industries, according to a new Energi Media analysis of Statistics Canada data.
Exports totalled $670.1 billion from January through September 2026, up 15.5 per cent from $580.2 billion in the same period last year. Yet energy and unwrought precious metals accounted for more than four-fifths of that increase. A group of seven manufacturing-heavy export categories fell marginally.
The figures come as the November 3 U.S. midterm election results shift the political landscape in Washington. They suggest that Canada’s trade position is more complicated than either a story of economic defeat or a victory over Trump’s trade policies.
Canada’s Resource Economy Is Carrying Export Growth
Energy exports rose to $165.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026, up $43.2 billion, or 35.4 per cent, from the previous year. Exports of unwrought precious metals and alloys, a category dominated by gold, increased by $30.9 billion to $77.8 billion, a gain of 65.8 per cent.
Combined, the two categories supplied $74.1 billion of Canada’s $89.9 billion increase in merchandise exports. That’s 82.4 per cent of the growth.
Exports excluding energy and this precious-metals category increased just 3.8 per cent, from $411.3 billion to $427.1 billion. The contrast is substantial: the headline export figure suggests rapid expansion, while the rest of the merchandise economy is advancing far more slowly.
These are export values measured in current Canadian dollars. They reflect changes in prices as well as shipments. Stronger crude oil or gold prices can lift export receipts without a comparable increase in physical goods sold. The tables used here don’t isolate how much of the increase is price-driven.
Economist Jim Stanford told Energi Media1 that Canada’s export strategy needs to address the kinds of goods the country sells as well as its trading partners.
“It’s important to also diversify what we sell, not just where we sell it. And in this regard, the news is not encouraging because since the turn of the century, we have seen a significant reduction in the share of our merchandise exports … [that] constitute value added products, high technology, manufactured things … and instead we’ve been becoming more and more focused on the extraction and export of raw resource … products.”
Stanford was speaking about a long-term structural shift, rather than attributing the latest monthly trade changes to any single cause. His argument is developed further in Energi Media’s report on Canada’s manufacturing decline and economic sovereignty.
September underlined the trend. Total exports reached $78.6 billion, up 21.7 per cent from September 2025. Energy exports alone were 50.8 per cent higher.
Canadian Manufacturing Is Under Pressure, Particularly Automotive and Forestry
The seven manufacturing-heavy categories in the analysis exported $291.9 billion from January to September 2026, compared with $292.5 billion a year earlier. That’s a decline of 0.2 per cent despite the strong national export total. Energi Media previously examined the longer-term manufacturing losses in Ontario and Quebec.
Automobiles and parts suffered the largest dollar setback among those categories. Exports fell $5.3 billion, or 7.6 per cent, to $64.9 billion. Forestry products and building materials lost another $2.6 billion, declining 7.5 per cent to $32.2 billion.
Those two sectors together recorded almost $8 billion in reduced export sales. They have faced particular uncertainty from U.S. trade measures, but the trade figures alone can’t assign the losses to tariffs. Vehicle production decisions, demand conditions, exchange rates and other factors also influence sales.
Automotive historian Dimitry Anastakis told Energi Media2 that Trump’s trade measures have worsened conditions for Canadian vehicle producers.
“They’ve had a pretty tremendously negative impact. Last couple of months, exports to the United States, particularly around automotive, have been amongst the lowest in the last few years, because of the cost of these tariffs and … the rejigging of how the automotive market … is exporting towards the United States. We’ve also got 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, which in some ways are a bigger problem in terms of the total automotive market.”
His comments address industry-wide pressures; the new export figures alone don’t isolate the effect of tariffs. The governments’ response was detailed in Energi Media’s report on the $8.7-billion Carney–Ford plan for Ontario steel, auto jobs and EV manufacturing.
Not every industrial category is contracting. Chemicals, plastics and rubber exports increased 11.5 per cent, electronics and electrical equipment rose 7.3 per cent, and industrial machinery gained 3.6 per cent. Consumer goods were also modestly higher.
Canada Is Reducing Its Dependence on the U.S. Export Market
The other important change is where Canadian goods are going. Exports to the United States increased 8.5 per cent, reaching $458.9 billion in the first nine months of 2026. Exports to all other countries grew much faster: 34.3 per cent, to $211.2 billion.
The American share of Canada’s merchandise exports declined from 72.9 per cent in January–September 2025 to 68.5 per cent in the equivalent 2026 period, a drop of 4.4 percentage points. That’s meaningful diversification in the value of trade, although the United States remains by far Canada’s largest export market. A recent Energi Media report on TD Economics’ Canada–Europe trade analysis also examined how much of the potential export opportunity is concentrated in energy.
These particular tables report trading partners and commodity categories separately. They don’t establish how much of the growth in non-U.S. sales comes from manufactured goods finding new customers.
Trade economist Dan Ciuriak cautioned in an Energi Media interview3 that integrated production and corporate supply chains limit how quickly tariffs can reorganize North American trade.
“It does bite into company profits. They don’t like it. And they will, in the fullness of time, rearrange their supply chains to … avoid paying those particular tariffs.”
Ciuriak was discussing automotive tariffs and the persistence of cross-border trade, a useful qualification to the broader diversification figures. Economist Joseph Steinberg made a related argument about the constraints of geography and supply chains in an earlier Energi Media interview on Trump’s trade strategy.
The new trade data sharpen the central question for Canadian policymakers: Can Canada turn diversification in export value into stronger, broader manufacturing performance, or will the country’s apparent resilience continue to depend disproportionately on resources and precious metals?
End Notes
- Jim Stanford, Canada De-Industrialized, Energi Media.
- Dimitry Anastakis, Canada’s Automakers Hanging On Despite Trump Tariffs, Energi Media.
- Dan Ciuriak, Canada and US Trade, Energi Media.