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For Immediate Release: March 27, 2013
Contact: Lorri Crowley (202) 482-3809
Commerce Official Travels to Canada to Highlight Bilateral Trade and North American Competitiveness
OTTAWA - U.S. Commerce Department Assistant Secretary for Market Access and Compliance Michael Camuñez traveled to Ottawa, Canada to advance bilateral trade and North American Competiveness. Throughout the trip, Camuñez engaged his Canadian counterparts with the goal of deepening our bilateral trade relationship on issues such as regulatory cooperation, facilitating cross border trade, and stressed the importance of strong intellectual property rights and protections. He also discussed ways to enhance North American competitiveness.
“The United States and Canada are each other’s largest, and arguably most important, bilateral trading partners, with a staggering $600 billion in annual two way trade. When you include investment, we’re talking about an annual economic relationship in excess of one trillion dollars—one of the world’s largest and most successful partnerships,” Camuñez said. “And beyond just statistics, those numbers represent real economic prosperity, regional competitiveness, and literally millions of jobs for our people.”
Canada and the United States have enjoyed a long-standing economic partnership based upon ease of access to shared borders, similar consumer preferences, and high levels of co-production. Efforts to continue to deepen this commercial relationship—through such initiatives as the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) and the Beyond the Border Initiative (BTB)—have been fruitful to date. Since 2010, bilateral, two-way trade has increased more than 30 percent between the United States and Canada.
An integral element of both the RCC and BTB initiatives is stakeholder input. The views, priorities and concerns of industry help to identify new priorities under these initiatives that are central to expanding our two countries’ economic competitiveness. The Department of Commerce has and will continue to engage U.S. industry in these regulatory and border priorities.
U.S. exports to Canada have increased each year since 2010, from $197.5 billion in 2010, to $223.8 billion in 2011, and finally to $234.0 billion in 2012. This represents more than a 15percent increase in U.S. exports from 2010 to 2012.
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