Canada Import Trade Data: $558.53B in 2023, Down 2.3%

The United States and China Lead Canada's Suppliers

Canada imported $558.53 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 2.3% from $571.77 billion the year before. United States supplied 49.6% of that total, worth $276.81 billion, a dominant position that roughly mirrors the role the U.S. plays as Canada's overwhelming top export buyer, though notably less extreme on the import side, where American goods make up about half of the total rather than more than three-quarters. China ranked second at 11.8% ($66.09 billion), and Mexico followed at 6.1% ($34.22 billion), Canada's other USMCA partner rounding out a top three that together account for 67.5% of total import value.

Germany took fourth place at 3.3% ($18.44 billion), ahead of Japan at 2.7% ($15.33 billion) and South Korea at 1.8% ($10.30 billion). Vietnam added a nearly identical 1.8% ($9.83 billion), followed by Italy at 1.7% ($9.55 billion), the United Kingdom at 1.2% ($6.98 billion), and Brazil rounding out the top ten, also at 1.2% ($6.81 billion). Beyond the top three, no single supplier accounts for more than a few percentage points of the total, a much wider spread than what shows up among Canada's export buyers. That broader mix of import sources makes sense for a wealthy consumer economy buying everything from German industrial equipment to Vietnamese electronics and Brazilian agricultural goods, compared with an export list dominated almost entirely by whatever the neighboring U.S. market happens to want.

Vehicles and Machinery Top the Import List

Vehicles led all import categories in 2023, worth $92.07 billion and accounting for 16.5% of total value, narrowly ahead of machinery and mechanical appliances at 15.1% ($84.21 billion) and electrical machinery at 9.5% ($53.10 billion). Together these three manufacturing categories make up more than 40% of everything Canada imports, essentially a mirror image of the vehicle and parts trade that also dominates the export side, reflecting the same cross-border assembly process running in both directions under USMCA's rules of origin, where components, subassemblies, and finished vehicles move back and forth across the border multiple times before a car or piece of equipment is ready for sale.

Mineral fuels ranked fourth at 6.8% ($38.26 billion), a surprising entry given that fuel is also Canada's single largest export category. Industry analysis of Canada's refining sector explains that the gap has less to do with pipeline capacity than with refinery configuration: Eastern Canadian refineries are generally not equipped with the coking capacity needed to efficiently process the heavy crude produced in Western Canada, so they continue importing lighter foreign crude even as the country as a whole exports far more oil than it imports. Upgrading those refineries to handle more domestic heavy crude would require substantial new coking capacity, an investment that has not been made given the cost involved and the uncertain long-term outlook for refining demand. Precious stones, metals, and jewelry added 3.5% ($19.44 billion), plastics a nearly identical 3.5% ($19.30 billion), and pharmaceutical products 3.4% ($18.93 billion). Optical, medical, and measuring instruments contributed 2.7% ($15.07 billion), a catch-all "commodities not specified according to kind" category added 2.3% ($13.02 billion), and iron and steel articles closed out the top ten at 2.2% ($12.53 billion), a mix of industrial inputs and finished consumer goods spread across a much wider set of categories than the fuel-and-cocoa concentration seen in smaller resource-exporting economies.

A Rare Trade Surplus in a Down Year

Canada's import total has followed a similar arc to its exports over the past five years. It stood at $453.65 billion in 2019, fell to $405.20 billion in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted trade, then climbed to $491.69 billion in 2021 and a five-year high of $571.77 billion in 2022, before easing 2.3% to $558.53 billion in 2023.

That 2023 import figure sits just below the $567.34 billion Canada exported the same year, leaving the country with a modest trade surplus of roughly $8.81 billion, a departure from the trade deficits many resource-exporting economies run once manufactured imports are added into the mix. Given how closely both totals track the same U.S. relationship and the same global commodity price swings, that balance is more a byproduct of Canada's deep integration into North American supply chains, where energy exports and manufactured imports largely offset each other, than a sign of any deliberate shift in trade policy. For a closer look at how individual partner countries or product categories break down year over year, the data panels above provide the full detail behind these figures.