North American Trade Acceleration.
North American Trade systems have been dominated by the hard fact that the USA usually got there first. This arrangement has been slowly shifted, if at all slowly through the likes of NAFTA et al. and ongoning capital investment in infrastructure.
It goes without saying that disturbing all this will be risky particularly by unilateral ideas inspired by an initial read of stats. Yet easy to understand.
Let me explain the problem of geography. Everything in a container must cross the Americas to get from asia to Europe or alternately come through Suez. Neither lacks inconveneince or risk. It is possible to make it better by way of Canada.
To put it simply. Shanghai to amsterdam takes 30 days or much more via suez, or 28 days or less through Canada using our rail corridor. Any other alternative takes much longer including USA direct.
The Canada route lands in Prince Rupert and gets you directly at real speed to Chicago. This fully accesses the bulk of the USA market as even New york is 800 miles away. It also accesses the Port of montreal which is also 800 mies away and fully downhill. Chicago is also 900 miles to the Gulf which is less convenient for Amsterrdam by far.
It is all built and entirely owned by CNR including the route to the Gulf. and millions of barrels pass daily by rail to the gulf refiners. So capacity is already built. now Mexico is looking to ship produce to Canada and toronto is real close to Chicago. nothing requires a massive investment except consolidation of the connector to Mexico from the gulf which surely exists.
Obviously Montreal and alternatively Halifax are both positioned to handle those container volumes. Montreal does it in 11.5 days which is apparenly a week better than halifax. This pretty well matches New york which can use the gulf Stream the full route. Of course Montreal picks up 3.5 k/s as well in river flow
This has always been a potential trade advantage which has now been supercharged by this so called trade war. Better yet, the chicago hub also accesses the whole Canadian Market and can easiest ship directly to both Asia and Europe from the entire Mid West.
The big take home is that the superior solution must in time win out. all Canada has to do is meddle a little bit in terms of tarrifs and we can now see Canadian aluminium switching to europe. understand that Canada's aluminium industry is here for exactly one reason. Permanent access to hydro power. It is no accident that Canada produces 3000 tons plus, and Norway 1000 tons plus while the USA only 600 tons. Do note that China now produces 40,000 plus tons. That may not be true though.
Many specific investments in times past were made for serious strategic reasons which is another reason you get careful meddling away.
The surprising takehome is that Canada has the geographic cartds as well as stand up alliances equally insulted by misplaced American blustering.
I do suspect american politicians and citizens needed a wake up call regarding the real limits of applying raw power. Big Men always find the edge and push to find the opposition spent decades getting prepared..
