U.S. terms of trade with Canada rise 22.0 percent for year ending April 2020

Terms of trade measure the change in the purchasing power of U.S. exports compared with imports. From April 2019 to April 2020, the U.S. terms of trade with Canada rose 22.0 percent, due to a 6.7-percent drop in export prices to Canada and a 23.5-percent drop in import prices from Canada. Over the same period, the U.S. terms of trade with industrialized countries rose 2.7 percent. Terms of trade with Pacific Rim countries fell 5.8 percent from April 2019 to April 2020.

Among Pacific Rim countries, U.S. terms of trade with Japan fell 8.3 percent over the year. The U.S. terms of trade fell because export prices to Japan dropped 8.5 percent, while import prices from Japan declined by 0.1 percent.

These data are from the International Price program. To learn more, see “U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes — April 2020." Also see our blog post about measuring terms of trade. We also have more charts on U.S. import and export prices. Import and export price changes may be revised in each of the 3 months after original publication.

The countries that compose the groups are:

Industrialized countries: Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Latin America: Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

Pacific Rim: China, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Macao, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.