China could overtake the United States as the main market for B.C. | Vancouver Sun

Dakeryn Industries' re-manufacturing mill in Abbotsford, seen here on Tuesday, is one of dozens of B.C. mills that have to come up with countervailing duties that are retroactive to Feb. 2. JASON PAYNE / PNG

China has more growth potential than the United States, objected economist Peter Hall. Likewise, the chief economist of Export Development Canada, Peter Hall, said: “This is really about differential growth in the markets”.

In addition, he added, “China has a long and strong potential growth and the United States is a fully developed economy”.

For its part, it is said that this projection could compensate for a short-term decline in sales of wood to China after the meteoric rise in imports over the past 15 years.

In addition to this, it should be noted that, by volume, exports of B.C. China reached its peak in 2013 when logging companies sold 7.9 million cubic meters of processed wood to Chinese buyers, compared to 13.6 million cubic meters to buyers in the US market. Despite this, while wood exports to the United States increased to 17.9 million cubic meters in 2016, exports to China fell to 5.9 million cubic meters during the same period.

Meanwhile, it is well known that shipments of raw logs to China in particular, by value, have increased by at least 43 percent in the last three years. Thus, it has reached 479 million dollars in 2017. In addition, exports of logs to the United States during the same period they were reduced by 33 percent to only $ 44 million in raw wood in 2017.

A leading economist at the University of Calgary, Jack Mintz, objected that it would be difficult to diversify trade in the dominant market of the United States. Said economist wrote that Canada sold to the United States three quarters of the $ 545 billion in goods and $ 110 million in services that it exported in 2017. Likewise, Mintz said with China in number 2 buying only 4.3 percent of all exports from Canada. He added, “Our next largest export markets are fractions of that”.

Despite this, the chief economist of Export Development Canada, Peter Hall, said he is in the field of economists who believe that Canada is in a position to make significant increases in trade with China, not unlike Australia. Hall said, “If there is somewhere in Canada that gets more, it is BC because it is already the most diversified in terms of merchandise trade”.

Source: Derrick Penner | Vancouver Sun