The Impact of the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trade between Canada and the United States
We examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted trade between Canada and the United States, using a novel dataset on monthly bilateral trade flows between Canadian provinces and U.S. states, merged with COVID-19 health data. Our results show that a one-standard deviation increase in COVID-19 severity (case levels, hospitalizations, deaths) in a Canadian province leads to a fall of 3.1 to 4.9% in exports and a 6.7% to 9.1% fall in imports. Decomposing our analysis by industry, we determine that trade in the manufacturing industry was most negatively affected by the pandemic, while the agriculture industry suffered the least disruption to trade flows. Our descriptive evidence suggests that lockdowns may have also reduced Canadian exports and imports. However, while our regression coefficients are consistent with that finding, they are not statistically significant, perhaps because of the lack of variation due to similar timing in the imposition of restrictions across provinces.