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NAFTA, imports vs exports, and railroads

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by andrewjonathon [quote]QUOTE: It would appear that the captive U.S rail shippers are more likely to turn to trucks to get their goods into Canada, while Canadian rail shippers seem to prefer to stick with rail shipping into the US relative to their US counterparts. [/quote] I doubt the difference has so much to do with differences between Canadian and US shippers preferences as it does with the types of products being shipped. Canada exports to the US a lot of natural resources such as lumber tend to be shipped by rail more often than the types of goods going into Canada from the US such as fresh produce from California. [/quote] That was one thought I had for explaining the disparity, but it still seems that there needs to be a lot more to explain the paradox. The U.S. does run a trade deficit with Canada, so one would expect that some raw materials accounts for some of that disparity. Yet the fact that trucks take more product into Canada than they bring out seems to be an anomoly, e.g. there should also be a trade imbalance via trucking that emulates the overall balance of trade. Also, the imbalance of trade via rail is a larger import to export ratio than the overall balance of trade ratio. Since trucks are the mode of last resort, it would suggest there is much that could move into Canada by rail, but doesn't for the various reasons that have been debated elsewhere on this forum.
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