October 13, 2025

Hi, everyone. My name is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics. Thanks for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. We at ITR are your apolitical and unbiased source of economic intelligence. And today I wanted to talk about trade relationships in terms of imports and exports, as well as foreign direct investment in the US and where the US investment dollars are going. The way I wanted to share this information with you all today is first by highlighting exports of goods from the US to the rest of the world. It’s been really interesting to watch these data sets because of the tariff implications and better understanding where are our goods going and who is putting a higher priority on getting US goods. And so I’ll talk about four different countries that really make up the majority of our trade relationships, Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe.

As we’ve looked at the data since the beginning of 2025, we have seen exports to Europe accelerate the most compared to any of those four regions that I had mentioned, any of the three others, I should say. So exports to Europe are now $391.4b over the last 12 months. And again, we’re in an accelerating growth trend. In second place, we have Canada. And despite Canada coming in a second on the list at $343.5b, we’ve actually seen exports steadily declining. Mexico comes in at $336.1b and their export relationship has stayed relatively flat. And then finally, we have China down below at $126.7b, and their exports to that country have also been on the decline. So overall, when we think of where our goods from the US are going, the EU comes in at number one, Canada comes in at number two, Mexico number three and China at number four. But again, the real thing to know is that the declining trends are really characterizing Canada and China. So it’s been very interesting to see that Europe’s making up a bigger part of our world in terms of exports.

Now, the import picture is similar but again interesting. When we think about the impact that tariffs have, we really focus on imports. So if we look at the US imports of goods from the EU, China, Canada and Mexico, again the EU has really been the area where we’ve been importing more and more from. We’re importing about $653.8b from the EU. That is much higher than in second place, we have Mexico at $524.6b. So the EU and Mexico are making up the most important trade partners, at least from an import perspective. China and Canada coming down below, Canada at $401.3b and China at $393.5b, and again both Canada and China are in decline from an imports perspective.

So the reason I share all this data with you is because it’s been clear that the EU has really been the winner so far in 2025. We’re exporting more to the EU, we’re importing more from the EU. I’d really say China and Canada have been the losers so far this year. We’re exporting and importing less from both of those countries compared to where we were at the beginning of the year. So it’s really interesting to see how these trade relationships are shaping up.

Now one thing I still want to communicate, despite the moving around of these import export relationships, the US is still the number one destination of foreign direct investment. More people, more countries are investing in the US than any other region in the world. Now the largest investor in the US is the EU at $122b. That’s again characterizing the entirety of the EU but we have places like the Netherlands investing $33.2b, Germany $31.5b, Switzerland $23b, the United Kingdom $20.4b and then you can see France, Spain and Ireland round out that list. So the EU is a big area of investment for the US, that highlights our expectation for more onshoring and reshoring into the US. Canada is still the number one country, (so again I said the EU as a whole is the number one investing region into the US,) but Canada for looking at a country-by-country basis still comes in at number one.

Again the reason I say this, it’s important to evaluate these trade relationships as tariffs change these trade relationships. But I want you to still see the silver lining in this all, which is the US is still the number one place for foreign direct investment. It’s going to be part of what drives our forecast for increased industrial production, and manufacturing, that onshoring and reshoring trend. So yes, relationships change, but the US still remains number one in terms of folks investing in us. That’s a pretty good place to be as far as I’m concerned.

I’ll continue to keep you updated. And of course, tariffs are changing all the time and I’ll keep you updated as things continue to evolve. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. Please remember to like and subscribe to TrendsTalk wherever you listen to your podcasts. I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks so much. Take care for now.