Illustration by Alex Covarrubias

Though the world economy is suffering, through September 2008—the government’s most current statistics—the value of US surface trade with Canada and Mexico was up $58.8 billion over 2007, a boost of 8.8%.

Focusing on September alone, trade using surface transportation between the US and its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners was $71.8 billion, higher by 7.5% than in 2007. The surface modes monitored in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) trade report are truck, rail and pipeline. Overall, imports from the NAFTA countries declined by 4.8% year over year in September, while exports grew by 16.1%.

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