About the Trade Corridors Research Project

Every day, more than $1.5 billion in trade passes between Canada and the U.S. Every. Single. Day Do you know how North American trade is carried on? Canada needs "a big idea in order to understand and to maintain and cultivate its trading relationship with the United States." We propose "trade corridors as the big idea best suited to bringing coherence to the largest bilateral trading relationship in the world."

Trade corridors have existed since the Silk Road and earlier. Further, trade corridors are now intentionally developed in Asia, in Europe, in Latin America, and in the Caribbean basin. There is a growing recognition that trade corridors are more than transportation infrastructure. Therefore we define trade corridors as:

DEFINITION: streams of products, services, and information moving within and through communities in geographic patterns according to a matrix or "culture of trade agreements and treaties, statutes, delegated legislation, and customs that govern and guide trading relationships, institutions and structures.