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Canadian trade balance data for February is due Thursday 5 April 2018
A couple of previews, and not all the same way ... (bolding mine)
BMO:
- Canada's trade deficit is expected to widen slightly to $2.2 bln in February.
- Trade activity pulled back sharply to start the year, with declines in imports and exports. We're looking for a modest rebound in February.
- A small decline in oil prices is expected to restrain the gain in exports.
- The loonie depreciated modestly in February, with a bigger pullback coming in March.
- There was a big drop in electronic & electrical equipment import volumes in January, retracing some of Q4's big gain, with Statscan pointing to lower cell phone imports from China. This series tends to be a good leading indicator for machinery and equipment investment, so we'll be watching for some direction in broader investment trends in Q1. And, we'll see if non-commodity export volumes can gain any traction at all after moving sideways for nearly a decade.
RBC:
- We see a mild improvement in trade balance to -C$1.7bn in February, after it improved C$1.2bn in January (to -C$1.9bn).
- That improvement was largely on positive terms of trade, as both export and import volumes fell 4.0% m/m. The latter was in part due to lower capital goods imports (-6.7% m/m) after an increase at the end of 2017 ahead of some new regulations and we don't expect any reversal in February.
- Overall, nominal imports should fall about 0.4%, while we expect nominal exports to be little changed, impacted by still disappointing non-energy volumes (-3.6% y/y in January).
