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The looming threat of potential tariffs on Canadian exports into the United States would impact pricing on a variety of goods and services, including gasoline and oil, on both sides of the border.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, believes if United States President-Elect Donald Trump follows through with his tariffs, gasoline prices in Canada could drop.
"The tariffs if implemented would primarily affect motorists in the United States because the imports of the Canadian oil are being tariffed," he said. "It's something that could drag the Canadian economy down, tariffs could backfire. Instead of driving gasoline prices up in Canada, they could lead to gas prices to fall because of the ensuing economic circumstances that tariffs would bring to the Canadian economy."
Canada exports around 4 million barrels of oil into the United States daily, accounting for roughly a quarter (16-17 million barrels) of the oil United States refineries produce per day.
"It would be hugely problematic, especially for my neck of the woods down here in Chicago and the Great Lakes," he said. "Many of our refineries in the Great Lakes region nearly exclusively process heavy Canadian oil from Alberta that's brought down via pipelines.
"The difficulty here is knowing if the tariffs could potentially impact those oil flows that flow through the United States but end up in Canada (in Sarnia, Ontario) but it would certainly make a mess of things, especially in the Great Lakes where almost all of the oil to refineries is Canadian."
The refineries De Haan is referencing are located throughout Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ontario.
As of 2022, Canada imported 80 per cent of its refined petroleum products from the United States or an average of 381,372 of its 478,064 barrels per day.