Canada Industrial Research Brief

Headline improvement masks weakness beneath. Driven by a significant rise in sales of petroleum and coal products, as well as food products, total manufacturing sales edged up 0.3 per cent month over month in June, ending a string of declines since February. Yet this gain did little to improve the sequential weakness, as the three-month-over-three-month annualized rate fell to 18 per cent. The latest manufacturing survey shows that producers continued to feel the negative impact of higher U.S. tariffs, which disproportionately hit sales of primary metals, machinery, fabricated metals and transportation equipment. As Canada’s manufacturing hub, Ontario saw the largest tariff-related sales decline relative to other provinces.