2024-10-07
7 分钟Hi, this is Tom Lee Devlin, co-host of Money Talks,
our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
Here's an article handpicked from the latest edition of The Economist, read aloud.
The economies of Canada and America are joined at the hip.
Some $2 billion of trade and 400,000 people cross their 9,000 km of shared border every day.
Canadians on the West Coast do more day trips to nearby Seattle than to distant Toronto.
No wonder the two economies have largely moved in lockstep in recent decades.
Between 2009 and 2019, America's GDP grew by 27%.
Canada's expanded by 25%.
Yet since the pandemic, North America's two richest countries have diverged.
By the end of 2024, America's economy is expected to be 11% bigger than five years before.
Canada's will have grown by just 6%.
The difference is starker once population growth is accounted for.
The IMF forecasts that Canada's national income per head,
equivalent to around 80% of America's in the decade before the pandemic,
will be just 70% of its neighbors in 2025, the lowest for decades.
Were Canada's ten provinces and three territories an American state,
they would have gone from being slightly richer than Montana,
America's ninth poorest state, to being a bit worse off than Alabama, the fourth poorest.