Selling Beyond the U.S.: Do Recent Immigrants Advance Canada’s Export Agenda?

Given the continued stagnation of Canada-U.S. trade, Canadian businesses are being encouraged to target fast-growing markets in developing countries. Despite this, Canadian trade is still largely concentrated in the United States. Selling Beyond the U.S. investigates the export orientation of more than 15,000 Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), providing new evidence that recent immigrant business owners are more inclined to export to non-U.S. markets in comparison to SMEs owned by non-immigrants or immigrants who have lived in Canada for more than five years.

Exporting businesses owned by recent immigrants are compared with other businesses in terms of their growth rates, profitability, access to business networks and financing, and industrial and geographic concentrations. The resulting insights into the export activities and strength and weaknesses of these businesses create a solid platform upon which to develop coherent export promotion policies in relation to Canadian immigrants.