Canadian Pacific Kansas City CEO Keith Creel and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met at a grain terminal in Mexico City today to celebrate the arrival of a unit train carrying wheat grown in Manitoba.
Amid ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and its North American neighbors, CPKC has been seeking to connect customers in Canada and Mexico, using its U.S. network as a land bridge between the countries.
“This is just one example of the expanded trade options open to Western Canadian grain customers and other exporters in Canada and the United States looking to diversify their end markets,” CPKC said in a social media post. “Our trains move a variety of Canadian grains to Mexico, including wheat, oats, canola oils and specialty crops.”
The train that arrived this week in Mexico City hauled Canada Western Red Spring Wheat harvested in Manitoba. It’s a nearly 3,200-mile haul for CPKC, which was created in 2023 to tap growing North American free trade.
Although the Trump administration aims to reduce U.S. trade imbalances, Creel has said that the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are inextricably linked. If tariffs ultimately make U.S. markets less attractive to Canadian and Mexican companies, then those exporters are going to look elsewhere, Creel has said, which will allow CPKC to foster more trade between Canada and Mexico.
Also on hand for the event: Canada Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand and Minister of Canada-U.S. Trade Dominic LeBlanc.
Did anyone notice that these trains between Canada and Mexico need to traverse the United States, and in doing so, train crews and other operating support personnel will be paid? And given CPKFC’s circuitous route across the U.S., it’s likely that this train and others will have more route-miles in the U.S. than in the other two counties. So while this is marketed as Canadian and Mexican trade not including the U.S., many in the U.S. will benefit.
It should also be noted that this service is nothing new. Case in point: When the first shuttle grain train was launched from the BNSF-served Ceres Ag complex in Northgate, Saskatchewan in 2015, it was destined to El Paso, Texas to interchange with Ferromex which delivered the train within Mexico.
Not big deal, indeed. We don’t know (by reading the article) where in Manitoba the wheat was loaded, but the grain producing area of Manitoba is pretty limited:
https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/countrysummary/images/CA/cropprod/Canada_Wheat.png
So, it’s very likely, that the origin point was not too far from the U.S. border. The destination of the shipment in Mexico wasn’t given either, but it’s obvious that the vast majority of the mileage in this trip was traversing the United States, even though it was trade between Canada and Mexico. Given the eleven or so CPKFC crew changes on the route in the United States as well as all the operations support provided by Americans to keep the train going, it’s clear that the U.S. is benefitting significantly from this movement, especially considering that transportation is a huge percentage of the cost of grain. And even more so considering the operating profile and circuity of CPKFC north of the border.
Also, such shipments (between Canada and Mexico) are nothing new. When Ceres Global opened their Logistics Hub at Northgate, Saskatchewan (served exclusively by BNSF), the first unit grain train went to Mexico, interchanging with Ferromex at El Paso.
Carney and his team spent all of the previous day with President Sheinbaum and her crowd.
No one from Mexico was invited?