International trade in arts, culture, and heritage in 2023
Drilling into the most recent Canadian data on exports, imports, and surpluses or deficits
Welcome to 2026! Today’s post delves into recently released data on revenues and expenses for the export and import of cultural goods and services in 2023. I examine trade by type of cultural good or service, including an imperfect but reasonable approximation of “the arts”. The data relate to cultural products, not cultural industries.
Recognizing that 2023 trade data are not particularly current in the present environment, I looked into quarterly datasets on international trade. However, as often happens, the categories that are published quarterly (e.g., “personal, cultural, and recreational services”) are very broad and not informative about the situation of the arts, culture, and heritage. I am therefore sticking to an analysis of the 2023 dataset, which was released in late October.
Future articles will examine international trade into and from each province, as well as trends in cultural trade since 2010.
Canada exports $27 billion in arts, culture, and heritage goods and services
Statistics Canada’s summary of the trade dataset highlighted some key statistics:
Canada exported cultural goods and services worth $27.1 billion in 2023.
Canada imported $35.8 billion of cultural products worth in 2023, resulting in a cultural trade deficit of $8.7 billion.
Cultural goods and services represented 2.8% of all exports and 3.7% of all imports in 2022. (Both are increases from 2022, when exports were 2.6% and imports were 3.4%.)
Of nine cultural areas, live performance is “the only domain to remain below pre-pandemic levels, despite a 23.9% increase from 2022”.
Today’s first graph highlights the basic facts about Canada’s cultural trade in 2023.
By my calculation, the cultural trade deficit represents 32% of all cultural exports in 2023 (an increase from 30% in 2022). In other words, Canadians spent 32% more on cultural goods and services from abroad than we exported.
Cultural areas with a trade surplus
Despite the overall trade deficit of $8.7 billion in cultural goods and services, five specific areas registered a trade surplus:
Film and video: $3.9 billion
Crafts: $1.1 billion
Interactive media: $0.9 billion
Architecture: $27 million
Advertising: $15 million
Below the paywall, the article digs into the most recent data on the value of exports, imports, and trade surplus or deficit for each cultural domain, for an approximation of the arts, and for specific types of arts products, including visual arts, performing arts, film and video, books, and more. The American share of cultural trade is also highlighted.