Justin Fox, Columnist

It's Time for Buffalo to Secede, and Join Canada

The U.S. side of the Great Lakes has a far chillier economic outlook than its northern counterpart.

April 27, 2017 at 6:53 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

The real lake effect.
Photographer: John Normile/Getty Images

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"The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region," BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic wrote in a report published Tuesday, "is a vital driver of North American economic output, employment and trade, accounting for nearly a third of combined Canadian and U.S. output, jobs and exports." Economic growth in the region, he continued, "is expected to accelerate in 2017." Almost one-third! And growing! Go, Great Lakes!

The region does have its fast lanes and its slow lanes, though. Here's my rendition of a chart from the report:

The fast lanes, then, are mainly on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region. Especially when you consider that the two U.S. Great Lakes states that are growing fastest, Minnesota and Indiana, don't really have what you'd call Great Lakes-oriented economies (that is, their main cities are 150 miles from the nearest Great Lake).