UNITED STATES—  Since 1997, the value of printing shipments went from around 0.75% of GDP all the way down to about 0.35%. After the recovery in July 2009, things looked like they were evening out, but they just kept going down. Essentially, this is the story of technology. Printing shipments as a percentage of GDP started to plummet when the Internet truly “arrived” circa 1996 and while we can blame the recession for some of the drop after 2008, remember also that this was also the period that saw the advent of social media, the smartphone, and mobile media. Every new electronic medium has disrupted print’s standing in the overall scheme of media. This was taken from What They Think about the American printing industry but a lot of it applies to the Canadian printing industry.