# usaref North American Government Reference Data – History Series

> usaref North American Government Reference Data – History Series is a paid API for AI agents from usaref.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.005/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-13).

Returns the full historical time-series for a specific government reference data series (e.g. policy rates, VAT rates, minimum wages, public holidays) for a given North American country (CA or US), with citations to official primary sources.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://usaref.dev/v1/%7Bcountry%7D/%7Bseries%7D/history
- Price: $0.005/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/usaref-north-american-government-reference-data-history-series-5f834f9b
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_Jj53MlDTolU2zRErO2JOs

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability usaref-north-american-government-reference-data-history-series-5f834f9b
```

Example prompt: Can you pull the full history of Bank of Canada overnight policy rate changes, including each effective date and the official citation, so I can see how rates have evolved?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need the full chronological history of a North American government reference value (not just the current value), with official government citations and staleness signals. It is ideal for compliance audits, economic modeling, regulatory research, or any use case requiring an auditable chain of authoritative government data points rather than a single current figure.

## Known failure modes

- Unknown country code returns an error — only 'ca' and 'us' are supported
- Unknown or misspelled series name returns an error — must match supported slugs like policy-rate, minimum-wage, vat-rate, public-holidays
- Payment failure or missing x402 payment header results in 402 Payment Required response
- Network timeout on the upstream service
- Stale flag may be true if the official source has not been recently verified, indicating data may be outdated

## How this service works

Authoritative North American government reference values as clean JSON: central-bank policy rates, VAT rates, national minimum wages and public holidays for Canada (ca), United States (us). Every value carries a citation to its official primary source (government gazette or central-bank statement), an effective date, a last-confirmed date and a staleness flag.

## Output

A JSON array of historical entries for the requested series, each containing the numeric value and unit, the effective_from date (when the value came into force), the last_confirmed date (most recent verification), a staleness boolean flag, an official primary source object with URL and name, country and series identifiers, and a legal disclaimer. The Bank of Canada policy-rate example shows value: 2.25, unit: 'percent', effective_from: '2025-10-29', last_confirmed: '2026-07-20', stale: false.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "properties": {
   "type": "string"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "unit": "percent",
  "notes": "The 15 July 2026 release states verbatim: 'The Bank of Canada today held its target for the overnight rate at 2.25%, with the Bank Rate at 2.5% and the deposit rate at 2.20%.' effective_from is 2025-10-29, the date of the last CHANGE (a 25 bp cut from 2.50% to 2.25%), not the date of the most recent reaffirmation — the Bank has since held at 2.25% at all SIX subsequent fixed announcement dates: 10 December 2025, 28 January 2026, 18 March 2026, 29 April 2026, 10 June 2026 and 15 July 2026. The full 2026 FAD schedule published by the Bank in August 2025 is 28 January, 18 March, 29 April, 10 June, 15 July, 2 September, 28 October and 9 December, with the Monetary Policy Report released alongside the January, April, July and October decisions. Canada's operating band is 25 bp wide: the Bank Rate (upper limit, standing liquidity facility) is the target +25 bp = 2.50%, and the deposit rate (lower limit, remuneration on settlement balances) is 2.20% — 5 bp below target, a spread the Bank narrowed from the earlier target-minus-25bp convention. The target for the overnight rate is the correct headline policy rate; do not substitute the Bank Rate. Next scheduled fixed announcement date: 2 September 2026. bankofcanada.ca serves clean HTML and is reliably fetchable.",
  "stale": false,
  "value": 2.25,
  "series": "policy-rate",
  "source": {
   "url": "https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2026/07/fad-press-release-2026-07-15/",
   "name": "Bank of Canada, Fixed Announcement Date press release 15 July 2026, 'Bank of Canada maintains the policy rate at 2¼%' (decision under the Bank of Canada Act, RSC 1985, c. B-2); rate level set by the FAD press release of 29 October 2025"
  },
  "country": "CA",
  "disclaimer": "Independent service, not affiliated with any government. Verify against the cited official source before legal or financial use.",
  "effective_from": "2025-10-29",
  "last_confirmed": "2026-07-20"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/usaref-north-american-government-reference-data-history-series-5f834f9b/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from usaref.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/usaref.dev/llms.txt)