September Rain
China posted lackluster trade figures in September, highlighting how it might become slowly less reliant on global commerce as other major economies retrench.
Chinese exports increased 2.4% year-on-year, below economists’ expectations of around 6%, to $303.7 billion, while imports increased only 0.3% to $222 billon.
The 2024 Boom
For most of 2024, Chinese…
The politics of trade in the U.S. have gotten complicated during this century, mainly because deindustrialization in the Rust Belt has cost so many factories and jobs. The free trade consensus of the 1990s that led to NAFTA and China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 is dead.
But it shouldn’t be lost on…
As the business world girds for a fresh wave of trade protectionism and the possibility of a second Trump administration, China bumped up exports of two essential metals. In June, its shipments of steel products increased 20.8% year-on-year by quantity to 8.7 million tons and 3.8% by value to $6.8 billion. Its shipments of unwrought…
China’s electric car export boom has fueled demand in the country for automobile transport ships, driving up prices for foreign buyers.
Overall, in March, Chinese ship exports fell 5.9% year-on-year by quantity in March to 399, after steadily rising for most of this decade. By value, they increased 34% to $3.1 billion. So called Roll-on/roll-off,…
In the somewhat gloomy December and annual China trade statistics released in the second week of January was buried a piece of data that hearkened back to the boom years of Chinese commodity consumption: China is buying a lot more iron ore and copper.
In December, China boosted iron ore imports 11.1% year-on-year to 100.9…
It’s not an easy time for global trade--the roughly $25 trillion piece of the $105 trillion world economy. Protectionism is roaring in the U.S. and Europe, causing geopolitical tension with China. Inflation across most of the world has shrunk consumers’ wallets and imports, while deflation in China is also scaring businesses. Asian supply chains are…
A recent Financial Times article, based on data supplied by Trade Data Monitor, detailed the increase in Turkish exports of military-linked goods to Russia in the first nine months of 2023. This has magnified U.S. concerns over the trade of 45 "high-profile" items subject to export controls and heightened tensions with NATO partners.
The FT…
The world’s biggest exporter reported another month of dismal trade figures for June. Chinese exports declined 13% year-on-year in the month to $285.3 billion, and imports fell 6.9% to $214.7 billion.
The decline was driven by a massive drop in consumer spending in the U.S. and Europe, caused by inflation, fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, and…
Correlations between urea and natural gas pricing can exist during periods when supply and demand disruptions are not driving prices.
This is logical given that the urea value chain starts with natural gas. Using statistics from Trade Data Monitor, Baltic country (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden) natural gas import prices…
The world was rocked in 2022 by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, punishing inflation, and slackening demand in the U.S. and Europe. That’s dampened expectations for exports and imports in 2023. Global trade growth will slow to 1%, according to the World Trade Organization, because of inflation, higher interest rates, weaker demand in the U.S. and…