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Trump Election Gooses Trade– Before Tariffs Hit

UncategorizedNovember 7, 2024120Views 0Likes 0Comments

This week’s election of Donald Trump as the U.S.’s 47th president is almost certainly likely to lead to another trade war with China, and further tariffs on American imports. During the campaign, Trump said his favorite word was tariff and floated a universal 10% tariff and specific duties on Chinese imports as high as 60%.…

China Finally Affected by Protectionist Tariffs

UncategorizedOctober 23, 2024197Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

50 U.S. States Have 50 Trade Economies

UncategorizedSeptember 24, 2024403Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

China Hikes Metal Exports Amid Record Surplus

UncategorizedJuly 15, 2024905Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

How Tariffs Are Reshuffling EV Trade

UncategorizedJuly 11, 2024849Views 0Likes 0Comments

Age of the EV We’re entering the age of the electric vehicle, and global trade is keeping pace. Around 20% of all cars bought in the world in 2023, a total of almost 14 million, were electric, and there are now 40 million on the road, according to the International Energy Agency. Total trade in…

How Chinese Exports Beat Tariffs

UncategorizedJune 11, 2024733Views 0Likes 0Comments

More Tariffs on the Horizon There seems to be no end to the trade pendulum swinging hard toward protectionism in Brussels and Washington-- or to Chinese exports continuing to flood global markets. The Biden administration last month slapped tariffs on imports of electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and other high-tech goods from China. (They’ll mostly affect batteries.) The…

Middle East Trade in the Time of War

UncategorizedJune 5, 20241KViews 0Likes 0Comments

Middle East: The Big Picture In 2024, the Middle East has been hit by conflict, piracy, and the vagaries of supply chains and the oil market. The specter of protectionism appears threatening, especially between countries in conflict with each other. As the U.S. and the European Union slide into a quasi-permanent protectionist mindset, including tit-for-tat…

TDM Insight: Vietnamese Exports Rebound in 2024

UncategorizedMay 15, 20241KViews 0Likes 0Comments

After a tepid recovery in 2023, Vietnam’s trade machine appears to be firing on all cylinders so far in 2024. The country boosted exports 16.8% year-on-year to $92.9 billion in the first quarter, underpinning gross domestic product growth of 5.7%. This is no coincidence. Vietnam’s export sector is key to its economic growth. It is…

Can Chinese Imports Boost the Global Economy?

UncategorizedMay 14, 2024568Views 0Likes 0Comments

The Beijing trade engine has been slumping this year amid a tepid global economy, so a surprising jump in Chinese imports in April has raised the prospect of a China-led recovery. Total Chinese imports rose 8.4% year-on-year in April to $220.1 billon, almost double analyst expectations. Total exports increased 1.5% to $292.5 billon. Surprising Global…

China’s EV Export Boom is Driving up Demand for RoRo Ships

UncategorizedApril 15, 2024783Views 0Likes 0Comments

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,…

China Reboots Trade Thanks to Africa, India, Latin America

UncategorizedMarch 11, 20241KViews 0Likes 0Comments

Don’t let anybody tell you that globalization is dying—at least, not yet. Global trade economists obsess over consumer demand and rising protectionism in the U.S. and Europe, but this week’s release of Chinese trade statistics shows that other markets might soon be catching up in relevance. The Promise of Other Markets China’s exports to Latin…

Vietnam’s Secret Weapon: Agriculture

UncategorizedMarch 1, 20241KViews 0Likes 0Comments

In a tricky global economy, Vietnamese exports shrank in 2023, but the rising economic power managed to be one of the only countries to increase merchandise exports to China, thanks to a surprising surge in exports of fruits and vegetables, as well as rice, demonstrating the importance of export diversification. The Difficulties of 2023 The country of…

What’s Behind the High-Tech Trade Slump?

UncategorizedFebruary 16, 2024824Views 0Likes 0Comments

It’s not been an easy time for international trade, as a recent report co-authored by Trade Data Monitor and the World Intellectual Property Organization found. High-tech exports are set to decline by 4 percent in 2023, according to the TDM/WIPO analysis. Global and high-tech trade have soared and sunk like rollercoasters since 2019. After…

China Hikes Iron Ore, Copper Imports Amid Car Building Boom

UncategorizedJanuary 23, 20241KViews 0Likes 0Comments

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…

The Future of EU-China Trade

UncategorizedDecember 21, 20231KViews 0Likes 0Comments

As European Union leaders gathered in Beijing Thursday, one of their demands for China was a more equal trading relationship. “China is the EU’s most important trading partner,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “But there are clear imbalances and differences that we must address.” Europe’s weak consumer economy is doing its part…

Trade Data Monitor’s Top 10 Trade Trends Going Into 2024

UncategorizedDecember 20, 20232KViews 0Likes 0Comments

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…

Turkey Hikes Exports of Military-Goods Exported to Russia

UncategorizedDecember 8, 20231KViews 0Likes 0Comments

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…

TDM Data Used to Scrutinize Impact of Steel and Aluminum Tariffs

UncategorizedNovember 15, 20231KViews 0Likes 0Comments

Trade scholars in a recent paper used Trade Data Monitor data on steel and aluminum trade to gauge the impact of 2018-2019 protectionist measures on U.S. and European Union imports. The paper by Simon Evenett and Fernando Martin, published by the Center for European Policy Research, found that because the U.S. and European Union…

China Boosts Imports of Raw Materials by Double Digits

UncategorizedNovember 13, 20232KViews 0Likes 0Comments

China in October dramatically increased imports of fossil fuels, industrial metals and agricultural commodities, a run on raw materials that if sustained will have a major impact on prices and supply chains. China continued to increase its ferocious energy consumption, hiking imports of natural gas 120.1% year-on-year to 8.8 million tons, coal 23.3% to 36…

China Doubles Coal and Gas Imports as Global Trade Putters

UncategorizedJuly 27, 2023954Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

Why Global Trade in Rare Earth Elements is Growing and Diversifying

UncategorizedMarch 13, 2023803Views 0Likes 0Comments

Higher prices for rare-earth minerals and strategic support from the U.S. and other governments have sparked further investment, production, and international trade, diversifying supply for minerals that are essential to high-tech production. Rare earths elements, such as dysprosium, lanthanum and cerium, are 17 elements used as niche ingredients in magnets, batteries and catalytic converters. These…

Trade Data Show Correlations Between Gas and Urea Prices

UncategorizedFebruary 20, 2023807Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

U.S. Gas Exports Surging, High-Tech Supply Chains and Other Key Trade Trends For 2023

UncategorizedFebruary 13, 2023691Views 0Likes 0Comments

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…

Bangladesh Textile Firms Look to Asian Markets to Recover From Covid-19 Crisis

Bangladesh Textile Firms Look to Asian Markets to Recover From Covid-19 Crisis

UncategorizedJuly 20, 2020561Views 0Likes 0Comments

The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a pall over clothing retail markets in the U.S. and Europe. With iconic firms like Brooks Brothers and JC Penney battling bankruptcy, Asian textile manufacturers have lost billions of dollars in orders. That’s hit Bangladesh’s garment sector, the world’s second largest, particularly hard. The country is heavily dependent on the…