Shake-up in Global Steel
The world of steel trade is in for a shake-up. New climate rules in Europe, the prospect of ramped-up U.S. tariffs on steel and an excess of Chinese steel imports mean companies around the world must calibrate their trade strategies in 2024.
With the U.S. locked in protectionism and the…
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%.…
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…
The conversation about global trade often leaves out the world’s fourth biggest economy and third top exporter and importer, but Germany is poised to play an even bigger role this decade as China and the U.S. remain locked in a trade war.
In August, Chinese exports to Germany jumped a whopping 21.5% to $10.1 billion.…
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…
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…
As the world’s top source of monthly trade statistics for governments, corporations, NGOs, law firms, and international institutions, Trade Data Monitor carefully tracks shifts in trade terms. At the top of the list is tariffs, and we’ll be monitoring how new import tariffs are changing trade flows.
New U.S. Tariffs
On May 14, the U.S.…
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…
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…
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…
As we enter the third year after the invasion of Ukraine, the landscape of Ukrainian trade, and, specifically, exports of wheat, have drastically evolved. As the world's 4th-largest exporter of wheat and meslin in 2023, Ukraine has remained a relatively stable producer of wheat over the past decade and has remained especially resilient over the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The ongoing corporate jousting for U.S. Steel has created another round of uncertainty for American industry. The fate of the venerable 122-year-old firm remains uncertain, but buyers of steel face a supply chain crisis, trade data suggests.
The U.S. has fallen to fourth in the world in steelmaking, at around 86 million tons, behind China…
As global trade putters in 2023, because of weak consumer demand, lingering Covid fallout and protectionist tensions, the slackening has highlighted niche sectors in the global economy where trade is still robust.
The upshot: We’re no longer living in a world where every consumer is buying more stuff and everything is made in China, or…
There’s so much focus on the U.S.-China trade relationship and its frequent fireworks that it’s often forgotten that the European Union, still the world’s preeminent free-trade alliance, with 447 million consumers, is the better customer.
In April, exports to the European Union increased 4.1% year-on-year to $44.7 billion, while exports to the U.S. dropped 6.2%…
The steep drop in Vietnam’s exports and imports during the first quarter of 2023 points to vulnerabilities in the country of around 100 million’s economy, as well as slumping factory orders and business confidence around the world.
Vietnam’s quarterly exports fell 11.8% year-on-year to $79.3 billion in the first three months of 2023. Trade makes…
Vietnam, which has become a global trade powerhouse and one of the global economy’s key world trade indicators, posted weak exports in December, suggesting a challenging economic situation in 2023.
In December, exports fell 15.8% year-on-year to $29 billion. Because Vietnam has become a manufacturing platform for so many companies making high-tech and other consumer…
As the global economy slows, it's denting global trade and hurting economies in farflung places. The World Trade Organization now expects global trade to grow at 1% next year instead of 3.4%. One of the regions most impacted will be South America, where trade will increase only 0.3% in 2023, according to the WTO.
South…