Tags
CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, goods trade, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade surpluses, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy
Back to the full-year 2022 trade figures today, and the focus is on this question: Is the structure of U.S. trade settling into to a somewhat stable post-CCP Virus pattern? That’s one possible conclusion that can be drawn from a detailed look at U.S. goods trade flows for full-year 2022 and comparing them with those of the year before, and then with those of 2019 – the last full pre-pandemic year.
What they show is that although this structure barely changed between 2021 and 2022, some sizable changes can be seen between 2019 and last year. The evidence comes from examining list of the products that have recorded the biggest trade surpluses and deficits during these years.
For data geeks, these lists are constructed from the U.S.government’s main system for slicing and dicing the economy by industry – the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The level of disaggregation used is the sixth – which in my view enables the clearest and most conveniient way to distinguish between final products (on the goods side of the economy) and their parts and components. With so much production of so many manufactures in particular still so globalized, that’s a crucial distinction. All specific amounts are presented in billions of pre-inflation dollars.
Finally, the numbers for the civilian aeropace sector (whose trade flows are enomous) are kind of funky, because the Census Bureau that gathers the data has been inconsistent in lumping all these numbers together and breaking them down into aircraft and the various types of aircraft parts.
That said, let’s start with the twenty categories that ran up the biggest trade surpluses in 2022 and the magnitude of those surpluses:
aircraft: $90.53
natural gas: $75.14
petroleum refinery products; $60.51
misc special classification: $35.51
soybeans: $34.00
plastics materials and resins: $23.16
waste and scrap: $20.82
corn: $18.59
non-anthracite coal & petroleum gases: $16.44
used or second hand merchandise: $9.38
cotton: $9.10
semiconductor machinery: $9.09
wheat: $7.82
non-poultry meat products: $7.60
motor vehicle bodies: $7.21
non-aluminum non-ferrous smelted/refined metal: $6.91
petrochemicals: $5.66
tree nuts: $5.61
semiconductors and related : $5.59
copper, nickel, lead & zinc: $5.5
Now here are their counterparts in 2021:
civilian aircraft, engines, and engine parts: $79.89
natural gas: $54.55
soybeans: $27.07
petroleum refinery products: $26.29
special classification : $24.90
waste and scrap: $21.39
plastics materials and resins: $18.78
corn: $18.58
semiconductor machinery: $12.21
semiconductors and related devices: $10.62
non-anthracite coal and petroleum gases: $9.29
used or second-hand merchandise: $8.56
non-poultry meat products: $7.83
motor vehicle bodies: $6.95
wheat: $6.87
cotton: $5.76
copper, nickel, lead and zinc: $5.46
tree nuts: $4.69
prepared or preserved poultry: $4.54
miscelleaneous inorganic chemicals: $4.05
What jumps out is how similar these two lists are. In fact, 18 of the biggest surplus sectors for 2021 earned the same distinction in 2022. Even the order of the two lists is strikingly similar. No individual sector moved more than two rungs up or down in the rankings. And even the two 2021 biggest surplus winners that didn’t make the 2022 list, they came awfully close, with prepared or preserved poultry ranking twenty first in 2022 and miscellaneous organic chemicals ranking twenty fourth.
And don’t forget this head-scratcher: Between 2021 and 2022, a trade deficit in non-aluminum non-ferrous smelted and refined metals of $484 billion turned into a $6.91 surplus!
Very similar top twenty results emerge from the 2021 and 2022 lists of sectors with the biggest trade deficits for those years. Here’s the 2022 list:
autos and light trucks: $112.98
broadcast and wireless communications equipment; $93.76
goods returned from Canada: $90.79
computers: $82.93
crude petroleum: $81.28
pharmaceutical preparations: $66.02
female cut and sew apparel: $47.85
male cut and sew apparel: $39.07
footwear: $34.56
audio and video equipment: $34.26
iron, steel, ferroalloy steel products: $33.34
miscellaneous motor vehicle parts: $31.17
dolls, toys and games: $30.79
printed circuit assemblies: $29.90
major household appliances: $21.08
miscellaneous electronic components: $20.99
miscellaneous plastics products: $20.03
storage batteries: $19.13
aircraft engines and engine parts: $18.34
motor vehicle electrical and electronic equipment: $17.67
And the top (bottom?) twenty for 2021:
goods returned from Canada: $96.13
autos and light trucks: $95.84
broadcast and wireless communications equipment: $80.02
computers: $79.08
crude petroleum: $63.69
pharmaceutical preparations: $63.57
female cut and sew apparel: $40.98
audio and video equipment: $34.34
male cut and sew apparel: $29.82
miscellaneous motor vehicle parts: $28.91
dolls, toys and games: $26.67
printed circuit assemblies: $26.57
iron and steel and ferroalloy steel products: $26.21
footwear: $25.81
major household appliances: $20.84
miscellaneous plastics products: $20.51
jewelry and silverware: $17.77
motor vehicle electrical and electronic equipment: $16.09
curtains and linens: $15.23
aircraft engines and engine parts: $14.06
Revealingly, the 2021 and 2022 lists are not only also very much alike each other. They’re alike in a big way very similar to how the surplus lists for the two yeasr are alike: Eighteen of the entries on the 2021 list are on the 2022 list.
The big difference: Movement up and down the ranks was somewhat greater. Three sectors changed places by more than two rungs: footwear (which rose from fourteenth on the 2021 list to ninth in 2022; jewelry and silverware, which dropped from seventeenth to twenty-first; and curtains and linens, which tumbled from nineteenth to twenty-ninth – likely because the domestic housing sector slumped.
But the differences between the 2019 and 2022 lists are more substantial. Here are the former’s top twenty trade surplus winners:
civilian aircraft, engines, and parts: $126.02
petroleum refinery products: $30.55
special classification provisions: $24.51
natural gas: $21.79
plastics materials and resins: $18.80
soybeans: $18.49
waste and scrap: $13.07
non-anthracite coal and petroleum gases: $9.31
motor vehicle bodies: $ 9.20
semiconductors and related devices: $9.01
used or second-hand merchandise: $8.80
corn: $7.62
wheat: $5.85
tree nuts: $5.10
computer parts: $4.79
copper, nickel, lead and zinc: $4.40
miscellaneous basic inorganic chemicals: $4.31
prepared or preserved poultry: $3.79
in vitro diagnostic substances: $3.27
surface active agents: $3.24
Here again, eighteen out of the 2019 entrants made it to the 2022 list. But there were quite a few more big movers and in two cases huge movers. No fewer than nine made shifts of more than two places, including motor vehicle bodies, which sank from nine on the former to 15 on the latter; semiconductors, which plummeted from tenth to nineteenth; corn, which rose from fourth to eighth; copper and the three other metals,which dropped from 16 to 20; miscellaneous inorganic chemicals, which fell from seventeenth to twenty-fourth; and surface active agents, which declined from twentieth to twenty sixth.
Much more dramatic, however, in computer parts, a $4.79 billion surplus turned into a $438 million deficit, and in in vitro diagnostic substances. a $3.27 billion surplus had become a ginormous $15.47 billion deficit by last year –no doubt mainly reflecting exploding demand for CCP Virus tests.
The differences between the 2019 and 2022 top twenty trade deficit sectors were noteworthy, but not quite so. Here are the results for 2019:
autos and light trucks: $125.47
goods returned from Canada: $91.23
broadcast and wireless communications equipment: $73.02
pharmaceutical preparations: $62.24
crude oil: $61.91
computers: $59.44
female cut and sew apparel: $42.07
male cut and sew apparel: $30.88
aircraft engines and engine parts: $25.68
footwear: $25.39
miscellaneous motor vehicle parts: $23.21
audio and video equipment: $22.36
non-diagnostic biological products: $17.31
dolls, toys and games: $17.28
iron, steel and ferroalloy steel products: $16.95
printed circuit assemblies: $16.71
motor vehicle electrical and electronic equipment: $14.36
non-engine aircaft parts: $14.33
major household appliances: $14.12
miscellaneous plastics products: $12.86
As with the surplus list, eighteen of the top twenty deficit 2019 showed up on the counterpart 2022 list. But whereas nine sectors made moves of more than two places between the coresponding surplus lists, that was the case for only six sectors in the deficit lists. They were iron, steel and ferroalloy products (fifteenth to eleventh); motor vehicle electrical and electronic equipment (seventeenth to twentieth); non-engine aircraft parts (eighteenth to fifty sixth); major household appliances (nineteenth to fifteenth); and miscellaneous plastics products (twentieth to seventeenth). In addition, the non-diagnostic biological substances went from a $17.31 billion deficit in 2019 to a $4.17 billion surplus in 2022!
As with any economic developments coming out of the pandemic era, it may be way too soon to draw sweeping conclusions. So the structure of U.S. trade deficits and surpluses will be worth watching going forward. But it’s not too soon to ask whether these trends seem likely to benefit or harm the economy’s health longer term – or won’t matter much either way. And that will be the subject of the upcoming final (for now) deep dive into the 2022 U.S. trade figures.