As anyone who has paid attention to a presidential campaign in the United States knows, trade is both an economic and a political issue. The sources in this chapter contain data both on the volume of international trade—the values and quantities of goods and, to a lesser extent, services that are created in one country and then sent to another—and on tariffs, trade agreements, and other politically enacted policies that attempt to restrict or encourage international trade.
Major Sources: United States
Responsibility for international trade statistics in the United States is divided between three divisions of the U.S. Department of Commerce: the Census Bureau and the International Trade Administration both disseminate statistics on international trade in tangible goods, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis disseminates data on trade in services and intangible goods. Collectively, they distribute trade data through several different sites.
Census Bureau (U.S. Department of Commerce)
The Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade website (www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html) bills itself as “the official source for U.S. export and import statistics.” Its data on the value of imports and exports is available in the following ways:
• Overall annual data on trade between the United States and the rest of the world is available 1960 to present (www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/).
• Monthly and annual data on overall trade (total imports, total exports, and trade balance) between the United States and individual foreign countries, territories, or regions of the world is available 1985 to present for many countries, with shorter time series available for territories (www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/country/).
• In the “U.S. International Trade Statistics” section, one can find detailed monthly data about trade between the United States and individual foreign countries in specific products, 2000 to present (http://censtats.census.gov/naic3_6/naics3_6.shtml).
• Additional monthly data on trade in “advanced technology products,” such as computer and electronic equipment, certain medical products, and aerospace products, is available 1989 to present for overall import and export data, and 2003 to present for data broken down by country and type of product (www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/country/).
Additionally, statistics about U.S.-based companies that are involved in importing and exporting are available 1987 to present, with gaps (www.census.gov/foreign-trade/aip/index.html#profile).
Another Census Bureau site, known as the NAICS Related-Party database (http://sasweb.ssd.census.gov/relatedparty/), may be useful for researchers who want annual rather than monthly time series of trade data in specific products. Like the “U.S. International Trade Statistics” site mentioned previously, it provides data about trade between the United States and any given foreign country in specific products—down to six-digit NAICS codes (see chapter 1 for an explanation of NAICS codes). It has only annual data, and only for 2002 to present, but unlike the “U.S. International Trade Statistics” site it allows users to download data for multiple time periods at once. It also allows users to separate out trade involving related parties (where the importer has a substantial equity stake in the exporter or vice versa).
International Trade Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce)
TradeStats Express (TSE, http://tse.export.gov), which is produced by the International Trade Administration (ITA), contains quarterly and annual data on trade between the United States and foreign countries, 1989 to present. This data is available either at the level of the entire United States or of individual states, and, on the other side of the trade, at the level of individual countries, of continents or other large regions, or of countries belonging to various international groups such as the European Union, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Although the NAICS Related-Party database and the TSE both disseminate data based on the same administrative sources (viz., electronic declarations filed by exporters and importers with the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Customs and Border Protection), the two report slightly different figures. The NAICS Related-Party database includes only imports for consumption (i.e., imports on which customs duties have been paid and which are available to be used or sold in the United States), whereas the TSE also includes imports that are being held in “bonded warehouses” or “Foreign Trade Zones.” These are special areas where imported goods can be stored without incurring customs duties until they become “imports for consumption” or are reexported elsewhere without customs duties. Additionally, the databases handle seasonal adjustments, errata, and certain other technical matters differently. Refer to the documentation for both databases for specific information about how each one arrives at the numbers it reports.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (U.S. Department of Commerce)
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes data on trade in services (e.g., education, insurance, consulting) and intangible goods (e.g., royalties and similar payments on intellectual property) between the United States and approximately thirty major trading partners. Much of the data, which is available on its “International Economic Accounts” site (www.bea.gov/international/index.htm), covers 1986 to present, although some data sets cover shorter periods of time. Beginning with 2006, data is also available broken down into trade between unaffiliated entities, trade between U.S. affiliates and foreign parent companies, and trade between foreign affiliates and U.S. parent companies.
U.S. International Trade Commission
Another source for U.S. trade data, as well as data on the amount of tariffs and other duties paid on that trade, is the International Tariff and Trade DataWeb (http://dataweb.usitc.gov; free registration required), produced by the U.S. International Trade Commission. This source provides more detailed measures of the value of imports than many other sources; it has several different measures of value that variously include or exclude costs such as insurance on the merchandise, freight for shipping the merchandise, and amount of import duties paid on the merchandise. The estimated (“calculated”) amount of duties paid is also available as a separate variable, as is the actual quantity of goods imported or exported. The site offers many options for defining groups of products, including NAICS, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC), and the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS, a U.S.-based expansion of the Harmonized System; see chapter 1 for more information about the various codes used to classify trade data). Data is available at the most specific level offered by each of the classification systems, which allows users to select fine-grained product categories. Data is available monthly, 1989 to present.
USA Trade Online (U.S. Census Bureau)
Foreign trade data is one of the few types of data produced by the federal government that is not always free to users; some of the Census Bureau’s foreign trade data products require a subscription. These include those available via USA Trade Online (https://usatrade.census.gov), which has monthly import and export data with finer geographic detail than other Census Bureau products; users can download data at the level of individual ports as well as districts (groups of ports in the same general geographic area). Another advantage of USA Trade Online is that, like the International Tariff and Trade DataWeb and unlike many other U.S. federal trade data sources, it provides data on the quantity as well as the value of imports and exports. Although USA Trade Online generally requires a subscription, it can be freely accessed by anyone at some federal depository libraries.
Major Sources: World
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) disseminates data through several different sources, including three useful databases: UNCTADstat, Comtrade, and TRAINS.
UNCTADstat (http://unctadstat.unctad.org). The UNCTADstat website provides a great deal of data on trade, foreign direct investment, exchange rates, shipping, and other topics related to countries’ economic relationships with the rest of the world. Some data is available as far back as 1948, including the overall value of imports and exports for most countries. To view data in UNCTADstat, first find the report containing the needed data, either by searching or by browsing through the tree structure. After you click on the report’s title, a table opens with default settings, often showing global or regional data. To view data for individual countries, click on “ECONOMY,” which displays options for selecting either individual countries or various groupings of countries, such as “least developed countries,” “landlocked developing countries,” or “ECOWAS” (Economic Community of West African States). Click on “Show table” to return to the data view. Similarly, clicking on any of the other underlined headings, such as “PARTNER” (for trade partners), “YEAR,” or “PRODUCT,” displays options for choosing different parameters for those variables. Products are classified by SITC codes.
Comtrade (the name stands for “Commodity Trade Statistics Database”; http://comtrade.un.org). Comtrade provides extremely detailed data on the value and quantity of exports, imports, reexports, and reimports between approximately two hundred countries, territories, and economic groupings, 1962 to present. Data is available classified by both SITC and Harmonized System (HS) codes as well as Broad Economic Categories (BEC). The data sets classified by HS codes are available down to the six-digit level, which makes them some of the most detailed trade data available internationally. For example, the HS-classified data in Comtrade includes not merely trade in cheese—the most detailed cheese-related category in NAICS—but specifically blue-veined cheese, fresh cheese, grated/powdered cheese, and processed cheese. Because the data is so fine-grained and is available for so many years, more than a billion data points are available in the database. However, only 50,000 of them can be downloaded at a time, so users may have to query strategically to assemble large data sets.
UNCTAD TRAINS (Trade Analysis and Information System). This source is focused on data about tariffs and other trade control measures. Access to TRAINS is provided by the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS, http://wits.worldbank.org/wits/), an online system that can also be used to access Comtrade and some additional trade-related data. The TRAINS data is very granular; tariff data is available at the ten-digit HS level when using the “Quick Search” options, or at the six-digit HS level when using the “Advanced Query” interface, covering both bound duties (the legal maximum duty on a given item) and applied duties (the duty actually in effect at a given point in time). In addition to the standard data queries and download capabilities, WITS provides sophisticated options for working with the data online, including the ability to save queries between sessions, create custom groupings of products and countries that can be saved and used in queries, and model changes in the amount of trade based on hypothetical changes in the tariffs applied to that trade. Bulk data downloads are also available for the TRAINS data, 1988 to present. Although the WITS system has many useful capabilities, it does have a few drawbacks. A free registration is required, and the system can be slow to process some queries and make the data files available for download.
Minor Sources
World Trade Organization
Trade data is available from several international and regional organizations. The World Trade Organization (WTO), despite its name, is not an especially good source of trade data; its activities primarily focus on trade negotiations and disputes. It does, however, have good data on trade agreements, including a regional trade agreement (RTA) database (http://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx) and a preferential trade agreement (PTA) database (http://ptadb.wto.org/?lang=1). It also provides some recent data on trade, as well as data on tariff rates (www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/data_pub_e.htm). The data on tariffs, disseminated via the WTO’s Tariff Analysis Online site (TAO, http://tariffanalysis.wto.org/?ui=1; free registration required), is copious and multifaceted, covering both bound and applied duties as well as quotas affecting tariffs, subsidies provided by countries to exporters of various products, and more. Be aware, though, that not all countries’ data is included in TAO. Also, the TAO time series are not as lengthy as those available from some other sources: TAO contains only data 1996 to present; WITS has data 1988 to present, for example.
World Bank
In addition to the basic trade data it publishes on the World Bank Data site (http://data.worldbank.org; see chapter 2), the World Bank publishes the Exporter Dynamics Database (http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/exporter-dynamics-database; click “DATABANK” in the right sidebar to access aggregate data). This database contains information about companies that export products from a given country, such as average value of products exported per company, average number of different types of products exported per company, and average number of countries to which a company exports. Much of this data is available broken down by companies that are new entrants to the market, those exiting the market, and incumbents. Data is available for forty-five countries, 1997–2011.
Several regional or other groups provide trade databases that primarily contain data specifically from their member states. These include DataIntal, from the InterAmerican Development Bank (www.iadb.org/dataintal/); Comext, from the European Union (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/newxtweb/); and multiple data sets from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, http://stats.oecd.org). For the most part, the data points contained in these data sets are simply subsets of the data available from the global sources mentioned previously, with some variations in definitions, time periods available, and the like.
One OECD data set deserves individual mention. The Trade in Value Added (TiVA) data set is a recently initiated joint project of the WTO and OECD. Unlike most trade statistics, the TiVA data (http://stats.oecd.org/; search for TiVA) takes into account the fact that many exported items are not entirely manufactured in a single country. For example, a pair of jeans exported from Bangladesh might be made from cotton imported from India and zippers imported from Japan. This causes problems for traditional trade statistics; to name just one, the value of the cotton and the zippers gets double-counted in global trade figures, once when they are exported from India and Japan, respectively, and again when they are exported from Bangladesh as part of the finished jeans. Traditional trade statistics also make it difficult to estimate just how much Bangladesh’s economy benefits from exporting that pair of jeans. To solve problems such as this, the data in TiVA would include only the value added in Bangladesh.1
Note
1. For example, if the cotton cost $5, the zippers cost $1, and the jeans were worth $20, TiVA would attribute $14 in exports to Bangladesh ($20 total value minus $5 worth of components imported from India minus $1 worth of components imported from Japan = $14 in value added in Bangladesh). The data in TiVA is not yet comprehensive; as of the May 2013 release only fifty-six countries and the European Union were included, and only selected years between 1995 and 2009 were covered.