Archive for June, 2021

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Steel and Aluminum: Trade You Can Track

June 28, 2021

Eric Anderson is an International Trade Specialist in the Enforcement & Compliance Office of Communications

This post contains external links. Please review our external linking policy.

Circular saw cutting through a pipe throwing off sparks. Image from Unsplash.com

While you may not regularly think about it, there are few commodities more ubiquitous in our lives than steel and aluminum. From consumer electronics to aerospace technology, we are constantly surrounded by products that contain these two important metals. In fact, that device you are using right now is made of steel; and that can of carbonated water in your hand is made from aluminum. In 2020, the United States was the world’s fifth largest producer of crude steel and the ninth largest producer of primary aluminum. As such, the global steel and aluminum trade impacts our everyday lives and, as a result, has great national importance.

Even though we produce a lot of steel and aluminum domestically, the United States’ large domestic market almost always needs more than it can supply. To bridge the shortage, many different types of steel and aluminum are imported into the U.S. market. But where does all of this imported steel and aluminum come from? To get a closer look at how these commodities enter the U.S. market, ITA’s Enforcement and Compliance (E&C) business unit developed Steel and Aluminum Import Monitors, which are unique tools that provide greater transparency in trade flows and import trends for these iconic industries.

Aluminum Import Monitor

Members of the public are now able to see where imports of aluminum were produced thanks to our new interactive tool, the Aluminum Import Monitor (AIM). On June 28, 2021, importers of aluminum will be required to apply for a free license which will include information such as type of product, country of origin, and value or volume, etc. These license data will be integrated into the monitor, in aggregate, to provide the same early indicators to changing import trends as the Steel Import Monitor. Data obtained through the program will help identify surges in imports of specific aluminum products, including possible anomalies in the trade of aluminum products subject to import duties, which bolsters the effectiveness of existing trade remedy measures. The AIM also allows users to obtain and analyze data in the form of graphs, maps, and tables

Steel Import Monitor

The sister program to AIM, our Steel Import Monitor, for nearly two decades has provided the public with near real-time aggregate data on steel mill imports into the United States. This monitoring tool assists E&C and the steel industry, for example, in identifying import trends and changes as well as potential circumvention and evasion. With these numbers, steel industry watchers are able to pick up on any early indicators of import trends, and make important business decisions. Earlier this year, E&C enhanced the original version of this dashboard by using additional data collected through the steel licenses to provide more product level detail to platform users.

Steel Melt and Pour Dashboard

This innovative, first-of-its-kind tool displays data from Commerce’s new ‘melt and pour’ dashboard, which has recently been unveiled and available to the public. The supply chain view in the dashboard shows where U.S. imported steel was first produced and where it was further processed into the imported steel mill product. Just like how “farm to table” is all about knowing where food comes from, the melt and pour dashboard enables users to get a glimpse at the supply chain of steel.

These monitoring tools provide E&C with more data about the supply chain of finished steel imports into the United States. This data aids E&C’s ability to monitor for anomalies in trade patterns, which can help E&C and the domestic manufacturers to identify potential transshipment and circumvention of U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty orders, which are an important remedy that protect American businesses and workers from unfairly traded foreign products.

Posted in Enforcement and Compliance, Steel and Aluminum, Trade Data | Comments Off on Steel and Aluminum: Trade You Can Track

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Spotlight on Pride Month: Jeff Dutton, Commercial Service Officer

June 17, 2021

Jeff Dutton is a Commercial Officer based in Shanghai, China

This post coincides with the Department of Commerce’s spotlight on LGBT Pride Month.

This post contains external links. Please review our external linking policy. 

ITA Commercial Service Officer Jeff Dutton speaks to industry leaders at the Carrier Air Conditioning Museum in China.

I work at ITA’s U.S. Commercial Service office in Shanghai, China, supervising a team of 7 local staff and 2 fellow commercial officers. We offer a variety of export promotion services to small and medium-sized U.S. companies. Whether it’s a consumer product such as air fresheners or nutritional supplements, or a service provider helping industrial parks in China use less energy and lower carbon emissions, my colleagues and I help connect U.S. companies with potential agents, distributors, and customers in China.

As a college student in my home state of Arkansas, I studied abroad in Spain, Mexico, and Japan. I decided to pursue my interest in international trade and economics with a Master’s degree in International Relations at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York. A Maxwell School alumna who had landed at ITA recommended that I apply for several ITA jobs. I didn’t get the first job that I interviewed for, but I kept trying and in 1998 was offered an International Trade Specialist position. What excites me about export promotion and commercial diplomacy is that it brings people together for mutually beneficial economic exchange while at the same time helping communities across America by creating good-paying jobs. I also enjoy meeting business owners who succeeded in expanding their operations and hiring more American workers as a result of trade agreements ITA helped negotiate or a contract signed with a foreign distributor that my teammates introduced them to.

International trade is inherently cross-cultural and being a successful practitioner of it requires sensitivity to other cultures, flexibility in the way you communicate, and a readiness to expect the unexpected. I think that many members of the LGBTQ+ community have honed these skills for a variety of reasons, but partially because many of us felt not quite at home in the communities where we grew up, even if we did have supportive and loving families (as I had, even in rural Arkansas). So there may be a disproportionately higher number of LGBTQ+ people in organizations like the State Department, ITA, and the Foreign Agricultural Service. On the customer side, there are many LGBTQ+ owned and -led businesses in the United States who are our clients, particularly in the travel and leisure, design, and other creative industries. As U.S. exports become more service-oriented, knowledge-based and creative, it will be important to engage this dynamic segment of the American economy.

For those in the LGBTQ+ community interested in expanding your business through international sales, please take advantage of ITA’s many low-cost services for U.S. small- and medium-size exporters. Go to Trade.gov and check out the growing number of free market intelligence reports from virtually every major market worldwide where the Commercial Service has offices. Also on trade.gov, find your local U.S. office of the Commercial Service and give our expert colleagues near you a call to explore your options and brainstorm about best prospects.

Posted in Pride Month, Spotlight on Commerce | Comments Off on Spotlight on Pride Month: Jeff Dutton, Commercial Service Officer

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Exploring the Global Economic Recovery from COVID-19

June 15, 2021

Brooke Tenison is an International Economist in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Trade Policy and Analysis; and Susan Xu is an International Economist in the Office of Trade and Economic Policy

This post contains external links. Please review our  external linking policy. 

A heatmap of global GDP growth rates for 2021. Relatively few countries are projected to continue to suffer negative growth rates over the next year. Many countries, especially across Africa and the Middle East, are predicted to see modest growth up to 3 percent. Advanced economies are projected to see mainly between 3 and 5 percent, while a very select few, including China, are projected to show more than 8% growth.
Data Source: IMF World Economic Outlook

Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, the world economy has weathered stop-go rhythms with shutdowns and reopenings, and markets of all shapes and sizes incurring tremendous losses. However, with the arrival of multiple effective vaccines, the world is looking toward recovery, both from an economic and public health perspective.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook released in April 2021, the global economy is projected to recover in 2021 and 2022 with anticipated GDP growth of 6% and 4.4% respectively. This growth, however, is not projected to be shared equally across countries or industries.

As trade economists, we’d like to offer perspectives about how the economic recovery is progressing.

Economic recovery so far is based on three main factors:

  • First and foremost is uneven access to vaccines—each economy’s growth hinges on vaccine availability and efficacy.
  • Second, domestic policies, which vary across countries, significantly impact the pace of economic recovery.
  • Third, the pace of recovery will also depend on country-specific structural factors, particularly reliance on high-contact sectors, such as tourism.

Furthermore, advanced economies and developing countries vary in their capacities to execute short- and long-term recovery strategies. This has a direct impact on their abilities to recover:

  • Advanced economies are projected to recover faster than emerging market and developing economies. Advanced economies had the fiscal space at the beginning of the crisis to implement effective stimulus measures, and many now can quickly roll out vaccines. This bloc tends to have larger work-from-home flexibility in conducting business as they generally have higher technology intensity in the production process and digital infrastructure.
  • Conversely, developing countries historically do not have as much room in their budgets to stimulate their economies, and have not been able to vaccinate their populations as quickly as advanced economies. Lacking access to vaccines effectively places a ceiling on growth, and some estimates project that developing economies will not have widespread access to vaccines for several years. Businesses in developing economies tend to depend more on face-to-face interactions and have fewer work-from-home jobs. In the meantime, developing economies will likely suffer from economic scarring, or long-term effects.

 Recoveries also vary largely by country according to the data in May. In particular:

  • The United States is projected to surpass pre-COVID levels of GDP in 2021 thanks to a rapid vaccine rollout and three rounds of stimulus checks that have kept American consumers spending through the pandemic.
  • The European Union (EU) is expected to recover to pre-COVID GDP levels a bit later, in mid-2022, due to a slow vaccine rollout and dependency on sectors that rely on human contact and interaction, such as tourism, cultural and creative industries. The EU has struggled with a third wave of COVID-19 infections and new lockdowns.
  • In contrast, the United Kingdom (UK) is expected to recover faster than the rest of Europe despite having longer lockdowns than many European countries, one of the deadliest outbreaks in 2020, and complications from Brexit. Its early procurement of vaccines and rapid vaccination drive to deliver the first shot to as many people as possible are key to a quicker recovery. Also important is the UK’s quick fiscal policy response; it was the first major economy to set plans to repair the damage to public finances caused by the pandemic.
  • China has surprised many with the speed of its recovery. The world’s second-largest economy grew 2.3% in 2020—the only major economy to avoid a contraction last year. This growth has continued in 2021 as a rebound in foreign demand has encouraged higher export growth. Partially hit by global chip shortages and international logistics jams, the economy’s strong pandemic bounce-back presents a two-speed track, with strong industrial output and export demand but lagging consumer spending.

Focus on Trade:

As of spring 2021, overall global trade volumes have numerically returned to pre-pandemic levels, but their composition looks different. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global trade began recovering in the third quarter of 2020 and continued through the end of the year. Goods trade led the charge, recovering far more quickly than services. Goods like home office and communications equipment performed remarkably well compared to last year. Services trade, suffering from pandemic-related restrictions as well as consumer hesitation to travel, bottomed out in the second quarter of 2020 and is recovering sluggishly. Travel and tourism is understandably the most impacted services sector (check out NTTO’s dashboard for how this is progressing in the U.S.).

For a U.S. perspective on the recovery in trade, check out ITA’s monthly analysis of U.S. exports, imports, and other vital trade data.

From a global perspective, this crisis will continue to have echo-effects long after the virus is contained. With each passing day we have some more insight into how the virus has affected the global economy. While it is too early to understand the full picture, for now we can see simply that growth has a double ceiling: virus containment and vaccine access. Until the virus is controlled, we will continue on a bumpy, uneven road to recovery.

Posted in Export Data, Industry and Analysis, Trade Data | Comments Off on Exploring the Global Economic Recovery from COVID-19