Surprisingly (to me at least), the US is now 3rd in worldwide merchandise exports, as according to the CIA Factbook.
I guess it'd be important to look at the total number for goods and services before we conclude that these numbers are scary, but goods aren't likely to reverse the ordering much -- the US exports way more in merchandise than in services.
This is something the US should do something about. I.e., by getting China to peg its currency at a higher rate, or by having the US Treasury sell debt just to buy foreign government debt, thus weakening the dollar and providing a boost to US exports. Long term, of course, it would be nice to get our fiscal house in order as well, but not until we've got a sustained recovery.
1 European Union $ 1,952,000,000,000 2007 est.
2 China $ 1,194,000,000,000 2009 est.
3 Germany $ 1,187,000,000,000 2009 est.
4 United States $ 994,700,000,000 2009 est.
5 Japan $ 516,300,000,000 2009 est.
6 France $ 456,800,000,000 2009 est.
7 Netherlands $ 397,600,000,000 2009 est.
8 Italy $ 369,000,000,000 2009 est.
9 Korea, South $ 355,100,000,000 2009 est.
10 United Kingdom $ 351,300,000,000 2009 est.
11 Hong Kong $ 326,900,000,000 2009 est.
12 Canada $ 298,500,000,000 2009 est.
13 Belgium $ 296,100,000,000 2009 est.
14 Russia $ 295,600,000,000 2009 est.
15 Singapore $ 245,000,000,000 2009 est.
16 Mexico $ 223,600,000,000 2009 est.
17 Spain $ 215,700,000,000 2009 est.
18 Taiwan $ 198,400,000,000 2009 est.
19 Switzerland $ 190,100,000,000 2009 est.
20 Saudi Arabia $ 180,500,000,000 2009 est.
And notice, we're behind China even counting Hong Kong separately...
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I don't get this list.
ReplyDeleteGermany + France + Italy alone is greater the entire export output of the EU? I know the CIA has intelligence issues, but I didn't think it was THIS bad.
Well, probably more than half of German exports go to the EU, so those wouldnt' count as EU exports... So, the above list is a bit biased in that sense -- the US eats so much of world exports that it is disadvantaged in exporting b/c most of its trade is with itself...
ReplyDeleteAnd so, if we combined China and Hong Kong, the same would happen -- China and Hong Kong's bilateral trade is probably $200 billion, so then adding Hong Kong to China might only add $100 billion to exports...
-TV