june trade statistics

Our june trade statistics reflect a few key trends:

non-oil domestic exports continue to decrease, driven by a decrease in electronics exports.

oil-domestic exports continue to increase. this is however driven by a valuation effect, as the actual volume of oil exports has decreased. one more reason to be careful about prices, which i will elaborate on when i write my "what is the value of capital" post.

overall exports increased 11%, imports increased 19%

re-exports have grown, reflecting the secular shift from export share to re-export share. this either reflects that my department is doing well or some other macro trend. what could cause this? modelling the effect of high oil prices on supply chains would indeed predict more hubbing and spoking, but also reduce the total volume of exports. so we would have more trade diverted through us (secondary effect) but less trade overall (primary effect). i will elaborate in my "spatial economics" post. you can further test this hypothesis by showing that re-exports are growing within regional markets but exports/re-exports are falling to markets further from us (US, EU, China). This is indeed true, but could also be reflective of poor demand conditions in these markets.