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Did you know that in May 2020 China exported more face masks than cellphones? Are you interested on COVID's impact in international trade? Want to explore these patterns by yourself? Time for a data thread!! (1/N)
(tool at https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer)
(tool at https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer)
To start, let's compare exports by month for all countries for which we have official 2020 data. This shows that China's exports plummeted in February, but rebounded quickly (V-shaped recovery), whereas US and Germany exports did not recover as quickly. /2
We can use the Trend Explorer to normalize this data in multiple ways. For instance, as an index (e.g. relative to exports on Jan 2020) or compared to the same month of last year (to adjust for seasonality).
(tool at https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer) /3
(tool at https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer) /3
Compared to Jan 2020, April looks bleak for most countries, with drops of 30 or 40%. Yet, some countries appear to have done well, such as Brazil and South Africa. We will get to that later. /4
Compared to the same month of last year, the picture is similar but here China stands-out. In August 2020, China is up more than 20% in year-over-year exports. Most other countries are down 10% or more since March or April. /5
But the cool thing about the Trend Explorer ( https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer) is that we can slice the data by detailed products or coarse sectors. For instance if we look at "other cloth articles (aka Face Masks)" we will see that China exported about $14 billion of them in May 2020./6
Is $14 billion in monthly exports a lot? Well, it is more than the monthly crude petroleum exports of Russia or Canada, and it is about how many phones China exports in a month. That's a lot!! /7
In fact, when we look at sectors we see big differences. Some sectors faired well, others did poorly. Brazil did well in soybean exports (which is used mainly as animal feed) & frozen beef. The US, not so much. /8
But most sectors suffered. Let's look at products within the Transportation sector, which includes cars, aircrafts, car parts, etc. Transportation exports declined by as much as 80% in some cases. /9
US aircraft & aircraft parts declined by more than $6 billion in April and May, and are yet to recover. /10
Car exports, a key sector for the US, Spain, Canada, and Japan, also declined by similar amounts. They seem to be recovering now, but the drop was large (about 80% in many cases). /11
In simple terms, we see a pattern, where food related products are doing relatively well, whereas transportation, machinery, and minerals, are doing poorly. /12
Still the reason why at @datwheel we built this tool is to help you explore. After all, there are 5,000+ products in the harmonized system, so the combinations are nearly endless. To explore more, visit https://oec.world/en/trend-explorer
Credit for the tool goes to @felipefigueroal from @datawheel.
