The negative effects of the global coronavirus pandemic breaking out in China has begun to become visible in the trade data between the U.S. and China, with the combined value of all goods imported and exported between the two nations plunging in February 2020 by $12 billion below the level recorded a year earlier in February 2019.
That change bucks expectations of a rising volume of trade starting in February 2020 that should have resulted from the signing of the 'Phase 1' trade deal between the U.S. and China in January 2020. In the chart above, we've projected a counterfactual based on the recovery of trade between the U.S. and China following its bottom during the Great Recession as measured by its trailing twelve month average, which should provide a reasonable basis for assessing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on U.S.-China trade.
Over time, the cumulative gap between the trailing year average of trade between the U.S. and China and the counterfactual will provide an indication of the full extent to which trade between the two nations has been affected because of the pandemic and its aftermath. In the first month, the cumulative gap is $16.9 billion, which may be expected to grow considerably in the months ahead.
References
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. China / U.S. Foreign Exchange Rate. G.5 Foreign Exchange Rates. Accessed 2 April 2020.
U.S. Census Bureau. Trade in Goods with China. Accessed 2 April 2020.
Labels: coronavirus, recession, trade
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
ironman at politicalcalculations
Thanks in advance!
Closing values for previous trading day.
This site is primarily powered by:
CSS Validation
RSS Site Feed
JavaScript
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
Blog Roll
