On March 8, 2018, US president Donald Trump issued two proclamations to adjust US imports of aluminum and steel from all countries except Canada and Mexico, key regional allies and trade partners. President Trump asserted that a 25 percent tariff on steel “articles” and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum articles are necessary for the US to develop its domestic steel and aluminum industries and to protect and create jobs.
The US government will potentially collect $7.4 billion a year from the new tariffs, according to the definitions specified in the presidential proclamations and data from the United Nations Statistics Division.
The winners and losers among US trading partners vary based on the specific articles.
Steel articles. The top 5 exporters of steel articles to the US are Canada, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Japan, and Brazil, however, article-by-article trade dynamics modify the impact of the tariffs.
Aluminum articles. Canada is also among the top 5 exporters of aluminum articles to the US, joined by China, Russia, the UAE, and Mexico.
First River has provided strategy consulting services to the steel industry and those with an interest in it since 1998. Now, in partnership with Knoema, you can improve your understanding of the steel industry around the world with proprietary steel-industry data and dashboards from First River.
Let Knoema deliver expertly-designed visualizations directly to your inbox.
The concentration index of exports estimates a country’s reliance on a limited group of commodities as its primary source of foreign exchange income. Ranging from 0 (perfect diversification) to 1 (concentrated on a single product)*, a comparison of index scores to the contribution of natural resources to GDP worldwide shows that countries that are resource-rich tend to have less diversified export bases.Last year Iraq’s export concentration index reached 0.97, driven by its export concentration in mineral fuels, namely oil. Other oil exporters—including Angola, Iran, Kuwait, and Nigeria, among others—likewise have high...
Weeks after US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a temporary halt in the US-China trade war, the first positive signs of a return to normal trade relations are emerging. Last week, the China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) and fellow state-run Chinese enterprise Cofco bought more than 1.5 million tons of US soybeans, the first significant deal since the countries agreed to a 90-day truce from December 1, 2018, to March 1, 2019. The announcement caused a spike in soybean futures to $918.5 a bushel, the highest price since June.Soybeans were one of the most significant Chinese imports...
The Syrian Civil War is the largest ongoing military conflict in the world, already claiming a total of at least 167,000 lives* since civil unrest first erupted in March 2011 on the heels of the Arab Spring. Human life is one measure of a wars devastation. Today, we examine the devastation of war from an economic perspective: international trade. The disruption in Syrian trade has already lowered its ranking globally from the 88th largest exporter in 2011 to the 141st in 2015.Syria experienced the world's second largest loss of total foreign trade from 2011 to 2015, with exports decreasing by 88 percent and imports by 72...
In June, US crude oil exports reached historic levels at nearly 2.2 million barrels per day (b/d), a level similar to that of Nigeria and Iran. From 1975 until late 2015, a federal ban on the export of US crude oil severely restricted crude oil exports to all countries except Canada. By lifting the ban, the US Government has transformed the United States into a major exporter of crude oil and a force that is reshaping global oil markets. To date in 2018, the United States has averaged more than 1.7 million b/d of crude oil exports while continuing to import an average of 7.9 million b/d.Although Canada remains an...