United States

Trade

Like most countries, the US imports and exports also plunged, already in two years since its highest gain in 2014 at $2.4 trillion and $1.6 trillion, respectively. As of 2016, imports were down to $2.2 trillion, while exports were at $1.5 trillion. US exported a total of 4,563 products to 223 countries, while it imported 4,558 products from 220 countries.

The countrys imports were comprised largely of consumer goods (37.8 percent) and capital goods (34.5 percent). Intermediate goods were also relatively high at 15.5 percent, while raw materials were only at 8.4 percent. The exports, on the other hand, were largely comprised of capital goods (34.4 percent) and consumer goods (25.5 percent). Intermediate goods and raw materials were only at 19.6 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively.

Machineries and electronics sector (24.0 percent) dominated the exports, followed by miscellaneous (20.0 percent), chemicals (10.6 percent), transportation (9.9 percent), fuels (6.5 percent), vegetable (5.0 percent), plastic or rubber (5.0 percent), stone and glass (4.7 percent), metals (4.4 percent), food products (3.0 percent), wood (2.6 percent), animal (1.8 percent), and textiles and clothing (1.6 percent). The imports were also dominated by machineries and electronics (28.8 percent) at a slightly higher proportion, followed by transportation (14.2 percent), miscellaneous (12.9 percent), chemicals (8.8 percent), fuels (7.3 percent), textiles and clothing (5.1 percent), metals (4.9 percent), stone and glass (3.9 percent), plastic or rubber (3.4 percent), food products (2.8 percent), vegetable (2.3 percent), wood (2.0 percent), footwear (1.4 percent), and animal (1.4 percent).

Given the spatial advantage, Canada (18.4 percent) and Mexico (15.8 percent) were the largest destinations of US products. China (8.0 percent), Japan (4.4 percent), and UK (3.8 percent) were also the major destinations of US products. In contrast, China (21.4 percent) dominated the imports, followed by Mexico (13.2 percent), Canada (12.3 percent), Japan (6.0 percent), and Germany (5.2 percent).

The service imports of US, in terms of BOP, was valued at $503.0 trillion, while services exports were valued at $752.4 trillion.

Investment

The FDI inflows of US declined from $457.1 billion to $275.4 billion in 2017. The FDI stock, however, increased from $6.5 trillion to $7.8 trillion. Most of these investments came from the UK (15.0 percent), Japan (11.3 percent), Luxembourg (11.2 percent), Canada (10.0 percent), the Netherlands (9.6 percent), Switzerland (8.4 percent), Germany (7.9 percent), France (6.8 percent), Cayman Islands (2.3 percent), Ireland (2.3 percent), and Belgium (2.2 percent).

Most of the FDI were invested on manufacturing sector (38.8 percent), financial and insurance activities (25.3 percent), wholesale and retail trade maintenance (13.6 percent), information and communication (5.1 percent), professional, scientific, and technical services (4.8 percent), mining and quarrying (4.4 percent), transport and storage (2.6 percent), administrative and support services activities (1.8 percent), and real estate (1.6 percent).

References:

https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/USA/Year/2016/Summary (Accessed on 31 October 2018)

https://en.portal.santandertrade.com/establish-overseas/united-states/foreign-investment (Accessed on 31 October 2018)