Friday, May 14, 2010

Times They are A-Changing

The WSJ reports (hat tip Dead Cats Bouncing):

John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Investor Service, points out an interesting nugget within the March trade figures, released on Wednesday by the Commerce Department, in a note to clients today. March was “a watershed month,” he says, as “For the first time in recorded history, the moving 12-month sum of $227.6 billion of U.S. merchandise exports to Asia’s emerging market countries surpassed the… $223.7 billion of such exports to the European Union.”

In the year through March, he notes, U.S. merchandise exports to emerging Asia — which includes China, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea plus a handful of smaller nations — rose by 3.7% while shipments to the EU dropped by 13.9%. In other words, U.S. exports to Europe have already been dwindling while Asia has become
an increasingly important destination for U.S. goods. That should help U.S.
companies avoid too much of a hit from euro zone woes.
While my figures don't exactly match those detailed above, the story is the same. The emerging world is becoming a larger and more important partner to the United States by the day, while Europe is moving the other direction (and will continue to do so as long as the Euro continues down its current path).

In fact, one can (and plenty have) argue that the only way for the U.S. to get out of the issues currently faced is through the demand coming out of the emerging world.



Source: Haver

2 comments:

  1. Well, 65 % of the world's population lives in 'Asia'. It's surprising at this date the numbers are so low, which speaks to the per capita poverty and, less so - the dollar peg that exists at least in SE and E Asia.

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  2. I would not make too much out of this graph. Note that, until the past year, exports to Europe were growing impressively over the last decade.

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