United States reduces its trade deficit

By Carlo Barbieri

The 2019 numbers brought important news to US economic analysts.

For the first time since 2013, there has been a decline in the deficit in its trade balance.

About 1.7% less was this deficit, which reached $ 616.8 billion in 2019, against $ 17.1 billion in 2018, showing the first effects of changing the policy from multilateral to bilateral agreements and stimulating the return to the country of companies established in other countries.

These changes took place in various sectors of the economy, especially automobiles, pharmaceuticals, corn and commercial aircraft, despite the serious problem faced by Boeing.

In the automobile industry, passenger car imports increased by $ 1.9 billion, but exports increased by $ 4.9 billion.

In commercial used vehicles, such as buses, trucks and other special use vehicles, imports increased by $ 4.8 billion, but exports also experienced an increase of $ 1.6 billion.

In the pharmaceutical industry, there has been a huge increase in imports, given the government’s policy of cheapening the cost of medicines for the American population of $ 16 billion, but there has also been an increase in exports of $ 6.3 billion.

The USA with its oil production having reached a level never seen before in the country increased its export by 35.5%, that is, $ 17.1 billion, and the import of crude oil fell by 19.3%, that is, in values, $ 30.3 billion compared to the previous year.

The main importers were South Korea ($ 3.5 billion), the Netherlands (3.0 billion), India ($ 2.1 billion).

The biggest decreases in imports were: Saudi Arabia ($ 10.2 billion) Venezuela ($ 9.0 billion), Iraq ($ 5.0 billion).

If this movement is expected to continue to occur, however, it may be impacted by the Coronavirus.

New agreements are scheduled to take place in the short term and those signed in recent times are expected to start taking effect in 2020.

Brazil and England should be the main bilateral impact agreements in the next 2 years.