Re-exports could be excluded from export statistics

American Shipper’s sister publication, the Adam Smith Project, wrote Monday about the dangers of recalibrating trade statistics to suit policy initiatives.    The Trump administration has reportedly asked staffers at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to recalculate export volumes out of the country in a way that excludes so-called re-exports.
   The Wall Street Journal over the weekend reported that career employees in the departments were asked to segregate re-exports from total export data, presumably to widen the U.S. trade imbalance.
   Re-exports are goods that are imported into a country to be transferred to a third country. By one definition, a re-export is a good that is unchanged before being transferred to a third country, while a broader definition of re-exports would include goods that undergo some material change, such as value-added service or finally assembly.
   In any case, the report seems to underline the Trump administration’s goal of stoking growth of the U.S. manufacturing sector by highlighting how much more the United States imports than exports.
   Deleting some or all of the re-export volume from the total export volume would greatly widen the U.S. trade deficit, perhaps providing a platform for the president and Congress to enact anti-import policies.
   According to the report, re-exports account for around 10-15 percent of total exports and a much higher percentage with certain U.S. trade partners. Economists, however, insist that if re-exports are discounted from total export calculations, similar changes would need to be made to import statistical measures for reasons of symmetry.
   American Shipper’s sister publication, the Adam Smith Project, wrote Monday about the dangers of recalibrating trade statistics to suit policy initiatives.