Global stock markets had a rude awakening last week when signs that China’s economy is slowing became unmistakable. Not so the astute market observers who have been tracking the trade data on China – or so reports the Wall Street Journal. According to the WSJ, one...
Trade Data on China: US Exports Take a Hit
The Mercosur countries feeling the pinch of China’s economic rebalancing act with its cutbacks in imports (as we wrote yesterday in Mercosur’s Falling Currencies Failing to Lift Exports) are not alone: Any country that counts on China as a customer for its exports is...
Mercosur’s Falling Currencies Failing to Lift Exports
One benefit of a weakening currency should be exports priced to move in the global marketplace. So the slide in value of, for example, Brazil’s real should be translating into rising exports. But that’s not happening in Brazil or other key emerging markets that the...
J.Crew Brought Low by a Cropped Sweater
Tossing aside the Head of Women’s Design for the J.Crew brand and trimming 175 from the payroll, the J.Crew Group last week announced alterations aimed at “critical improvements to our J.Crew women’s assortment including fit, design aesthetic and styling.” As Business...
Esri Story Maps Picture LA-LB Port Slowdown Data
Our partners at Esri have used their GIS (geographic information systems) software to create a series of interactive story maps illustrating the impact of the West Coast ports’ slowdown during the dispute over terms of a new longshoremen’s contract. The old contract...
Asking for More: South Korean Trade with South America
Last month, South Korean President Park Geun-hye wound up a four-nation swing through South America in search of expanded trade and economic cooperation. In Colombia, Park pressed for ratification of the pending free trade agreement (approved by Colombia’s Congress...
Wild Card in Polyethylene Trade: Iran Sanctions
Market watchers trying to factor in Iran’s potential return to global markets in oil, gas and petrochemicals have no choice but to spin many an alternative scenario. Limited sanction relief provided by November 2013’s Geneva Interim Agreement has resulted in limited...
Need to be Nimble: China’s Economy in the Year of Goat
The Year of the Goat (or, by some interpretations, the Year of the Sheep) challenges China’s economy to sustain a steady climb over some rough terrain, at a slower but not too-slow rate (it’s now forecast at 6.8% by the International Monetary Fund). And, all the...
The Shutdown’s Collateral Damage to Trade
by Peter Quinter, guest columnist Even as agreement was being reached to re-open the federal government, the shutdown scored another hit on trade: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on its website and to all registered attendees that it has postponed the...
Follow-up on Shutdown’s Impact on US Imports: New Trade Data
Frankly, we didn’t think the US federal government shutdown would last this long. Anecdotal information is that imports are arriving at US ports and being processed by Customs, but delays in moving shipments out of port facilities are just beginning (see Bloomberg,...