FACT: 38 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings have opened since 2019.

THE NUMBERS: U.S.’ share of the world’s 100 tallest buildings –

2024	14
2020	14
2010	29
2000	47
1990	87
1950	91
1900	38

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

An early architecture critic, the Venerable Rodolf Glaber of the Dijon Abbey, looks back from somewhere around the year 1040 to Europe’s turn-of-the-millennium cathedral boom:

“It was as though the world had shaken herself and cast off her old age, and clothed herself everywhere in a white garment of churches…”

Then this year: Merdeka 118, the pride of Kuala Lumpur, opened January 24 as the world’s second-tallest building and fourth officially “mega-tall”* skyscraper.  At 2,233 feet or 681 meters, and overtopped only by Dubai’s 2,787 foot/870 meters Burj Khalifa, M-118 is the most recent in Asia’s newly built ‘steel-and-glass garment’ of tall buildings.  To be precise, the New York-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat reports that of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, 35 have opened since 2019, and 62 of the top 100 since 2014. Using computer-aided design and new alloys developed in the last generation — twisting facades to minimize wind torque, lightweight alloy cladding to resist heat, and so forth — they have metaphorically put the American skyline a bit in the shade.

U.S. urban skyscrapers using steel-girder-and-curtain-wall technology surpassed Glaber’s stone-on-stone cathedrals as the tallest buildings in the 1920s. As recently as 1990 the U.S. was home to 9 of the world’s top 10 buildings, and 87 of its top 100. The current count is about half Chinese, with the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. a tier down, and eight other mostly East and Southeast Asian countries making up the rest.  A rundown of the Council’s current 100-highest list looks like this:

(1) 46 in mainland China, including five of the top ten. The Shanghai Tower (2015, 2073 feet) joins M-118, Burj Khalifa, and the Makkah Clock Tower in Riyadh as one of four officially-recognized “megatalls” (above 1,968 feet); the 5th-ranked Ping An Tower in Shenzhen (2017) just misses at 1,965 feet.  Five more of the top 100 are in Hong Kong.

(2) 15 in the United Arab Emirates, including top-ranked Burj Kh., with fourteen in Dubai City.  Dubai for the past twenty years has held a lead over New York as the city with the highest ultra-tall count.

(3) 14 in the United States. Eight are in New York, with One World Trade Center seventh in the world at 1,776 feet.  The Empire State Building, open since 1931 and by far the oldest building in the top 100, ranks 53rd. Chicago has five, and Philadelphia has one, the 95th-place Comcast Tower. No other U.S. city has a top-100 building. (LA’s Wilshire Grand ranked 88th when it opened in 2017, but has already dropped to 104th.) By way of comparison, in 1990 17 U.S. cities had at least one of the world’s top 100 buildings, and New York alone had 23.

(4) 20 elsewhere: Five in Malaysia, another five in Russia, three in Korea, two apiece in Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, one each in Vietnam, Kuwait, and Indonesia.

By way of consolation, though the American skyline may no longer tower over its rivals, the U.S. intellectual role in skyscraper design and construction remains very big. Ultra-tall buildings are highly “globalized” efforts; the builders of Merdeka-118, for example, turned to New York-based LERA (Leslie E. Robertson Associates) to oversee its structural engineering, while U.S. firms Fisher Marantz Stone, Barker Mohandas, and CPP handled vertical transport, lighting systems, and wind stress design. (As well as Samsung’s construction wing for the building contract, Australian and Hong Kong architects, and a Finnish elevator company.) Overall, specialized U.S. architecture and engineering firms in Chicago, New York, New England, and California designed or co-designed nine of the ten buildings at the top of the current top 100 list, and five of the ten tallest openings in 2022 and 2023.

FURTHER READING

New York’s Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat lists the world’s 100 tallest buildings in 2024, 2020, 2010, 2000, 1990, and 1980.  The 2025 list, assuming buildings now in the final-construction stage open as planned, will bring on 11 new ones of 1,145 feet and up, and by necessity drop numbers 90-100 off.  On net this means China’s share will rise from 46 to 47.  Dubai will also get another, and Cairo and Istanbul will join.  The U.S., Korea, Malaysia, and Russia will lose one each.

Merdeka 118.

… Samsung Construction explains the concrete — 400,000 tons of it, enough to “cover a football field to a height of 19 stories in one solid block,” and braced by 40,000 km of rebar.

… and structural engineering lead Leslie E. Robertson Associates summarizes design.

Burj Khalifa features 160 floors, a spiral shape to minimize upper-story wind torque, specialized glass, and heat-resistant glazed aluminum/stainless steel cladding on the outer walls.

One World Trade Center (2014) at 1776 feet, ranks seventh worldwide and tops the U.S.

And the current ‘ultimate project’ – LERA, in partnership with Chicago-based Kohn Pederson Fox, has the most ambitious proposal of all: a 5,700-foot “Sky Mile Tower” in Tokyo, twice as high as Burj Khalifa and burying every conceivable competitor.  The “vision” outline of the Sky Mile Tower.

A brief survey of tall-building record-holders and techniques:

Here’s a list of the world’s tallest buildings and their opening dates (or best estimates) if there isn’t a precise one available:

2010:	2,716 feet (Burj Khalifa, UAE)
2004:	1,666 feet (Taipei 101, Taipei)
1998:	1,482 feet (Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur)
1974:	1,450 feet (Sears Tower, Chicago)
1972:	1,368 feet (World Trade Center, New York)
1931:	1,250 feet (Empire State Building, New York)
1930:	1,046 feet (Chrysler Building, New York)
1913:	792 feet (Woolworth Building, New York)
1908:	612 feet (Singer Building, New York)
1901:	548 feet (City Hall, Philadelphia)
1311:	525 feet** (Lincoln Cathedral, UK)
~2550 BC:	481 feet (Great Pyramid, Egypt)

* Not counting free-standing towers like the 555-foot Washington Monument (1884) or the 986-foot Eiffel Tower (1889).
** Estimated including the original spire, which fell down in 1548.

Pyramids & Ziggurats: The 481-foot Great Pyramid outside Cairo held the world’s tallest record for 3,800 years. Not just a lame pile of rocks, the G.P. is a “smart pyramid” with a complex interior network of chambers, tunnels, and ventilation shafts meant for practical, religious, and perhaps astronomical purposes, all pointing to sophisticated though unrecorded architectural drafting and engineering techniques. The slightly younger ziggurats in neighboring Sumer and Akkad were made of brick, a squishier material which meant they couldn’t be as tall, and topped out around 170 feet. The Great Pyramid

Cathedrals: Designed without printing presses, standardized weights and measures, or mathematics beyond flat-plane geometry, cathedrals overtook pyramids in the 14th century.  As of 1900 they still made up all of the world’s top 20; and except for Philadelphia’s 548-foot City Hall (1901) they remain today the world’s tallest stone-on-stone buildings. Glaber on the 1000-AD cathedral boom.

… and the Ulm Munster, tallest existing cathedral.

Skyscrapers: Stone buildings can’t get much above 500 feet, since the weight of the upper tiers will crack the load-bearing pillars and walls beneath. Steel-skeleton buildings with curtain walls designed in Chicago and New York solved the problem. Meanwhile, the Otis hydraulic elevator system settled the 50-story-climb-to-the-top challenge, and architects set aside a few floors for water pumps so penthouse suites and executive offices could get toilets that flush and faucets that spout water rather than sucking air. Here’s the Empire State Building looking ahead to its 2031 centennial.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. economic growth greater than China and the EU combined this year.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. share of world GDP* – 

2024:	26.3%
2020:	25.0%
1980:	25.5%

IMF World Economic Outlook 2024, currency basis

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Two ways to count and divide “all the money in the world”:

One way is to ask: How much money do people make? And where are they making it? The International Monetary Fund’s beloved “World Economic Outlook” database, updated for 2024 last Thursday, reports that “World GDP”, having cleared the $100 trillion mark in 2022, hit $104.79 trillion in 2023 and will likely reach $109.53 trillion this year. (GDP on “currency basis”; see below for an asterisk and the alternative approach.) The WEO is particularly upbeat on the United States, noting that “the U.S. economy has already surged past its pre-pandemic trend” and continues to outpace its peers with a GDP jump from last year’s $27.4 trillion to $28.8 trillion. The U.S.’ projected $1.4 trillion nearly equals the $0.87 trillion the IMF’s forecasters project for China and the $0.67 trillion for the European Union combined.  To put this in less abstract terms, the $1.4 trillion in growth roughly equals (a) the total national output in the Spain/Saudi Arabia/Indonesia tier; or (b) the combined output of the six New England states, from the 1000 biotech firms and the 350 universities through Red Sox/Celtics/Bruins/Patriots merch, lobsters and maple syrup, Freedom Trail and foliage tour receipts, etc..  A table of the IMF’s growth forecasts for 2024:

World Growth 2024:	+$4.74 trillion
United States:	+$1.42 trillion
China:	+$0.87 trillion
European Union:	+$0.65 trillion
Latin America:	+$0.43 trillion
India:	+$0.36 trillion
ASEAN:	+$0.29 trillion
All else:	+$0.62 trillion

Assuming the IMF’s projections are pretty close to reality, this leave with U.S. with 26% of world output – up a point from the 25% share in 2020, and essentially the same as their 25.5% calculation for 1980. (Though still below the 30% reached at the peak of the 1990s boom.)  So, lots of changes this year and over time; but the various ups and downs of the last two generations seem to have left a division of output and income more stable than many might guess.

A second approach would be to ask:  How much money have they got? Credit Suisse, in its most recent “Global Wealth Report” (out last summer, with estimates for the year 2022) thinks there’s about $454 trillion in privately held “wealth” — that is, real estate, stocks, CDs, jewelry, cars, bank accounts, coins and bills, and so on — in the world.  About $140 trillion, or 31% of the total, is in the United States. By comparison, their 2012 report guessed at $241 trillion in world wealth, with $72 trillion or a basically equal 30% in the United States. As with GDP, though Credit Suisse’s reports begin only in 2010, the U.S.’ share looks pretty stable over time, while (as with GDP) the European and Japanese shares have drifted a bit down, and those of China and India up.

FURTHER READING

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook 2024 on global growth, pandemic recovery, risks, and more.

… and has some advice from IMF economists, trying their best to rain at least a little on the U.S.’ parade:

The strong recent performance of the United States reflects robust productivity and employment growth, but also strong demand in an economy that remains overheated. This calls for a cautious and gradual approach to easing by the Federal Reserve. The fiscal stance, out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability, is of particular concern. It raises short-term risks to the disinflation process, as well as longer-term fiscal and financial stability risks for the global economy.

… and the accompanying WEO Database has all the numbers.

And the promised *asterisk*: GDP measurements come in two versions. The “currency basis” method used above, which compares and adds up GDP based on value in U.S. dollars.  The alternative, “purchasing-power parities”, tries to figure the size of economies by assuming comparable prices for comparable goods and local services.

The currency-basis method makes the U.S. look a bit unreasonably strong, as the past year’s rising dollar magnifies the apparent U.S.’ growth relative to other countries.  Extreme cases include Japan and sub-Saharan Africa, where declines in currency value vis-à-vis the dollar produce supposed GDP “declines” of $100 billion in Japan and $34 billion in sub-Saharan Africa. In reality, the IMF guesses Japan’s economy will grow by 0.9%, and Africa’s by 3.8%. Using “purchasing-power parities” yields a less dramatic picture, in which Japan gets $210 billion in growth and Africa $340 billion, and the U.S.’ $1.4 trillion makes up a sixth of all world growth rather than a third.  Still a good year though.

U.S. government perspectives:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the economic outlook at home and worldwide.

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers on U.S. employment and wage patterns.

… and also from CEA, the annual big-picture Economic Report of the President.

More from the WEO:

Some good news: IMF has Ukraine’s economy growing at 3.2%, after 5% in 2023, with Ukraine’s strategic defeat of Russia’s Black Sea fleet reopening grain and manufacturing trade.  The view from Kyiv.

Growth rates by country: The WEO’s growth estimate spectrum, from the four hottest economies to the four most troubled, has Guyana’s energy-driven 34% growth at the top, followed by Palau’s 12.4%, Niger’s 10.4%, and Senegal’s 8.3%; at the less happy pole are Kuwait’s -1.4%, Argentina’s -2.8%, Haiti’s -3.0%, and Sudan’s -4.2%.

Largest economies: The world’s ten largest economies (currency basis) are the U.S. at $28.8 trillion, China at $18.5 trillion, Germany $4.6 trillion, Japan $4.1 trillion, India $3.9 trillion, the U.K. $3.5 trillion, France $3.3 trillion, Brazil and Italy $2.3 trillion each, and Canada $2.2 trillion. Together they sum to $73 trillion, about two-thirds of world GDP. Among this group, India has the fastest-growing economy tiara at 6.8%, with China second at 4.7% and the U.S. third at 2.7%.

And how much is “all the money in the world”?:

Credit Suisse’s privately held “wealth” count doesn’t include the wealth held by governments — navies, buildings, national parks and public lands, state-owned enterprises, and so on. No estimate for this seems to exist, but the World Bank says the public-sector share of GDP worldwide is about 16.5%. This suggests a private-sector-wealth-to-private-sector-GDP ratio of about 5.2 to 1. If the public sector ratio is similar, world “wealth” would be somewhere around $550 trillion. If it’s larger, total wealth might be in sight of the $1 quadrillion mark. Credit Suisse counts wealth.

Or, how much actual cash is hanging around? The Federal Reserve reports about $2.25 trillion in U.S. paper cash, about a third of the $6.5 trillion in worldwide bills and coins reported by the Bank of International Settlements.  The “M2” “broad money” total, including bank accounts and CDs, is more like $21 trillion in the U.S., and based on the World Bank’s calculation of about 143% of world GDP, would be about $150 trillion worldwide. The Federal Reserve counts dollar bills.

… the World Bank matches cash and bank accounts against GDP.

… and the Switzerland-based Bank of International Settlements tallies $6.5 trillion in bills and loose change, and $7.5 trillion in daily currency exchange.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. life expectancy loss during the COVID-19 pandemic: -1 year for college-educated, -4 years for high school diploma or less.

THE NUMBERS: Largest drops in U.S. life expectancy, last 125 years –

1917-1918	-11.8 years
1902-1904	-3.9 years
1942-1943	-2.9 years
2019-2021	-2.4 years

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The first April edition of the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Mortality and Morbidity Weekly is uncharacteristically upbeat. It reports that in 2022, American life expectancy rose by a year and a month, to 77.5 years from the 76.4 years of 2021, pushed u by falling COVID mortality, a two-year drop in homicide rates, and other factors. This jump, though, followed a loss of 2.6 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.0 in 2020 and then 2021’s 76.4. The two-year decline was America’s worst in the 80 years since World War II, and the fourth-worst in CDC’s records going back to 1900.

In international context, American’s overall pandemic life expectancy decline was sharp but not extraordinary. The World Bank reports a 2-year average life expectancy loss across the globe, and the actual difference might be less, since the Bank rounds to full years rather than using the CDC’s tenths.  But nonetheless, the overall U.S. level remains strange, disturbing, and low: Americans get two years less life expectancy than the Bank’s 80-year “high-income country” average, and seven years less than the 84 and 85 reported for Switzerland, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong at the very top of the World Bank’s table. The U.S., meanwhile, is in a group near the top of the Bank’s middle-income bracket, a bit below the 79-year averages for Thailand, Chile, and the United Arab Emirates, and equal to China’s 78.

The temptation is to ask: Why is American life so short?  But this probably puts the question the wrong way.  The single 77.5-year U.S. national life-expectancy average conceals extreme variation — by place, by race and ethnicity, by gender, and by education – with some groups of Americans in the high-income tier, and others with life expectancy more like those of lower-middle income or even least-developed countries.  The COVID-19 pandemic loss likewise was not identical across the country, but magnified for some groups.  In particular, research by Anne Case and Angus Deaton shows that from 2019 to 2021, life expectancy fell by one year for college-educated Americans while plunging by four for their high-school-only neighbors. A more detailed look suggests both reasons for the disparities and the dramatically different effects of the pandemic: pre-existing health patterns and their effects; the lag in regions where state governments have not expanded Medicaid; and the poor crisis-era presidential leadership in 2020. As a point of departure, here’s a table of life expectancies at birth worldwide and in the United States, using the World Bank’s figures for countries and regions and CDC’s for American states and demographic groups:

Asian American women (2022)	86.3 years
Japan (2021, longest country life expectancy)	84 years
Hawaii (2020, longest U.S. state life expectancy)	80.7 years
High-income country average (2021)	80 years
Thailand (2021)	79 years
U.S. (2022)	77.5 years
U.S. (2021)	76.4 years
U.S. (2019)	78.8 years
Mississippi (2020, shortest U.S. state life expectancy)	71.9 years
World (2021)	71 years
Brazil (2021)	71 years
Mexico (2021)	70 years
Native American men (2022)	64.6 years
Haiti (2021)	63 years
Least-developed country average (2021)	62 years
Chad (2021, shortest country life expectancy)	53 years

 

With this in the background, a more precise question might be: Why are the lives of some groups of Americans so much shorter than others? Look closer:

States and regions: The CDC’s most recent state-by-state table covers 2020, a year into the pandemic decline. It reveals a gap of nine years between the lowest- and highest-expectancy states.  At the low end, Mississippi’s 71.9 years and West Virginia’s 72.8 resemble national figures for Peru, Armenia, Bangladesh, and Mexico.  More generally, life expectancies are shortest — 71 to 74 years — across the Deep South and Appalachia, whose international regional matches include the Middle East at 73 years and the Caribbean at 72. Hawaiians, the longest-lived Americans, have life expectancies equal to the 81-year expectancies in Germany and the U.K. Washington, Minnesota, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont are a bit lower, clustered around 79 years.  By region, the longest lifespans – the group between 78 and 81 years in 2020 – are in New England, the West Coast, and the Rocky Mountain West.  This doesn’t match the Japan/Switzerland/Hong Kong tier, but it is close to Western Europe, China, and Taiwan. A policy/social observation: in the regions with the lowest life expectancy, homicide rates are highest and governments are least likely to have expanded Medicaid eligibility.

Race/gender/ethnicity: U.S. life expectancy varies even more widely by race, gender, and ethnicity than by geography.  Dividing the population this way yields a life-expectancy range of 23 years, within sight of the 32-year spectrum dividing the world’s shortest-lived country (Chad at 53) from its longest-lived (Japan at 84). The 11 million Asian-American women now have a life expectancy of 86.3 years, longer than any of the 228 countries and territories in the World Bank’s tables. (But still a shade below the 87 years for women in Japan.)  The 2.5 million Native American men are the shortest-lived group with a life expectancy of 64.6 years — barely above the 64-year average across the UN’s least-developed countries and Haiti’s 63 years, even with a two-year rebound from the 62.2 years in 2021. Between these poles, life expectancy in 2022 was 84.5 for Asian Americans; 80.0 for American Hispanics; 77.5 for non-Hispanic white Americans, mirroring the national average; 72.8 for African Americans; and 67.9 for Native Americans. In each case, women on average outlived men, by four to seven years.

Education level: Finally, using a somewhat different approach — healthy life expectancy at 25, as opposed to at birth — Americans with college degrees can expect nine years more life than Americans with high school diplomas or less. This gap widened sharply during the COVID pandemic, when (measuring from 2019 to the 2021 low), high-education Americans lost one year of life expectancy and non-college Americans four years. Three contributors to this sudden widening of the gap:

(a) Pre-existing vulnerabilities: Pre-COVID risk indicators show that less educated people were more vulnerable to a pandemic to begin with. Obesity and smoking rates, for example, are 36% and 28% among Americans with less than a college education, as opposed to 28% and 6% for college graduates.

(b) More exposed during the pandemic: Differing pandemic-era work patterns left working-class people more exposed.  Workers in many upper-education careers — law firms, financial services, universities, high-level civil service, business managers – were often able to work from home in relative safety.  Blue-collar workers — bus drivers, security guards, janitors, food-manufacturing workers, grocery store stockers and cashiers — by contrast were more likely to work on-site, and so were in greater danger.

(c) Poor presidential leadership: COVID vaccination rates were lower among non-college Americans — a 2023 NIH review shows 79% vaccination rates for college graduates and 49% for high school diploma or less – making infection more dangerous for this group. This suggests that less educated people, in particular, those attracted to “populism,” may have been more susceptible to anti-vaccination propaganda and premature de-masking, and more likely to be misled by Mr. Trump’s erratic and perhaps panicky oscillation between vaccine advocacy and flirtation with pseudo-remedies such as irradiation and animal medicines.

With this in the background, America’s low life expectancy seems less a general national problem than an acute issue concentrated in specific regional and demographic groups, and influenced both by state-level policy and crisis leadership. So reading the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly offers a mix of reassurance about recovery from the pandemic, sadness about poor choices, and longer-term hope that the country’s record can in principle get better.

FURTHER READING

Overall:

CDC’s take on 2022, in the April 4th Mortality and Morbidity Weekly.

And the World Bank’s life expectancy by country/region/world, mostly through 2021.

More detail:

CDC’s report on 2021, from National Vital Statistics’ November 2023 release.

… State-by-state life expectancy from 2018 to 2020.

… and a map of obesity prevalence correlates fairly closely with state life expectancy.

The National Institutes of Health report on vaccination rates, including by education.

Anne Case and Angus Deaton, writing for the Brookings Institution last year, highlight the life expectancies gaps separating college-educated from high-school-only Americans, and the COVID-era plunge for the latter.

Long-term perspective:

The CDC’s figures over the past 125 years show life expectancy at a dismal 47 years in 1900.  (No vaccinations, no blood transfusions in accidents, no antibiotics or anti-inflammatory medicines, infant mortality at 157 deaths per 1,000 births as opposed to today’s 5.5.).  Having risen to 54 by 1916, this crashed back down to 39 in 1918 — easily the worst event in the CDC’s statistical records, reflecting the 126,000 AEF soldiers killed in spring and summer World War I campaigns, and the 675,000 dead in that autumn’s Spanish Flu epidemic. Rebounding in the early 1920s, life expectancy reached 60 years by 1930 and 66 by 1941, then fell back to 63 in 1943. (Meaning the COVID pandemic’s impact was close to that of World War II.) The 70-year mark comes in 1960, after which life gets steadily longer for 50 years — 71 years in 1970, 74 in 1980, 75 in 1990, 77 in 2000, and 79 in 2010.  Then came a plateau till 2019, followed by the 2.4-year drop to 2021 and the 2022 rebound. The CDC’s long view.

And the longest-lived country:

Asahi Shimbun on Japanese life expectancy, also slightly down during the pandemic.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Tariff revenue in FY2023: $80 billion. Reps. Fletcher and Pettersen have some very good questions about who is paying this money.

THE NUMBERS: Tax revenue by source, Fiscal Year 2023* –

Tariff system:	$80.3 billion
Fuel tax for trust fund:	$42.2 billion
Estate and gift tax:	$33.7 billion
Tobacco excise tax:	$10.3 billion
Alcohol excise tax:	$9.5 billion

* Office of Management and Budget

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Who says Congress has no room for creative thinking? For fresh approaches to tired debates? Or for starting a project by seeking reliable facts and data first? Well, a lot of people might say those sorts of things. But here are Representatives Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas, and Chair of the New Democrat Coalition’s Trade Task Force) and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), proving them wrong today as they introduce a bill entitled the “Pink Tariff Study Act”. Their bill directs the Treasury Secretary to review the American tariff system — likely for the first time in 70 years — for gender bias, regressivity, and impact on different types of American households.  Some background and significance of their idea:

Congress has two “trade policy” powers: (1) to “regulate commerce with foreign nations”, and (2) to “lay and impose Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” For nearly a century — since the New Deal-era Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act began America’s series of tariff-reducing and trade-opening agreements in 1934 — arguments over trade and trade policy have revolved mainly around imports, export opportunities, and in general the first power. For the first 150 years of U.S. history, though, it was mostly the opposite, with Congressional debates focused on the tariff system’s role as one of the major federal taxes. Though this aspect of tariff policy hasn’t recently got much attention, tariffs remain one of the seven major federal taxes, and are by no means the smallest. The Office of Management and Budget reports that in the last “Fiscal Year” — October 2023 to September 2024 — CBP officers collected over $80 billion in tariff money, nearly as much as their Treasury colleagues got from all the taxes on inheritances, gasoline, liquor, and tobacco put together.

Who exactly is paying this $80 billion?  Is the division of payment fair?  Has anyone recently looked systematically through the 11,414 tariff lines to see what the rates are?  PPI’s work over the past year has done some of this, noting with dismay that the tariff system taxes women’s clothes more heavily than men’s, taxes cheap stainless steel spoons more than sterling silver, and so on.  Some academic economists have done similar work — three excellent examples below — and independent modelers have examined Trump-era tariffs on metals and Chinese goods.  But Congress and executive branch agencies, whose respective jobs include setting all these thousands of tariff rates and collecting the billions of dollars, haven’t looked in a long time. Congress’ last hearing on this system dates to the early 1970s; the Treasury Department’s last review is of uncertain date but probably during the Eisenhower presidency.

In this sense, the tariff system is like an old tax policy room boarded up decades ago, and not checked since for termites, dry rot, etc. Except that it takes in lots of money: $12 billion on clothes, $3 billion on shoes, $8 billion on electronics, and so on. Extending the metaphor, Reps. Fletcher and Pettersen are asking the Treasury Department to open the windows, air the room out, and look at what’s inside.  Their bill is simple, hopefully non-controversial, and intended to seek information on four questions:

*    Is the tariff system biased by gender, for example with respect to clothing?
*    Is it a regressive tax, falling more heavily on lower-income families than on wealthy households?
*    How does the tax burden it imposes fall by gender, household type, and income level?
*    Are there other ways in which it might impose unequal taxation?

So:  Reps. Fletcher and Pettersen are posing simple and important questions and demonstrating a well-founded concern for fairness and equity in taxation.  And as they do, they are answering cynics with an example of Congressional policymaking which based on values, informed by data and analysis, and meant to do some good.

FURTHER READING

Reps. Fletcher and Pettersen introduce the Pink Tariff Study Act.

And the New Democrat Coalition release explains.

… and for some backstory, the NDC’s Trade Task Force, chaired by Rep. Fletcher, pledges last November to address gender bias and regressivity in the tariff system in their 2023 Trade Agenda.

Tax background:

OMB’s historical tables for spending, tax, and more.

Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis reviews five categories of taxes — income, payroll, corporate income, estate, and a combined “excises and duties” column — for distributional impact.

Tariff system background:

And the U.S. International Trade Commission has the actual, 11,414-line-plus-special-programs U.S. tariff schedule.

PPI’s Elaine Wei and Ed Gresser on the gender bias of U.S. clothing tariffs.

… and the apparently inexplicable, but actually very typical, case of spoon tariffs (with a cameo by Secretary Yellen’s long-ago predecessor, the late Albert Gallatin, explaining in retirement (1833) why tariff systems are more likely than other taxes to evolve toward regressivity).

The University of Wisconsin’s Lydia Cox and Federal Reserve economist Miguel Acosta (February 2024) on the regressivity of tariff policy, its origins, and the potential pro-poor impact of reform.

The ITC’s staff paper (2018) on gender impacts and regressivity.

And Obama-era Council of Economic Advisors eminences Kathryn Russ, Jay Shambaugh, and Jason Furman reach similar conclusions.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: The Port of Baltimore handles 10% of U.S. vehicle trade and 94% of Ethiopian birdseed imports.

THE NUMBERS: Arrivals of Ethiopian “noug” imports, 2023 –

Port of Baltimore:	7,095 tons
Port of New York:	429 tons
All other:	6 tons

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Last week’s destruction of the Key Bridge over the Patapsco River, after the 300-meter container ship Dali lost power and collapsed the main pier, closes the Port of Baltimore except for a temporary channel allowing barges and tugboats to enter and leave. The accident’s direct impact on the city’s economy will pretty certainly be its most important economic effect, and the loss of six construction workers’ lives its central human impact. The event also, though, is a bit of a stress test for American “supply chain resilience,” given Baltimore’s place as a large and especially versatile seaport. Some data, and a small-scale illustration of the way these events can touch people close to home and very far away:

America’s annual maritime commerce flows total, per NOAA, 2.3 billion tons of cargo and a symmetrical $2.3 trillion worth of trade. These big numbers, equivalent to about 8% of GDP and 43% of all U.S. trade flows, are distributed across 208 American ports handling over 250,000 tons of cargo a year. (With some left over for another 100 or so smaller border-crossings.) Baltimore’s 308-year-old port ranks in the top 25 on three different metrics — total cargo flow, dry bulk, and container transits — and handles about 2500 ship calls a year, with 50 million tons of cargo valued at $80 billion. Its particular specialization is automotive trade, with 750,000 annual incoming and outbound vehicles, but like other big ports it manages a very wide spectrum of consumer goods, natural resources, farm products, and more.  As the wrecked Dali continues to block most ship transits, groups accordingly reworking their logistical arrangements range from manufacturers of half the 10,000 tractors Americans sell to Australian farmers and miners each year; to executives in electronics and automotive plants using the port for half of the U.S.’ 10,300 tons of matte cobalt arriving from Norway, Japan, and Madagascar annually; and on to garden-shop operators buying seed for nesting bluebirds and goldfinches this spring. A bit more on this last:

The relevant seed — known as Guizotia abyssinica to botanists, “noug” to Ethiopian farmers, and “niger seed” or the trademarked “Nyjer” for garden supply stores — is a small, thin black seed produced by a bright yellow flowering plant.  Native like coffee to upland Ethiopia, noug has been harvested on the plateau for millennia as a source of cooking oil, with “a nutty flavor and pleasant odour and outraking sesame as Ethiopia’s most widely cultivated oilseed.  About 800,000 upland farmers in Amhara and Oromia grow and harvest 300,000 tons each year.  Biologically, its small size and high oil content make it attractive to popular and brightly colored U.S. songbirds such as the goldfinches and indigo bunting (reasonably but not precisely considered a bluebird*), millions of which will fly in from their winter homes in Mexico and the Caribbean for nesting this week. Hoping to attract them to backyard feeders, American bird enthusiasts purchase about 15,000 tons of noug from garden-shop operators for the past two decades. An Addis Ababa correspondent explains:

“Ethiopia uses the Niger seed for oil extraction for human consumption/cooking oil.  A few years back some traders from Singapore, USA and Europe discovered the availability of this product and started to buy from Ethiopian exporters and ship it to the USA buyers.  These USA buyers are major traders, by number not more than eleven.  They have become the target for whomever wants to sell the Niger seed…  We hear that Niger seed goes to the USA market for bird feed, which really amazes us because we know the product as for human consumption only.”

Exporting firms in Addis Ababa buy it from farmers in the field, sterilize and bag the seeds in 50-kilo sacks, and carry the sacks by truck or (since 2018) by rail to the Djibouti port — Baltimore’s partner in noug trade and the busiest Horn of Africa port. Last year’s exports earned Ethiopia $9.4 million. About 40% of each year’s annual shipments arrive in April and May, and about 94% of it — 7,095 of 7,530 tons last year — crosses Baltimore’s dry bulk dock.  Shippers and garden shops are presumably looking hard for new paths, with their success — like that of their counterparts in autos, electronics industries, coal, metals, and more — one small test of the American economy’s flexibility and “resilience,” as well as something important in its own right for the livelihoods of East African farmers and this spring’s bluebird nesting.

* Ornithologically, the eastern U.S. is home to two bright-blue birds, the indigo bunting and the “bluebird” per se. Male buntings are blue all over and females a more modest brown; among bluebirds, both males and females are blue (though females are more grayish-blue), with a brownish breast. Current population counts estimate about 75 million buntings and 23 million bluebirds.

FURTHER READING

Ports:

The Port of Baltimore.

… Mayor Scott updates Baltimoreans.

NOAA summarizes U.S. port stats.

The Department of Transportation looks at 2024 U.S. port performance.

… focuses in on Port of Baltimore.

… and outlines what’s next in Bipartisan Infrastructure Act port investment.

Wreck:

Ship tracker “Vesselfinder” has basics – size, deadweight tonnage, previous port calls – on the Dali.

Auto industry execs predict that they can manage the port closure without too much trouble.

Noug and Buntings:

The Ethiopian Pulses, Oilseeds, and Spices Processors Exporters Association pitches Ethiopian specialty produce exports.

USDA on the Ethiopian oilseed economy.

Oregon State University explains Ethiopia’s status as one of the world’s eight “Vavilov Centers”, with especially diverse crops.

NIH evaluates noug and its nutritional benefit.

The Audubon Society explains its appeal to birds.

… and updates you on the relatively healthy indigo bunting population.

And the Port Authority of Djibouti, including a look at the 2018 opening of a rail link to Addis financed by the Djibouti and Ethiopian governments and the Chinese Ex-Im Bank.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

FACT: Trump campaign proposes the highest U.S. tariff since 1937.

THE NUMBERS: U.S.’ “trade-weighted average tariff”* –

2022	2.8%
2016	1.5%
1990	3.3%
1960	7.2%
1937	15.6%

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The 2024 election’s core questions are more basic than policy choices. Such as: Can a person who has attempted to overthrow a settled election and called for “termination” of unspecified parts of the Constitution live up to an oath to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”? Or: Does the American public endorse a campaign based, as PPI’s President Will Marshall memorably put it last week, on “slandering America as a chaotic hellscape only he can rule”? But this point made, policy choices still have consequences. So here’s one:

The Trump campaign proposes to create a 10% worldwide tariff and a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, probably through a sort of decree. What should we expect from this? A bit of a historic perspective, then a pretty definite result, a very unlikely rationale, and a worst-case scenario:

Context: Highest Tariff Rate Since the Depression: The U.S. International Trade Commission records U.S. trade-weighted tariff averages — that is, “revenue from tariffs divided by goods import value” — going back 134 years, to 1890 and the administration of Pres. Benjamin Harrison. Their most recent figure, for 2022, has $91 billion in tariff revenue and $3.23 trillion in imports for a 2.8% average. This is about twice the 1.2% to 1.5% range before the Trump administration’s “301” and “232” tariffs, imposed in 2018 and 2019. Earlier rates rise steadily as time flows backward, from 3.3% in 1990 to 7.2% in 1960 and higher further back, to a peak of 19.8% in 1933 as Herbert Hoover left office.  Rates began to decline as the Roosevelt administration cut tariffs through its Reciprocal Trade Agreements program, to averages of 16.8% in 1936 and 15.6% in 1937. Assuming the campaign’s 10% is (a) added on top of the existing tariff system rather than replacing it, and (b) that its 60% China tariff wouldn’t entirely wipe out U.S.-China trade but leave some continuing under very high taxation, the resulting rate would likely be somewhere around 15%. This would be the highest rate since sometime in the late 1930s.

1. Will Happen: Shift of Taxation Toward Goods-Buyers: One result is very clear. Tariffs are taxes on physical goods brought in from overseas and collected at the border. Tariff-payers are American companies and individuals who buy them. This means a U.S. tax system that relies more heavily on tariffs — in particular if, as campaign literature has suggested, they are used to “offset” revenue losses from lower taxes on corporate and individual incomes — would shift some of the tax burdens. Industries that earn money through financial transactions (e.g. real estate, law firms, financial services) would pay less, while families shopping for goods and businesses that buy and sell goods or use them to make things (e.g. retailers, manufacturers, restaurants, building contractors, repair shops, and farmers) would pay more. This latter effect is magnified, since tariffs generally enable competing local producers to raise their own prices as well.

2. Not Likely to Happen: Policy Rationale Unsupported by Experience: What is the purpose?  Essays by former Trump trade officials Peter Navarro in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy book in 2023 and Robert Lighthizer in the Economist this past February, assert that higher tariffs would do two things: first, raise manufacturing output and employment, and second, reduce U.S. trade deficits. Both individuals argued for Trump’s 2018 tariffs on the same grounds.  Their hopes did not materialize. To the contrary, with these policies in place manufacturing shrank as a share of GDP, factory employment growth slowed, and trade deficits grew sharply. Here are some data:

a. U.S. manufacturing sector share of GDP: Manufacturing, having been 10.9% of U.S. GDP in 2018, was down to 10.3% in 2021 and likely 10.2% in 2023 pending a final determination by the Bureau of Economic Analysis later this year.

b. U.S. manufacturing employment:  Manufacturing job growth averaged 103,000 net new jobs per year in the last five years of the Obama administration, and about half that — 54,000 per year — in the five years since 2018.  Note of course a large upheaval in 2020-21 during the Covid pandemic and recovery — a big employment drop in 2020, a big jump in 2021 — so the post-2018 average has some question marks around it.

c. Trade balance: The overall U.S. goods/services trade balance was $479 billion in deficit in 2016.  This deficit rose steadily throughout the Trump administration (again with a temporary downturn during the COVID pandemic) to $842 billion in 2021 and $951 billion in 2022 before dropping last year to $773 billion. The manufacturing deficit specifically rose from $0.65 trillion in 2016 to $1.1 trillion in 2022, then $1.05 trillion last year.

3. And a worst-case scenario: In sum, the proposal is to restore late Depression-era trade policy, and shift some taxation away from financialized sectors and upper-income services industries to households and goods-producing or goods-using sectors, in the probably unrealistic hope this would push investment and hiring into manufacturing. To speculate about likely economy-wide results:

Depression-like trade policies need not bring Depression-type outcomes. Modern economic historians tend to view 1930s tariffs as making the Depression somewhat deeper and longer, but root its main causes in other ill-starred ideas: central bank passivity in crisis, refusal to rescue failing banks and lack of deposit insurance, unambitious fiscal policy in the early years, international currency conflicts amplified by the gold standard. With this as a guide, a UK-post-Brexit-like result, with somewhat slower growth and somewhat higher inflation, may be the most likely “macro” outcome of a big tariff increase.  Those interested in really dire forecasts, though, can turn to a very well-placed observer on the spot in 1936. Here’s then-President Roosevelt at the “Inter-American Conference on the Maintenance of Peace” in Buenos Aires, reminding us that even if policy choices are not this November’s core questions, they can still matter a lot:

“[T]he welfare and prosperity of each of our Nations depend in large part on the benefits derived from commerce among ourselves and with other Nations, for our present civilization rests on the basis of an international exchange of commodities. Every Nation of the world has felt the evil effects of recent efforts to erect trade barriers of every known kind. Every individual citizen has suffered from them. It is no accident that the Nations which have carried this process farthest are those which proclaim most loudly that they require war as an instrument of their policy. It is no accident that attempts to be self-sufficient have led to failing standards for their people and to ever-increasing loss of the democratic ideals in a mad race to pile armament on armament. It is no accident that, because of these suicidal policies and the suffering attending them, many of their people have come to believe with despair that the price of war seems less than the price of peace.

“This state of affairs we must refuse to accept with every instinct of defense, with every exhortation of enthusiastic hope, with every use of mind and skill.  I cannot refrain here from reiterating my gratification that in this, as in so many other achievements, the American Republics have given a salutary example to the world. The resolution adopted at the Inter-American Conference at Montevideo endorsing the principles of liberal trade policies has shone forth like a beacon in the storm of economic madness which has been sweeping over the entire world during these later years. Truly, if the principles there embodied find still wider application in your deliberations, it will be a notable contribution to the cause of peace.”

FURTHER READING

The U.S. International Trade Commission’s record of U.S. imports, revenue, tariff rates (more precisely, “ad valorem equivalent” rates), etc. from 1890-2022.

Trump campaign tariff primary sources:

Navarro in Heritage’s “Project 2025” (Chapter 26).

Lighthizer in the Economist (subs. req.).

Tariffs and the Depression:

FDR in Buenos Aires.

Contemporary Dartmouth economic historian Douglas Irwin looks back at President Hoover, Sen. Smoot & Rep. Hawley, and the Tariff Act of 1930.

And Charles Kindleberger’s classic on the worldwide Depression economy.

And some statistics:

Trade balance: Both Amb. Lighthizer and Dr. Navarro emphasize trade balance, especially in manufacturing, as a rationale for higher tariffs.  Here are the relevant export/import/balance figures for 2016, 2021, and 2023, in total and for manufacturing (NAICS basis) specifically:

All Goods and Services Trade	Exports	Imports	Balance
2023	$3.054 trillion –	$3.827 trillion =	-$773 billion
2021	$3.409 trillion –	$2.567 trillion =	-$842 billion
2016	$2.241 trillion –	$2.720 trillion =	-$480 billion
Manufacturing Only
2023	$1.600 trillion –	$2.674 trillion =	-$1.074 trillion
2021	$1.403 trillion –	$2.459 trillion =	-$1.056 trillion
2016	$1.264 trillion –	$1.911 trillion =	-$647 billion

U.S. monthly trade data from the Census.

…  and for the big picture, the Census has U.S. exports, imports, and balances from 1960 to 2023 on one convenient page.

Manufacturing and GDP: BEA’s ‘GDP by Industry’ data series (to be updated a week from Thursday with an initial estimate for full-year 2023), has U.S. output and GDP shares for manufacturing, information, real estate and finance, mining and forestry, agriculture, etc. Try the second table in the Interactive Data Tables for GDP shares.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. carbon emissions fell by 190 million tons in 2023.

THE NUMBERS: Energy-related carbon emissions, 2023* –

World total:	37.8 billion tons
Change by country
China:	+565 million tons
India:	+190 million tons
World:	+410 million tons
Japan:	-100 million tons
United States:	-190 million tons
European Union:	-220 million tons

*International Energy Agency, 2024

WHAT THEY MEAN:

As the Biden administration’s energy and climate officials think through January’s “pause” on capacity expansion for the U.S.’ $34 billion in liquefied natural gas exports, some data on emissions trends and their causes:

Statisticians at the International Energy Agency calculate carbon emissions each year. This month they came in with a figure of 37.8 billion tons from energy production in 2023, up 410 million tons from their 37.4 billion ton estimate for 2022.  In a longer-term perspective, these figures compare to 0.2 billion tons in 1850 as Victorian steam, gears, and airships took off; to 6 billion tons in 1950 as the world recovered from the Second World War, and to 25 billion tons in 2000 at the millennium.  So, quite a lot of carbon, and a world a bit further away from “net zero” than it was in 2022. But beneath this overall rise, IEA’s experts reveal intriguing shifts, especially in wealthy countries, and perhaps a sense that change is coming:

“Advanced economy GDP grew 1.7% but emissions fell 4.5%, a record decline outside of a recessionary period. Having fallen by 520 Mt in 2023, emissions [in these ‘advanced’ economies] are now back to their level of fifty years ago. Advanced economy coal demand, driven by evolutions in the G7, is back to the level of around 1900. The 2023 decline in advanced economy emissions was caused by a combination of structural and cyclical factors, including strong renewables deployment, coal-to-gas switching in the US, but also weaker industrial production in some countries, and milder weather.”

The 41 “advanced economies” in IEA’s report are the U.S., Canada, the 27 EU members, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Israel, Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and Macau, plus a few micro-states like the Vatican and Andorra. Together, the International Monetary Fund says they produce about 60% of world GDP ($60.9 trillion of 2023’s $104.5 trillion). Their 11.0 billion tons of carbon emissions, however, made up less than a third of the world total, and according to the IEA as a group they are back down to the emissions levels of 1973. Moreover, their 550-million-ton aggregate drop in emissions in 2023 came not during a recession or pandemic, but in a year of reasonably strong growth, which suggests a systemic reduction of emissions across the wealthy world rather than a cyclical blip.

The U.S. is a case in point. IEA estimates American emissions at 4.6 billion tons, a decline of 25% from the 6.1 billion-ton peak twenty years ago, and of 190 million tons from 2022’s 4.8 billion.  Per IEA, the largest part of the U.S.’ 2023 decline — 80 million tons, or about 40% of the total reduction — came not from falling output or changeable weather and hydro issues, but from switching from coal-powered electricity to natural gas.

What does this imply elsewhere? Worldwide, by source IEA believes that (on net) 270 million of last year’s 410 million tons of emissions growth, about two-thirds of the total, came from additional burning of coal for power.  Looked at by place, ‘developing Asia’ now produces half of all world carbon emissions, topped by China at 12.6 billion and then India at 3.5 billion; Chinese emissions grew by 565 million tons and India’s by 190 million tons last year.  Here too, at least in China, data suggest ways to reduce emissions.  China’s “emissions intensity” — the amount of carbon released per dollar of economic output — is down from 0.8 kilos of CO2 in 2013 to 0.5 kilos as of 2020 (the date of the last available estimate), which across China’s $18 trillion economy represents a savings of about five billion tons of carbon a year. Both these countries, and “developing Asia” generally, continue to rely heavily on coal-burning, making Asian coal power the largest “driver” of worldwide emissions growth.  IEA’s report therefore underlines the very large Asian opportunity (noted by PPI’s Paul Bledsoe in an August 2022 report) to cut world emissions by substituting gas, nuclear power, and renewables for Asian coal burning.

In sum, reducing emissions is a big task but not a hopeless one. The advanced economies that make up most of the world economy are now visibly succeeding, having (a) cut emissions substantially over the past five years, (b) done so last year during a period of economic growth, and (c) not by impoverishing themselves but through efficiency, switches from dirtier to cleaner fuels, and technological innovation. The large middle-income countries that are now the largest emissions sources can very much do the same. Where infrastructure allows, low-methane natural gas has a significant and useful part in this.

FURTHER READING

The International Energy Agency reports on carbon emissions in 2023 (executive summary with a link to full text).

Policy:

The White House’s “pause.”

PPI analysis & commentary:

Former Congressman Tim Ryan doesn’t mince words on this.

PPI energy and climate expert Elan Sykes outlines a path forward.

… and comments on Department of Energy policy developments.

Background and data:

NOAA summarizes worldwide surface temperature change since 1880.

Our World in Data tracks emissions by country, industry sector, etc.

And the Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2023 looks ahead with projections by region and major country through 2050.

And some trade statistics:

Apart from the energy and climate side of gas debates, how large is LNG trade?  Having overtaken Russia and Saudi Arabia in 2021, the U.S. is the world’s largest energy exporter.  Depending on how you split things up, energy has a case for “top U.S. export” at $323 billion last year, which is about 15% of the U.S.’ $3.05 trillion in total goods and services exports. LNG makes up $34 billion of it. A table putting all this in context with some comparisons:

Total U.S. goods and services exports	$3.053 trillion
All goods put together	$2.051 trillion
All manufacturing	$1.600 trillion
Automotive (vehicles & parts)	$137 billion
Aircraft & parts	$113 billion
Pharmaceuticals & medicines	$108 billion
Integrated circuits	$44 billion
Medical devices	$36 billion
All services	$1.003 trillion
Intellectual property revenue	$126 billion
Student tuition	$40 billion
All energy	$323 billion
Liquefied natural gas	$34 billion
All agriculture	$175 billion
Soybeans	$28 billion

 

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Half of the world’s 3.51 billion workers don’t have regular pay or labor law protections.

THE NUMBERS: World labor force, 2024* –

Total labor force	3.70 billion
Employed	3.51 billion
Working for wages and salaries	1,780 million
“Self-employed”*	1,625 million
“Formal sector” workers with wage, inspection, & other rules:	1,660 million
“Informal” sector workers without these protections:	2,030 million

 

* Estimates from International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2024.
* The ILO’s term “self-employed” includes business owners, but also includes “own-account” workers such as day laborers, and “contributing family workers” working in small family businesses or farms without pay. The ILO views these two latter groups as comprised of workers who are “least likely to have formal work arrangements, [and] least likely to have social protection and safety nets to guard against economic shocks.”

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The International Labour Organization’s “World Employment and Social Outlook 2024,” out last January, says the world’s workforce has grown by 26 million this year and now totals 3.70 billion people. Subtracting the 191 million people currently unemployed, this means 3.51 billion people go to work daily in factories, on farms, in labs and offices, at home, in restaurants and hotels, and so forth. One perspective on them all, drawn from the ILO’s data, raises some uneasy questions about an ambitious new American “global labor” policy.

The ILO figures divide the world’s employed workers pretty clearly into two groups of about equal size. Those in the first group, about 1.7 billion people, work at “okay-to-good jobs” which feature regularly paid wages or salaries, and legal protections for health and safety, labor rights at work, minimum wages, and holidays.  Those in the second group have “pretty-bad-to-terrible jobs.” They earn money essentially through paid piecework rather than regular wages or salaries, and as workers holding “informal sector” jobs lack their peers’ legal protection for wages, health, and rights. (For a sense of where they work, earlier ILO research – 2019 – reports the highest rates of “informality” at 92% of all farm workers, 84% of domestic service workers such as maids and nannies, 74% of construction workers, 61% of accommodation and food service workers, and 60% of repair shops employees.) This second tier also features the vast majority of the world’s very worst jobs — that is, those involving abuses such as the world’s 160 million child laborers, and the 241 million extreme-working-poverty jobs paying $2.15 a day or less.

A “global labor” policy meant to fundamentally improve working life should try to help people in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” second group get into the “okay-to-good” group. The most likely way to do this on a large scale is to help low- and middle-income countries improve labor laws and develop the professional civil services needed to implement these laws throughout their economies, and so change working life for very large numbers of people.

Now to the new policy: Last November, the White House launched a global labor standards strategy, explained in a 3,444-word “Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally” along with supporting speeches and press releases. The Memorandum sets out a many-tiered array of policies and agency responsibilities to support worker rights abroad, fight child labor and forced labor, improve health and safety standards, and so forth.  In principle its policies cover the entire 3.7 billion world labor force.  But in practice the Memo’s content — and even more so the releases describing implementation plans — seem (a) to place workers in global “supply chains” employed by large international businesses at the center of policy, and (b) to focus on enforcement against ill-doers rather than on efforts to help workers move from bad to better jobs.  Here for example is Julie Su, Acting Secretary of Labor, describing the DoL’s view of its responsibilities at the Memorandum’s November launch event:

“[C]orporations are global. So workers, and worker power, and the way we think about workers have to be global, as well.  …  When global actors are allowed to evade labor laws in one country by exploiting workers in another part of the world, this undermines workers’ rights everywhere.  And when workers are harassed, discriminated against, and attacked as they produce things that are sold all around the world, we cannot simply look away and ignore the ways that our global economy brings with it global responsibility. … The Department of Labor is also expanding its work to combat forced labor and improve transparency and accountability from the top to the bottom of global supply chains.”

It’s certainly good for people and officials in rich countries to think about the lives of factory and logistics workers, and to find ways to reduce abuses in supply chains. But if these are the core focuses, policy is very likely to miss most of the workers in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” jobs group. The 2023 edition of the “World Employment and Social Outlook” report, for example, drew on a study of 24 middle-income countries to conclude that workers in “global supply chains” (or at least those supply chains ultimately linked to wealthy countries) are more likely than their peers in purely domestic jobs to work in the “okay-to-good-jobs” group with regular pay and legal protection:

“[S]ectors with higher GSC [“global supply-chain”] integration tend to have a larger share of wage and salaries employment, a lower incidence of informality and a lower proportion of low-paid employment — and hence in principle a higher quality of employment.”

The implication is that while it’s easier for policymakers to focus on supply-chain workers connected to the wealthy world than on the “informal” sector maids, day laborers, and farm workers who are less visible to American eyes, the latter group is (on average, based on ILO’s finding) in worse straits and would often improve their lives by getting supply-chain jobs.  Likewise, it’s perhaps natural to think first about ‘enforcement’ on individual cases and only later about less glamorous but more systematic efforts to help improve laws and build professional civil service bureaucracies.  But the latter task is the main one, if the goal is to make labor standards meaningful for entire workforces.  If the next years’ policies are supply-chain and enforcement issues, then, the Memorandum’s achievements will be limited.  In some cases – if enforcement in supply chains is such a priority as to slow the flow of workers from “pretty-bad-to-terrible” work into “okay-to-good” supply-chain jobs, or in some cases even push workers out of these jobs altogether — they could have perverse as well as good effects. (See below for a sad 2014 example.)  So: probably time for some rethinking, some revisions, and a broader approach.

FURTHER READING

FACT: Americans buy 11 tons of Ukrainian honey daily.

THE NUMBERS: Sample U.S. imports from Ukraine, 2023 –

Sunflower oil	31,262 tons
Honey	4,075 tons
Apple juice	123 million liters
Hockey sticks	173,000
Electric coffeemakers	176,000
Pig iron	1.1 million tons

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s Jonathan Swift praising bees three centuries back: “We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.” And here’s Alisa Koverda, translator and apiary expert at the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry, writing in the autumn of 2022:

“Ukraine’s honey business is one of the largest in the world. Sadly, as a result of the war, dozens of apiaries and beehives are being destroyed every week. In some cases, beekeepers are able to get some financial support from the government, but it is not enough. Yet, the beekeepers remain optimistic. They share everything they have: their honey, knowledge and optimistic spirit.”

Peacetime Ukraine is the world’s second-largest honey producer, home according to her article to 220,000 commercial beekeepers with 2.3 million colonies, and probably another 200,000 part-time unregistered part-timers. They sold 58,000 tons of honey abroad in 2021.  Their top customers were neighboring Poles and Germans; Americans ranked third at 5,953 tons, making Ukraine the fifth-largest U.S. overseas honey source.

Pulling back a bit, pre-war Ukraine’s exports combined a large agricultural trade, centered on wheat — the blue and yellow flag represents the sky and a grain field — sunflower oil and seeds, honey, and processed foods such as apple juice with heavy-industry products led by iron and steel. Altogether this made up about a third of Ukrainian GDP, or $68 billion of a $200 billion as of 2021.

Three years later, exporting is more important still — together with aid and remittances, foreign customers are Ukraine’s main source of hard currency, helping to finance the war effort, keep local fire and police services functioning, and supporting the living standards of civilian workers and families.  Markets abroad, though, are obviously now harder to reach.  Grains, metals, and vegetable oils are bulky and heavy goods requiring sophisticated logistics and safe sea lanes to move, but Ukraine’s eastern seaports are occupied, and the Dnipro river ports near the front are free but blocked. The national export total accordingly fell from 2021’s $68 billion to $44 billion in 2022, and continued to drop through the middle of 2023. Nonetheless, through military successes, logistical innovation, help from allies, and inventive diplomacy, Ukraine’s trade absorbed the shock, began a rebound in the second half of 2023, and is now rising again.

At the core of this revival is a remarkable naval achievement. Without capital ships of its own, Ukraine has used drones, missiles, and intelligence to sink a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet’s 75 ships – the most recent example yesterday, the three-year-old 1600-ton patrol cruiser Sergey Kotov – and forced the rest to shelter out of range in the east. This has opened a “grain corridor” near the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts, allowing 23 million tons of exports to flow out of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdennyi in the second half of 2023. In February 2024, the Kyiv Independent reports 8 million tons. To the northwest, meanwhile, support from the European Union and aid programs run by the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development have helped redirect some of Ukraine’s outbound trade through new road crossings and Danube river ports via Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. The Economy Ministry’s creative diplomacy, meanwhile, has worked out a waiver of Trump-era steel tariffs with the Biden administration, negotiated a free trade agreement with southern neighbor Turkiye, and used WTO rights and rules to battle occasional grain blockages at western-border transit points.

Altogether, having stabilized in 2023, Ukraine’s trade is now rising, with IMF projections suggesting 11% export growth this year, supporting in turn national GDP growth of 3.2%.  U.S. Census figures on arriving goods provide a set of human-scale examples. Some products — sunflower seeds and steel, for example – remain sharply down.  Apple juice and sunflower oil shipments, on the other hand, are now above their 2021 levels and accompanied by a steady flow of light manufactured goods: 176,000 electric coffeemakers, 132,500 pairs of skis (fourth in the world, behind Austria, China, and Bulgaria), 19,600 archery sets, and 173,000 hockey sticks (third, following China and Mexico).

Honey, too, is holding up, justifying the ‘optimistic spirit’ of late 2022.  Over the course of 2023, the U.S. Census reports 4,075 tons arriving (mainly in USDA’s ‘extra light amber’ grade), valued at $11 million. December’s arrivals included 74 tons in Chicago, 38 tons in Philadelphia, and 15 tons in New York. So in the third year of war, Ms. Koverda’s beekeepers continue to provide some sweetness and light to both overseas customers and locals, and along with these things an an example of resilience and hope.

FURTHER READING

From PPI:

PPI’s New Ukraine Project, directed by Kyiv-based Tamar Jacoby, has in-depth research and regular reporting on Ukrainian daily life, public mood, economic policy and anti-corruption progress, and more.

Budget and tax expert Ben Ritz explains the low cost, and high return, of military aid to Ukraine.

Diplomacy and policy:

The Ukrainian Embassy to the U.S.

Ukraine’s Commerce Ministry.

USAID’s agricultural support programs.

48 WTO delegations on economic and trade support for Ukraine.

View from the European Union.

Black Sea: 

English-language Kyiv Independent reports on the Black Sea grain corridor.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Ukraine’s naval success and the retreat of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

… and follows up with yesterday’s sinking of the Sergey Kotov.

And Logistics Cluster reviews the status of Ukraine’s ports.

“Sweetness and light”:

Agricultural specialist and translator Alisa Koverda explains Ukraine’s beekeeping culture and wartime adaptation.

… and Фундація Жінок Пасічниць (Fundatsiya Zhinok Pasichnish’ for non-Cyrillic readers; translated, Foundation of Women Beekeepers), with honey contacts and beekeeping tips.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: African American owned businesses export over $1 billion worth of goods per year.

THE NUMBERS: African American owned exporting businesses* –

2021	1,139 exporters, $1.12 billion in exports
2020	1,001 exporters, $1.10 billion in exports
2019	1,514 exporters, $0.81 billion in exports
2018	1,400 exporters, $0.83 billion in exports
2017	1,200 exporters, $0.62 billion in exports

* Census/BEA, most recent data available

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s President Biden a week before Christmas, talking up Milwaukee’s African American business community:

“Black small businesses with the talent, integrity, and ingenuity are the engines and the glue that hold communities together. … You’re the ones that sponsor the Little League teams. You’re the one that spon- — involved in the church events.  You’re the ones that hold the community together, and you keep it going.  You keep it moving. And every new business opening is a — is a vote for hope — just hope.  Hope.  You know, you’re making the American economy stronger and our nation more competitive.”

Biden’s enthusiastic remarks go on to report a lot of good news: the fastest growth in African American business formation since the 1990s; a doubling in the “share of Black households owning a business,” and a 60% rise in household wealth since 2019. Underneath these data are many stories — some of community collaboration, some of individual enterprise and inspiration, many of hard work, some of policy, many with some of each. Here’s one of the latter, in U.S. trade agencies’ effort to support African American exporting firms as they recover from a calamity:

Background: Each year since 2017, the Census and the Bureau of Economic Analysis have published a statistical picture of American exporting businesses. These include counts by size, race/ethnicity/gender of the owners, top markets and export earnings, employment, and payroll. These reports are labor-intensive projects requiring lots of detail work, and their data usually trail real-world events by three years. But they offer the most detailed description of exporting communities available anywhere in the world. The 2019 survey reports, for example, 1,514 African-American businesses selling over $800 million worth of goods to 60 countries — $43 million to China, $12 million to Ghana, $111 million to Canada, and so on. These (like exporters generally) are generally good employers. In 2021, they averaged 21 workers apiece, at a payroll of $64,600 per worker, whereas across the full list of ‘classifiable’ U.S. businesses — i.e., all privately-owned U.S. firms whose owners the Census and BEA could identify, exporters or not — the comparable averages were 11 workers at a payroll of $54,520 per employee.

COVID Impact: As we noted last summer, the COVID-19 pandemic hit this community very hard. By 2020, the Census/BEA count had fallen from 1,501 to 1,014 exporters — a 34% drop, seven times the 5% loss among all exporters, and well above the 8% of white-owned exporters and the 6% of Hispanic exporters. This is consistent with broader experience, as (for example) Federal Reserve economists reported that African American businesses closed at much higher rates than average in the spring of 2020. A closer look finds the number of medium-sized and large exporters — defined as businesses employing 100 workers or more — pretty stable; Census and BEA report 47 to 49 such businesses in 2019, 2020, and 2021, with exports between $200 million and $400 million per year.  Though there are some gaps in the data among smaller firms, the drop in their exporter total appears to be concentrated in small firms with fewer than 20 workers each.

Policy Since: Over the past three years, the government’s trade bureaucracy — Biden’s political appointees and civil servants at Secretary Raimondo’s Commerce Department, Reta Lewis’ Ex-Im Bank, and other agencies; career loan officers and regional export promotion specialists at 107 Commerce Department sites around the United States, U.S. Commercial Services officers at 146 overseas missions — have been trying to help the community repair the damage. A quick snapshot of one:

The Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration’s Global Diversity Export Initiative creates an array of support programs ranging from webinars to high-level overseas missions: an on-line training session last Thursday for African-American businesses on opportunities and frequent challenges overseas; a South Africa mission for personal-care product manufactures this spring; eight “Bridges to Global Markets” events around the country for diverse companies hoping to find foreign customers this year, in the Mississippi Delta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and other sites. Here’s GDEI lead Terri Batch, enthusiastically looking back at last year’s National Black Business Summit:

“We met with Black business owners from every corner of the country to promote ITA’s resources to support Black entrepreneurs – particularly those who haven’t previously engaged in international trade – discover new international markets for their products and services. During this event, I had the opportunity to moderate a Pan African Diaspora lunch panel that featured the services of the U.S. Commercial Service, Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Agency (USPTO), as well as entrepreneur and founder of Eminent Future, Isaac Barnes. This dynamic panel offered practical advice and support for black businesses pursuing business opportunities in Africa and beyond. Throughout the conference, we were also joined by speakers from other federal agencies including U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Prosper Africa. This whole-of-government approach to provide support for black-owned businesses to grow and scale into international markets is essential to carry out an inclusive and equitable economic agenda.”

And here are her Milwaukee colleagues, at work today a few miles west of Biden’s speech site and trying to help.  The data from BEA and Census are so far available only for 2021. But they do show an early rebound from the 1,001 exporters of 2020 to 1,139, and pretty substantial export growth, from the pre-Covid $806 million to more than $1 billion in 2021. All helping to underline and vindicate Biden’s Christmastime enthusiasm.

FURTHER READING

Biden in Milwaukee.

And his hosts at the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce.

Government and policy:

The Commerce Department’s Global Diversity Export Initiative.

… DoC Assistant Secretary Arun Venkataraman explains the GDEI in Houston.

… Los Angeles-based ITA trade specialist Terri Batch reports from last summer’s National Black Business Summit.

… and reflects on her own public service for Commerce’s Black History Month observance last year.

Ex-Im Bank has options for African-American businesses hoping to begin exporting.

… and works with the Congressional Black Caucus on strategic planning.

And the Small Business Administration’s export center.

Data: 

From Census and BEA, the world’s best statistical portraits of exporting communities by ownership, markets, export value, employment and payroll from 2017 to 2021.

… and Census’ annual report on exporters and importers by large/medium/small size, known as “Profile of Importing and Exporting Companies,” with totals, state-by-state figures, and 25 overseas markets.

And for context, the New York Fed (2020) studies the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on African American business.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: American steel output lower in 2023 than in 2017; aluminum about the same as 2017.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. steel use* –

2023:	93 million tons
2022:	96.9 million tons
2021:	98.9 million tons
2012-2017 average:	100 million tons

* U.S. Geological Survey, annual ‘apparent consumption’’

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Six years later, how have Trump-era metals tariffs worked out? Did the U.S. wind up making more steel or aluminum? If so, did the tariffs damage metal-users like auto companies or machinery makers? And if so, how did they respond?  Some perspectives on these questions, drawn from the U.S. International Trade Commission’s modeling estimates along with recent data on metal output and consumption:

The Basics: In the first week of March 2018, the Trump administration decided to impose tariffs of 25% on most imported steel products, and of 10% on most imported aluminum. These were added on top of pre-existing tariffs, mostly in the range of 2% to 5.7% for aluminum and 0% to 3% for steel. (Note: The pre-2018 rates oversimplify, as many steel and some aluminum products also have additional “anti-dumping” and “countervailing duty” tariffs. See below for a bit more.) The legal basis was a little-used U.S. trade law clause — “Section 232” — dating to 1962, which authorizes presidents to indefinitely “adjust” imports on grounds of national security. The Department of Commerce, which administers this law, argued for limiting imports in two Jan. 2018 reports on the grounds that ready access to these metals has security implications and rising imports had cut U.S. output. The resulting tariffs have mostly stayed in place since, with changes such as the substitution of quotas for tariffs for Korea and the EU and exemptions for Canada and Mexico.

What has happened since? Abstract economic logic suggests that a large new tariff should create a four-phase chain of events something like this:

(i)    Tariffs raise prices for the relevant imported good, in this case the two metals.
(ii)    U.S. buyers — in this case, industries such as machinery and auto factories, construction firms, and canning industries — shift purchasing to local varieties.  Imports therefore fall and the “domestic” share rises.
(iii)    As “consumer” industries pay more for the good, they lose some competitiveness vis-à-vis imports at home and in export competition abroad, and therefore risk also losing some production and employment.
(iv)    They respond by trying, to the extent possible, to use less.

The Commerce Department’s 2018 reports admitted that phase (iv) was theoretically possible, but said it probably wouldn’t materialize in reality because strong GDP growth and higher federal spending on metal-using products would offset higher prices. Thus capacity utilization would rise, and U.S. mills and smelters would grow more stable and profitable. Here’s their steel prediction:

“By reducing import penetration rates to approximately 21 percent, U.S. industry would be able to operate at 80 percent of their capacity utilization. Achieving this level of capacity utilization based on the projected 2017 import levels will require reducing imports from 36 million metric tons to about 23 million metric tons. If a reduction in imports can be combined with an increase in domestic steel demand, as can be reasonably expected [with] rising economic growth rates combined with the increased military spending and infrastructure proposals that the Trump Administration has planned, then U.S. steel mills can be expected to reach a capacity utilization level of 80 percent or greater. This increase in U.S. capacity utilization will enable U.S. steel mills to increase operations significantly in the short-term and improve the financial viability of the industry over the long-term.

In sum, the administration’s hope and prediction was that the U.S. would be producing more metals, since the policy “would enable U.S. steel producers to operate at an 80 percent or better average annual capacity utilization rate based on available capacity in 2017.” The analogous goal for primary aluminum was a rise in production to 1.45 million tons, and of smelter capacity utilization to 80%.

Phase i: Imports Fall, 2018-2019: U.S. statistical agencies such as the Census and the U.S. Geological Survey publish regular data on metal trade, use, and production. The trade figures show that after the tariffs went on in early 2018, imports of metals did in fact drop. Steel imports fell from the 36 million tons mentioned in the Commerce report to 25 million tons in 2019, quite close to their 23-million-ton goal. Aluminum imports went down from 6.2 million tons in 2017 to 5.3 million tons in 2019. Both declines seem to have lasted, though with some volatility and fluctuation; 2023 imports were 25 million tons for steel and 4.8 million tons for aluminum.

Phases ii & ii: Metal Output Up But “Downstream” Industries Contract, 2020-2021: The U.S. International Trade Commission’s formal five-year report last March estimated that in 2020 and 2021, the tariffs had raised U.S. steel and aluminum output by about $2.2 billion, as compared with a hypothetical case in which the administration did not impose tariffs. Meanwhile, they cut the output of U.S. metal-using manufacturers (mainly machinery, auto parts, and tools and cutlery) by about $3.5 billion. So overall, ITC’s estimate was that between 2017 and 2021, the tariffs had increased the metals production relative to a no-tariff scenario, but left the overall U.S. manufacturing sector a bit smaller.

Phase iv?: Output and Metal Use/2023: No such formal estimate yet exists for 2022 and 2023. However, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s annual “Mineral Commodity Surveys”, by 2023 Americans were using less steel and aluminum than they had before 2018. These reports show that from 2012 to 2017, the U.S. economy used an average of 100 million tons of steel and 5.23 million tons of aluminum per year. (Using USGS’ “apparent consumption” metric.) The 2023 U.S. economy, though about 10% bigger in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars than that of 2017, used only 93 million tons of steel and 4 million tons of aluminum — respectively 7% less and 20% less than before. Put another way, where in 2017 the U.S.’ $20.2 trillion GDP used on average 5100 tons of steel and 290 tons of aluminum per real $1 billion in output, the $22.4 trillion 2023 economy needed only 4,156 tons of steel and 179 tons of aluminum per $1 billion.

Thus, though imports remain close to the levels the Commerce Department’s 2018 reports envisioned, U.S. metal production has fallen back to pre-tariff levels. According to USGS, steel mills poured out 81.6 million tons of metal in pre-tariff 2017, and got up to 87.8 million tons in 2019.  In 2022, though, they were back to 80.5 million tons; in 2023, a slightly lower 80.0 million.  Primary aluminum smelters likewise, having raised output from 741,000 tons in 2017 to 1.09 million tons in 2019, had fallen back down to 750,000 tons in 2023. Nor did the Department’s prediction of higher capacity utilization prove realistic. The Federal Reserve’s “FRED” statistical service reports 74.2% in 2023, statistically about the same as 2017’s 73.6%. And actual capacity is down from 111 million to 104 million tons in steel, and from 2 million to 1.36 million tons in aluminum.

Analysis of this should be a little cautious, as metal use (especially in aluminum) can be volatile. But it’s unusual to see a sustained decline in use during periods of strong economic growth like that of 2021-2023. And it may be that (setting aside international reactions and retaliations, and impacts on metal users like the auto parts and machinery factories) we are now in Phase (iv), and the tariffs’ main current effect is “lower use of metals.” Not really what the DoC was advertising six years ago.

FURTHER READING

Analysis:

USITC analysis and estimates of the ‘232’ tariffs (see pp. 124-133).

Academics Kadee Russ & Lydia Cox forecast in February 2018 that metals tariffs could raise metal output, but likely at the cost of jobs and production in other manufacturing industries.

… and they look back from 2021.

Data: 

FRED (“Federal Reserve Economic Data”) has steel capacity utilization trends from 1970 forward.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s mineral commodity statistics have annual reports on steel and aluminum output,  imports and exports, capacity, and employment back to the early 1990s.

… and for real enthusiasts, a spreadsheet with data back to 1900.

And references:

The “Section 232” site for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, with links to the 2018 reports on steel and aluminum.

… or direct to the 2018 steel report.

… and the 2018 aluminum report.

And some tariff explanation:

Steel and aluminum typically have “MFN” tariffs in ranges from 2% to 5.7% for aluminum and from 0% to 3% for steel. Real-world policy is complex, though, as steel in particular is often also covered by “anti-dumping” and “countervailing duty” tariff penalties outside the regular tariff schedule. The Commerce Department reports that of the 685 AD and CVD “orders” currently in place, 309 cover steel and steel products, and a more modest 32 cover aluminum.

Here’s the U.S. tariff schedule, with steel in Chapters 72 and 73, and aluminum in Chapter 76.

And the Department of Commerce’s tally of AD and CVD “orders” by country, industry, date, and product.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Each January, the U.S. imports 11 million roses a day.

THE NUMBERS: Top sources of roses, January 2023 –

Colombia	177 million stems
Ecuador	137 million stems
Guatemala	4 million stems
Ethiopia	2 million stems
Mexico	1 million stems
Kenya	0.4 million stems

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Geoffrey Chaucer’s 699-line Parliament of Fowls (1382) makes the first English-language link between flowers, romance, and Valentine’s Day. The relevant passage:

“I]n a launde, upon an hille of floures,
Was set this noble goddesse Nature;
Of braunches were hir halles and hir boures,
Y-wrought after hir craft and hir mesure;
Ne ther nas foul that cometh of engendrure,
That they ne were prest in hir presence,
To take hir doom and yeve hir audience.
For this was on seynt Valentynes day,
Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make.*

* “When every bird comes to choose his mate.”

Seven centuries later, the National Retail Federation guesses Americans will spend about $25.8 billion on Valentine gifts this year.  A tenth of the money, $2.5 billion, goes to flowers. Before this evening’s candles light up, here’s a quick look at the four-step network of agriculture and farm labor, truckers and and pilots, policy professionals and front-line civil service workers, and small businesses that get the long-stemmed reds from tropical farms to florist storefront to you:

Growing and Picking: Worldwide flower trade totals about $10 billion annually. The Dutch are the top importers, with Americans second at about $2 billion per year. Colombia was last year’s top U.S. source at $1.1 billion, followed by Ecuador at $500 million. U.S. domestic floriculture, a $6.5 billion industry, supplies about a quarter of U.S. flowers, and centers more on garden and potted plants than cut stems.

By bloom type, 2.7 billion roses accounted for half the value of U.S. imports. Colombia provides about 1.5 billion stems, grown on about 8600 hectares of farmland near Bogota and harvested by about 100,000 rural workers. Next door Ecuador’s 1.0 billion are not far behind. The remaining 200 million roses arrive variously from Guatemala, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Kenya; among other flowers, Thailand is the top orchid source and Costa Rica places near the top in lilies.

Transport: Roses arrive year-round, but the large import pulses in late January/early February and late April/early May — just before Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day — include about half of annual deliveries. The short life of a blossom means that flower trade is mainly an air cargo business.  Once picked and boxed, roses travel in chilled trucks from farms to El Dorado airport near Bogota and Mariscal Sucre in Ecuador, with most Valentine’s roses — about 90% — arriving at Miami International Airport via (according to USDA) 30-35 daily chartered wide-body flights. Likewise in early May, orchid farms around Bangkok connect via Tokyo to deliver most U.S. prom-night corsages.

Transit: Customs and Border Protection officers inspect the incoming flowers for phytosanitary health on arrival at Miami. CBP reports inspecting 1.23 billion flowers at the airport last year and intercepting 1,975 pests — mostly nursery-threatening thrips, moths, and caterpillars rather than customer-intimidating scorpions or tarantulas.

Policy: Though technically assigned a 6.5% tariff, most flowers arrive in the U.S. duty-free under free trade agreements and “preference” programs. The U.S.-Colombia FTA waives the tariff for roses (and chrysanthemums, lilies, etc), saving florists and their customers about $65 million a year. The African Growth and Opportunity does the same for Ethiopian and Kenyan blossoms. Florists buying Ecuadoran roses and Thai orchids, though, must wait for Congress to revive the Generalized System of Preferences to get the same benefit.

And last: Having landed at the airport about a week ago, flower shipments move by refrigerated truck or domestic cargo flight to wholesalers and warehouses. By Monday, they have reached the roughly 12,000 American florists (mostly small businesses, employing about 64,000 people this year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics); and from them to you.

So that’s the business side. Last word to Chaucer, also from the Parliament:

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,     / The life so short, the art so hard to learn.
Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,  / The attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp
The dredful Ioy, that alwey slit so yerne,       / The fearful joy, that ever slips away so fast
Al this mene I by love.                                   / By all this I mean love.

FURTHER READING

Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules:

The original Middle English; Seynt Valentyne shows up in lines 305-312.

A modern-English translation.

Chaucer was a trade professional as well as a romantic poet, having spent the years 1374-1386 tallying wool exports and wine tariff revenue as Richard II’s Controller of Customs. They paid him 10 pounds a year plus a gallon of wine per day, and he wrote the Parliament in off hours.  The U.K.’s National Archives looks at Chaucer’s trade policy career.

From flower-bed to florist: 

The Colombian Flower Growers Association, ASCOLFLORES, recalls its first U.S.-Colombia FTA shipment.

Air cargo firms manage Colombia-to-Miami charters.

Miami International Airport (2023) explains flower transit.

Customs and Border Protection on letting flowers in while keeping thrips out.

The National Retail Federation’s 2024 Valentine forecast.

V-Day stats from the Society of American Florists.

… and also from the SAF, an appeal for GSP reauthorization.

Elsewhere:

The Netherlands is the world’s largest flower buyer at about $5.4 billion a year, or half of the value of flower trade. Most of this transits the gigantic Aalsmeer flower market just outside Amsterdam, which serves as the center for European flower trade and the main market for growers in Kenya and Ethiopia. Royal Flora Holland has the facts and figures.

And last:

How did roses become the Valentine’s Day standard? It’s likely no one really knows, but one theory traces the tradition to a series of letters sent to U.K. friends in 1718 by Mary Wortley Montagu from the Ottoman court, and published in book form a half-century later in 1763. (The Ottoman nobility were rose and tulip enthusiasts; roses are Persian by origin.) Letter #42 records a ‘flower language’ in which seraglio ladies assigned emotional meanings to different flowers and luxury products, and used them to send coded notes to friends and outside admirers.  Nineteenth-century French and Brits then built this into a gigantic “flower language” (“floriography”); an 1819 book by Charlotte Delatour cataloged meanings for 713 flowers (including 29 separate rose varieties), nursery plants, and other garden products such as fruits and tree branches.

People with deep gardening expertise and memorization powers could use this to convey signals pretty far beyond modern candy-heart romance — all the way (at least to a modern eye) from “platonic affection” and “romantic love” to “alternative life-style” and “stalker”.  For example, while a generic rose means “love,” and a white rose means “I am worthy of you,” a dog rose conveys an eyebrow-raising “pleasure and pain” message, and a maiden blush rose a frankly menacing “if you lose me, you will find it out.”

The need to keep these hundreds of definitions straight, and to be very sure you know which rose is which, must have put amateurs at constant risk of embarrassing blunders and awkward misunderstandings.  Modern flower association lists are much shorter and PPI trade staff think it’s probably better that way. Some more examples from Delatour, though, for those interested:

Cypress branch:          “Death and eternal sorrow”
Daffodil:             “Deceitful hope”
Daisy:                 “Beauty and innocence”
“Grass-leaved goosefoot”     “I declare war against you”
Jasmine:             “Sensuality”
Meadow saffron:        “My best days are past”
Potato                “Benevolence”
White poppy            “Sleep”

Lady Mary’s Turkish Embassy Letters.  See Letter 42 for the flower language, also Letter 25 for brief nudity, Letter 9 for a rant against Viennese fashion (“monstrous and contrary to all reason”), and Letter 35 for pioneering vaccination advocacy.

Delatour’s original Artistic Language of Flowers.

And a modern essay on the origins and practice of floriography, with a list of known flower messages.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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