FACT: Military spending was 2.3% of world GDP last year.

THE NUMBERS: World exports, 2022*-

All goods     $24,000 billion
Clothes            $315 billion
Fish                  $151 billion
Arms transfers   $32 billion

*Sources: WTO for all goods and apparel; UN Food and Agricultural Organization for fish; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for arms sales. SIPRI data covers known transfers of “major conventional weapons.”

WHAT THEY MEAN:

What place does the military hold in the world economy?  Statistical snapshots from 2022 on world military spending and arms trade, and then three cautions about the data:

World defense spending at modern-history lows: A widely-used calculation by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) finds world military spending — procurement, pay, military construction, and so on — at about $2.24 trillion in 2022.  According to the International Monetary Fund, world GDP was $100.15 trillion that year. So SIPRI’s figure suggests that about 2.2% of world income went to military budgets, and a World Bank table for the same year yields a very close 2.3% of world GDP.

This figure captures the policies governments set down in 2021, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and by historical standards, it is very low. Tallies from earlier decades report military spending rates above 6% of world GDP in the 1960s; in a range from 3.8% to 4.5% in the 1970s and 1980s; and varying since 2000 in a narrow band between 2.2% and 2.6%.  As two points of comparison: (a) about 11% of world GDP goes to health (or 6% of world GDP if one counts only public spending), and 4.2% to education; and (b) in labor terms, the CIA’s World Factbook estimates that about 20 million men and women are in uniform around the world which would be  0.5% of the world’s 3.5 billion workers. To look more specifically at the U.S., American military spending was about 3.5% of GDP in 2022 (by the World Bank’s table), which is above the worldwide average but far below the 11% the U.S. Defense Department reports for the Korean War years in the early 1950s and the 5% levels of the later Cold War.

Arms trade small relative to civilian trade:  SIPRI’s parallel “arms transfer” count reports about $32 billion worth of arms deliveries in 2022. Their count covers deliveries of “major conventional weapons” — tanks, planes, missiles, submarines, artillery, etc. — and includes sales of both new and used kits, licensed production, and deliveries of significant components as well as complete systems. Like the world’s combined military budget as a share of GDP, the arms transfer total is a lot of money but small when measured against civilian trade. The WTO’s most recent annual trade statistics report puts “goods trade” in general at $24 trillion in 2022, which would make SIPRI’s $32 billion in arms transfers about 0.1% of the total. Or, to look at particular products, the WTO’s places clothing exports at $313 billion — ten times SIPRI’s arms transfer figure — and automotive trade at a much larger $1.37 trillion, while the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s estimate of fish and seafood exports was $151 billion.

Nor does military trade look very large for individual countries. By country, SIPRI’s top exporters in 2022 were the U.S. at $14.5 billion, France at $3.0 billion, Russia at $2.8 billion, and China at $2.0 billion. This would be about 1% of the U.S.’ $2.1 trillion in goods exports, 0.5% of French and Russian exports (though a higher 3% of Russian manufacturing trade), and 0.1% of Chinese exports. On the import side, military shares of trade can be quite high for the largest purchasers — Qatar, the largest buyer on the SIPRI list, spent $3.3 billion on weapons or 15% of its overall $28 billion in imports, and military goods accounted for 2% and 7% of imports for fourth place Saudi Arabia and fifth place Kuwait — but outside the Persian Gulf is rarely a very large part of national import bills.

Tentative Conclusion: The public data and estimates, then, suggest that as of 2022 the world’s military economy was a relatively small part of the larger global economy; military spending a modest though not tiny part of national budgets; and military trade a very small part of international trade. Three cautions, though:

Caution (1): Secrecy: In many countries, some sections of national defense budgets and arms sales aren’t thought suitable for publishing, and are thus missing from the totals.  So figures for military spending and trade, strictly defined, are reasonable “lowest-case estimates” rather than very firm data.

Caution (2): Definitions: The military economy is not separate from the civilian economy, but merges with it along the edges. Definitions of what is “military” and what is “civilian” are thus a bit arbitrary.  In military trade, for example, is the right approach SIPRI’s decision to count weapons only? Would it be better to add “dual-capable” trucks, chips, fuel, rifles, and satellites too? Repair, training, software updates, replacement parts, and maintenance?  Or should everything a military service buys be considered “arms trade”?

As an important example, the U.S. Defense Department’s 2023 policy paper observes that for both of these reasons, China’s “actual military-related spending could be 1.1 to 2 times higher than stated in its official [$209 billion] budget.” This would suggest a figure approaching $400 billion and somewhere between 2% and 3.2% of Chinese GDP, in contrast to the World Bank table’s 1.6%. (And some private estimates go higher.) Or to choose a case close to home, the State Department’s Political-Military Affairs branch, which oversees official U.S. arms sales policy, uses a broader definition than SIPRI’s to report “new sales” of U.S. weapons at about $55 billion a year, which would imply considerably higher global as well as American arms sales.

Caution (3): Changing times: The defense budgets and arms transfers of 2022 are those decided upon in 2021, just before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Whatever the definitions one chooses, and however much they publish, governments are making this year’s budgets and sales in a world grown more dangerous, and their numbers will presumably be larger.

                 

FURTHER READING

SIPRI’s arms trade totals by country.

And their military spending database.

U.S. policy:

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, presenting an $842 billion request for next year’s defense budget to the Armed Services Committees, notes (a) a “pacing challenge” from rising military spending and capability in China; (b) an “acute threat” to Europe and global security posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and (c) structural programs including pay raises for enlisted personnel, research and development, and more.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security oversees export controls.

And the State Department’s Arms Sales and Defense page.

Spending: 

A World Bank table of military spending/GDP makes Latin America and the Pacific Islands the regions with the least ambitious military budgets, at an average of 1.0% for each region. The Arab states’ spending level is highest at 5.0%. The sample below drops two outliers at the very top — Eritrea’s 20.5% of GDP as of 2003, and Libya’s 15.5% as of 2014 — along with embattled Ukraine’s 33.5%. (Also note, the Bank doesn’t venture a guess for North Korea.) Apart from these anomalies, military spending/GDP ratios around the world in 2022 topped out at Saudi Arabia’s 7.4% and Qatar’s 7.0%, and drift downward to the 0.2% levels for Laos, Mauritius, and Ireland, and Haiti’s lowest-in-the-world 0.1%. Here’s a sample list indicating the range.

Saudi Arabia	7.4%
Qatar	7.0%
Oman	5.2%
Israel	4.5%
Russia	4.1%
U.S.	3.5%
Cuba	2.9%
Singapore	2.8%
South Korea	2.7%
Pakistan	2.6%
Lithuania	2.5%
WORLD	2.3%
Vietnam	2.3%
United Kingdom	2.2%
France	1.9%
China*	1.6%
Norway	1.6%
Spain	1.5%
New Zealand	1.2%
Thailand	1.2%
Brazil	1.1%
Switzerland	0.8%
Indonesia	0.7%
South Africa	0.7%
Argentina	0.4%
Ireland	0.2%
Haiti	0.1%

* Official published Chinese budget.  At the high end of DoD’s range, the Chinese military share of GDP share would be 3.2%, about the same as that of the United States.

And some perspectives on China’s military spending: 

SIPRI’s $240 billion in 2019.

DoD’s view (p. 142) has 1.1 to 2.0 times higher than the public budget, for a range between $220 billion and $420 billion.

And the American Enterprise Institute, citing Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, guesses $700 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: 13 of the 54 World Series players this year are “international.”

THE NUMBERS:

MLB rosters by birthplace –

All players	969
U.S.*	719
Dominican Republic	104
Venezuela	62
Cuba	21
Mexico	15
Canada	10
Japan	8
Colombia	7
11 other countries	23

* Includes 15 Puerto Rican players, whom MLB for some reason counts as “international.” 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Cuban-born Adolis Garcia’s 11th-inning walk-off won Game 1 for the Rangers on Friday night; Venezuelan catcher Gabriel Moreno’s 2nd-inning home run started the Diamondbacks’ 9-1 rout on Sunday’s Game 2. The two teams together feature 12 international players: six Dominicans, three Venezuelans, and three Cubans as the Series began; still seven as they prepare for Game 5 but now seven, three, and two respectively given Garcia’s Game 3 injury and replacement last night by Dominican shortstop Ezequiel Duran. Altogether, they make up 24% of the Series rosters. This figure:

(a)  Pretty closely matches the 26.5% international share of MLB’s full Opening Day rosters, and likewise faithfully reflects the roles of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Cuba as the top three contributors;

(b)  Is also quite close to the 25% international-player share of the roughly 4200 pro athletes playing this year in the six big North American pro leagues (MLB, NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLS, and NHL); and

(c)  Is a bit above the 18% overall international share of the American workforce, but typical of top-tier elite working life.  Some context for this last point:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Labor Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Workforce  release comes out each May.  Its most recent edition reports 158.3 million people working in the U.S. last year, of whom 28.7 million or 18% were born abroad. The foreign-born workforce is growing relatively faster than the native-born on net — the BLS release finds total U.S. employment up 5.7 million from 2021 to 2022, with foreign-born labor up 2.3 million workers and U.S.-born by 3.4 million. This “net growth” figure, though, conceals the fact that most of the 3.6 million workers who retire each year are locally born, so the actual “gross” count of new jobs for native-born Americans was probably more like 6 million.

Looking past these top-line figures to specific industries, the foreign-born labor shares represent a sort of classic “smile curve,” with immigrant contributions highest in the best-paying and lowest-paying sections of the economy, and lower in the middle. At the very top, MLB’s 250 international players join 60% of this year’s 20 Oscar acting nominees and 50% of the six U.S.-based 2023 Nobel Prize laureates in science and economics. At the lower-paying end, USDA’s Economic Research Service reports that about 60% of crop-pickers on American farms as of 2022 are immigrants, and BLS finds foreign-born employment shares between 20% and 30% in construction, groundskeeping, domestic and personal care services, and food preparation. An illustrative table with immigrant labor shares, using 2023 when possible and otherwise picking the most recent year available:

 

Crop-picking farmworkers	60%
Computer science doctorates	60%
2023 Oscar nominees	60%
All farmworkers	44%
Doctoral-level science & tech workers	40%
Construction workers	34%
Major-league athletes	25%
Food service	23%
Personal care & services	20%
All science & tech workers	19%
All U.S. workers	18%
Management jobs	14%
Education & training	12%
Health care practitioners	10%
Lawyers & paralegals	6%
Security services	6%

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics for all workers, National Science Foundation for engineering and science workers; MLB, NBA, WNBA, MLS plus outside writers on hockey and football for athletes.

 

Turning back to the Series, though, the nationalities of Garcia, Moreno, their MLB teammates and rivals, and by extension, the nationalities of U.S. workers generally, are interesting both as background for fans watching the game and as illustrations of the evolution of the economy and working life. But what they’re actually doing is the main thing. The manager’s perspective: Don’t overthink it. Play ball.

FURTHER READING

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent Labor Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Workforce brief, out May 2022.

More on sports: 

MLB: The 2023 Opening Day baseball rosters featured 250 foreign-born players or 26.5% of the 969 players variously out on the grass (or the “artificial turf” used in the Rangers’ Globe Field and the Diamondbacks’ Chase Stadium), riding the bench, or on the DL. Of these, 104 were Dominican, 62 Venezuelan, 21 Cuban, 15 Mexican, 10 Canadian, 8 Japanese,* 7 Colombians, and the remaining 23 are divided among eleven countries.

NBA: If MLB scouts spend most of their time on the Caribbean littoral, with frequent side trips to Japan and Taiwan, the NBA’s talent-spotters have to span the globe. The league’s opening tipoffs last week featured 125 international players among 450 players, or 28% of the total including as a sample 26 Canadians, 14 French, 9 Australians, six Nigerians, five Turks, three from Cameroon, three Lithuanians, one Georgian and one from South Sudan, three from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two Bahamians, two Japanese, two Ukrainians, six Germans and so on across 40 countries.

WNBA: The NBA’s sister league is slightly less “international,” though not dramatically so, with 30 international players among the 164 women on all 12 teams combined. Australia led with 7, Canada 4, Hungary, France, and China two each; this year’s champion Las Vegas Aces was unusual in having just one international player, Australian center Cayla George.

MLS: U.S. pro soccer is majority international, with 350 Americans and 440 international players. The league fudges the data a bit by declaring Canadians “domestic,” so as to get a North American 50.1% majority player share. The next biggest countries are Argentina with 40 players on North American pitches, Brazil with 34, and Colombia with 25.

NFL: Least “international” of the big U.S. pro leagues, the NFL is also distinctly less analyst-friendly since it doesn’t appear to provide a distinct count of international players. Wikipedia reports 106 of them (counting American Samoa), while NBC’s Chicago affiliate argues for 82. Given 1,676 total players, we can compromise on roughly 6%.

NHL: The “nation” in “National Hockey League”, finally, is not the United States but Canada, home to 295 of this year’s 506 skaters. The rest split equally between the U.S. and Europe — 205 Americans, 206 Europeans — with the top European contingents including 64 Swedes, 41 Russians, 36 Finns, and 23 Czechs.

A look back: 

Some historical data on U.S. immigrant labor from the Migration Policy Institute.

International perspective: 

The International Labor Organization counts 169 million “international migrant” workers as of 2019. This meshes imperfectly with the BLS’ count of the American workforce, as the ILO uses “all foreign-born workers” for countries that record these figures, but only “migrant” [i.e. non-citizen] workers for some other countries. This noted, the ILO report finds 32% of the world’s migrant workers in Europe, 22% in Canada and the U.S., 15% in the Middle East, and 14% in Asia and the Pacific. ILO on migrant workers.

Or, taking a global view, the World Bank’s figures for immigrant shares of the population (rather than workforce participation) place the U.S.’ 14.5% immigrant share of the population a) far below the majority-immigrant populations of the Persian Gulf, which run as high as 88% for the United Arab Emirates; (b) well above the mostly local East Asian workforces, with those of China and Vietnam the world’s lowest at 0.1% and (c) in the middle of the 8%-25% range of other large, wealthy western countries such as Canada, Italy, the U.K., Germany, France, or Australia.

And for comparison:

Hollywood’s 2023 Oscar nominees, tracing birth to Malaysia, Ireland, Vietnam, U.K., Australia, and more

The 2023 Nobel Prizes; Weissman, Goldin, and Brus are Massachusetts, New York, and Cleveland; Katariko, Bawendi, and Yekimov respectively born in Hungary, France, and Russia.

USDA’s look at America’s 1.18 million hired farmworkers.

And the National Science Foundation on the American sci/tech workforce; 19% international overall, with India the top source followed by China and the Philippines.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: Americans are buying fewer Chinese-made smartphones, laptops, TVs, and toys this year.

THE NUMBERS: Chinese share of U.S. laptop computers –

Jan. to Aug. 2023        82%
2022:                            91.5%
2021:                             93%
2017:                             93%

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The Census’ monthly trade figures, now complete through August 2023, show imports down by about $136 billion or 6% as compared the first eight months of 2022. (Last year: $2.21 trillion; this year: $2.08 trillion.) Nearly two-thirds of this decline is in specifically Chinese-made goods, so the worldwide 6% drop combines a remarkable 24% fall in imports from China with a modest 2% decline from the rest of the world. The figures are:

Imports:                                   -$136.3 billion =  -6%
From China:                             -$89.6 billion =  -24%
From all other countries:          -$46.7 billion =   -2%

Some thoughts on possible explanations below, but first a set of mini-case studies covering four consumer goods: laptops, smartphones, TV sets, and toys. Together these account for $19.5 billion of the $89.6 billion drop in imports from China, and about a seventh of the worldwide drop.

1. Laptops: Laptop computers accounted for $48 billion of America’s $526 billion in imports from China in 2022. This Chinese-made $48 billion in turn made up about 92% of a worldwide $52 billion.  Counting individual devices, Americans bought 111.5 million laptops last year from three main sources: 102.7 million from China, 5.4 million from Vietnam, and 2.5 million from Taiwan. Comparing Census’ Jan.-August figures for 2022 with those for 2023, the total laptop-import count is down from 76.4 million to 65.8 million, with Chinese-assembled laptops specifically off from 71.1 million to 56.4 million. By contrast, Vietnam’s laptop shipments, have more than doubled from 3.3 million in Jan.-Aug. 2022 to 7.2 million so far in 2023.  Taiwan’s have stayed the same at 1.4 million. So here, the drop in imports is not worldwide, but wholly Chinese..

2. Smartphones: The phone pattern is similar — overall U.S. buying down; buying from China especially down; one rival (though not the same one) rising fast. Specifically, 2022’s 173 million smartphone arrivals included 134.9 million from China, 30.4 million from Vietnam, 4.0 million from India, and another 4.0 million divided among Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. So far this year (again comparing Jan.-August. data), phone imports are down from 115.8 million to 94.3 million, with Chinese-assembled phones accounting for 12.2 million of the total 21.5-million drop. In contrast to laptops, next-door Vietnam is even further off its 2022 pace — from 24 million phones to 11.5 million, or more than half. India is the fast-growing rival here, up from 2.5 million phones to 6.8 million.

3. TV sets: TV-set data again repeat the pattern — total imports down, China down especially fast, and a competitor rising. TV imports from China are down by 40.7% in dollars — from $7 billion to $4.4 billion — and 35% in set-count, from 43 million to 27.9 million. Meanwhile, imports of TVs from Vietnam have jumped from 3.8 million in 2022 to 5.7 million in 2023. Imports from Mexico are up too (though not dramatically) from 19.1 million to 19.6 million.

4. Toys: Finally, a less chip-and-solid-state-electronics-heavy example  Overall, U.S. toy imports have dropped by about a third, from $13.8 billion in Jan.-Aug. 2022 to $9.1 billion in Jan.-Aug. 2023. Almost all the decline is in Chinese-made toys, down from $11.0 billion in Jan.-August 2022 to $6.9 billion in 2023. Here, though, while China’s “share” of U.S. toy imports has drifted down (from 83% in 2021 to 80% in 2022 and 76% so far in 2023) no single competitor seems to be rising in China’s place. Vietnamese toy shipments are down by 34%, Indonesia’s by 22%, and the non-China world overall by 20%. Mexican toy exports are a modest exception, up 8% in percentage terms, but in dollars, this is only about $40 million.

What to make of this? Four possible explanations:

1. Tapped-out American shoppers: One contributing factor is purely American. After two years of post-Covid shopping, Americans have restocked their wardrobes, replaced their phones, and TVs, and don’t need more just now.

This is plausible at least in part: With China the principal source of these things, any drop will naturally show up mainly in trade with China. But this doesn’t seem like the whole story — the simultaneous jumps in laptop and TV imports from Vietnam, and in phone imports from India, suggest buyers finding alternative if smaller Asian sourcing sites. So analysts while not discounting explanation 1 should also be thinking about explanations 2, 3, and 4.

2. Structural change reflecting geopolitics and trade conflict: After holding up through 2018-2022, despite tariffs, retaliations, spikes in diplomatic tension, and export controls, U.S.-China trade finally began to buckle this year.

3. Structural change reflecting Chinese domestic policies: After three years of chronic zero-COVID factory closures and intensified political pressure on foreign firms, China’s competitiveness has badly eroded and buyers are looking elsewhere.

4. Alternative structural change reflecting intra-Asian integration: Or, finally, China’s competitiveness maybe hasn’t eroded per se, but electronics supply chains are becoming more elaborate and specialized. In this hypothesis, final consumer-goods assembly (having shifted to China in the 2000s) now moves to neighboring countries as China takes up a new role as a components and engineering skills supplier, using the newly implemented Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement to cut costs.

 

FURTHER READING

Data:

Census’ monthly figures.

… and country-by-country data.

U.S. policy:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on de-risking, friend-shoring, non-“decoupling,” and the future U.S-China economic relationship.

And some perspectives:

WTO economists wonder whether trade flows are beginning to illuminate the early stages of “geopolitical blocks,” in which some countries trade more with China, and others more with the United States.

PIIE’s Adam Posen sees the end of the Chinese economic miracle.

Former World Bank director for China and current Singapore-based academic Bert Hofman, writing for the Asia Society Policy Institute, looks to domestic economic mistakes.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: Trade in 2022: $32 trillion in exports, in a $100 trillion world economy.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. shares of world exports* –

2022:   7.8% of manufacturing, 12.7% services, 9.6% agriculture, 8.5% fuels & mining
2017:    9.4% of manufacturing, 14.4% services, 9.8% agriculture, 6.7% fuels & mining

* Data from the WTO’s annual World Trade Statistical Review reports, 2023 and 2018.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The International Monetary Fund’s most recent World Economic Outlook, launched last Thursday, reports that in 2022, the world’s GDP topped eleven digits for the first time to reach $100.1 trillion. The WTO’s latest World Trade Statistical Review report, meanwhile, shows exports of goods in 2022 at $24.9 trillion and exports of services at $7.0 trillion. Combining the two, this means $31.9 billion, and a matching 31.9% of world output, crossed borders. This is high in historical terms — possibly the highest export-share-of-GDP ever — reflecting the energy price spike caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine along with post-COVID surge in shopping for consumer goods, reviving travel and transport services, high farm prices, and probably some acceleration of trade integration in Asia.  A table of these totals in the recent past and the last two decades:

2022:        31.9%
2021:        29.4%
2020:       26.5%
2019:        28.6%
2017:        28.4%
2012:        29.6%
2002:       22.4%

Tentative conclusion: The high 2022 export-to-GDP ratio probably reflects some temporary factors; in particular, without the energy price spike it would have been somewhere around 29%. But it also suggests that at least so far, the trade conflicts of the past five years haven’t very fundamentally changed trade flows.

Three closer-level looks — at products and “sectors,” countries, and the United States — offer some backup to this general conclusion, but also suggest areas where flows have at least shifted course:

Products: The largest single chunk of world exports is in manufacturing, which in 2022 accounted for $15.3 trillion, or about 48% of all world exports, slightly below the 52% of pre-pandemic 2019. The $15.3 value nearly equals the roughly $17 trillion in world manufacturing output; top exports were $3 trillion in chemicals, $2.5 trillion in IT goods, and $1.5 trillion in autos and auto parts. In second place comes $5.1 trillion in energy and mining, where the supply shock caused by the war nearly doubled trade value from 2017’s $2.63 trillion. Then came $3.3 trillion in digitally deliverable services ranging from entertainment and media to finance, software, gaming, air and hotel reservations, and so on; $2.3 trillion in food and farm goods; $1.5 trillion in miscellaneous goods-trade categories such as scrap metal, small-scale parcel deliveries, and returned purchases; and $1.4 trillion in transport and travel services.

So: Assuming the high energy prices were temporary, little about the world “traded-product” mix changed very much in the last five years.

Countries: The countries at the top of the WTO’s export rankings also remained pretty stable.  The largest single block of merchandise trade was either (a) the European Union’s $5.4 trillion in manufacturing exports (which is shaky as it counts $3.25 trillion in trade among the 27 EU members as well as $2.14 trillion from the EU to other countries), or (b) if you take the EU as a lot of individual countries rather than one big economy, China’s $3.3 trillion in manufactures. Counting down from this, the WTO’s rankings of “top exporters” and ‘top importers’ haven’t changed very much in any of the big product divisions. The top six manufacturing exporters in 2022 – China, EU-as-a-single-economy, the U.S., Japan, Korea, Mexico – are identical to the top six of 2017, though Taiwan and Singapore swap 7th and 8th place, and Vietnam replaces Canada in tenth. In agriculture, likewise, the top six exporters are identical, though Thailand jumps over Mexico and Australia to place 7th. Rankings in “fuels and mining” (which in WTO argot includes metal ores) have changed most¸ with the U.S. climbing past Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the top exporter.

Hmm: Despite the “301” tariffs the Trump administration placed on most Chinese goods in 2018 and early 2019, China’s #1 share of world manufacturing exports rose from 17.8% to 21.7%. The U.S. held its #2 manufacturing rank, but the American share of manufacturing exports shrank from 9.4% to 7.8%.

The U.S.: How did the U.S. fare as all this proceeded?  From 2017 to 2022, the U.S. held its second-place share as a goods exporter, lengthened its lead as the world’s top goods importer, and remained the top services trader.  So to date — despite “301” and “232” tariffs, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, sanctions on Russia, and a battery of new export controls — no very revolutionary changes in the actual U.S. world role.  A slightly more granular level, though, reveals some shifts:

1.  U.S. export economy is a bit smaller and more concentrated in energy: The U.S. export economy shrank a bit (in relative terms), from 12.2% of GDP in 2017 to 11.6% in 2022. Meanwhile, the Census’ count of U.S. exporting businesses fell from 290,600 in 2017 to (a preliminary) 279,000 in 2022. Energy exports however jumped from a historically very high 9.1% of total exports in 2017 – $141 billion of $1547 billion – to an all-time record 18.2% in 2022, or $380 billion of $2086 billion. Mirroring these domestic figures, the WTO finds the U.S. with a lower share of world manufacturing exports and a higher share of energy.  Overall, then, not a very inspiring result.  One explanation is benign: heavy stimulus spending causing a consumer boom and diverting exports to domestic customers.  Another is less encouraging: an unanticipated effect of tariffs, as the “301” and “232” tariffs imposed in 2018 and 2019 fell heavily on industrial inputs, and thus likely raised U.S. factory costs and eroded competitiveness, especially as Asian countries continued to cut tariffs on one another’s goods.

2.  Americans import more, especially in manufacturing: Imports, by contrast, rose from 14.9% of U.S. GDP to 15.4%.  This is the highest import share since 2014. Most of the jump reflects a post-pandemic surge in import of manufactured goods, which rose in dollar terms by $740 billion from the levels of 2014.  Mirroring this rise, the WTO tables show Americans buying 14.1% of world manufactured exports in 2017, and 15.7% in 2022. With exports only up $70 billion, the Trump administration’s pledge to reduce U.S. manufacturing trade deficits ended with a comically perverse doubling of the sectoral deficit from -$648 billion in 2016 to -$1.3 trillion in 2022.

3.  Less from China, more from Vietnam and Mexico: Within the totals, though, U.S. sourcing has shifted noticeably.  China’s share of U.S. imports, at 21.6% in 2017, fell to 16.3% in 2022; Vietnam and Mexico, and secondarily India and other ASEAN countries, picked up most of the roughly $150 billion in diverted imports.  In 2023 (based on the Census figures complete through last August) this drop accelerated, with China falling behind both Mexico and Canada as U.S. import sources.  This noted, China’s higher share of worldwide manufacturing exports suggests that (a) Chinese firms were able to replace lost U.S. customers with sales elsewhere, and/or (b) some of China’s diminishing share of American imports reflects shifts of final assembly to other middle-income countries, in which case China would be exporting components and parts to factories abroad and the U.S. still the final buyer.  See below, though, for a third possibility — the early stages of vaguely geopolitical “trade blocs” — suggested by WTO economists this month.

 

 

FURTHER READING

The WTO’s annual World Trade Statistical Review back to 2015, with links to the earlier “International Trade Statistics” yearbooks from 2000 to 2014.

… An accompanying WTO staff report, Global Trade Outlook and Statistics, looks around at 2023 and ahead to 2024, and predicts slower trade growth for the next year and a half. Under the heading “Evidence of Fragmentation” (pg. 12), the authors see initial signs of that trade flows may be beginning to reflect “geopolitical blocs”:

Economic and political tensions between the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies – have been building for several years, leading to the imposition of numerous tariffs. These measures have sparked some changes in international trading patterns, but evidence that they have thrown globalization into reverse remains limited.  …

Changes in trade shares along geopolitical lines are also discernible in recent data. For example, US trade in parts and components with politically like-minded countries as measured by UN voting patterns fell from 77% before the pandemic in 2019 to 73% afterwards in 2020. This share then rose to 74% in 2022 and finally back to 77% in 2023. While this could be a sign of supply chains shifting for geopolitical reasons, it could also simply be a reversion to pre-pandemic production patterns.

… and thoughts on it all from WTO Chief Economist Ralph Ossa.

And for context, the IMF’s just-updated World Economic Outlook database.

U.S. data:

Census’ monthly summaries of imports, exports, and balances.

… or by country (goods only).

And the Bureau of Economic Analysis has GDP breakdowns, services trade, and more.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: Florida green turtle nesting counts up 80-fold since the 1970s.

THE NUMBERS: Green turtle nest counts at 27 Florida “core index beaches” –

2022-2023      ~40,000 nests?
2020-2021      ~23,000 nests
2010-2011        ~10,000 nests
2000-2001      ~4,000 nests
1990-1991         ~1,000 nests
1980s                ~500 nests

* Florida Wildlife Commission, using two-year averages as green turtle nesting totals appear to vary in a two-year cycle. These are not total statewide (or U.S.) nesting estimates, but counts of nesting at 27 long-studied beaches, making up a representative sample of known Florida nesting beaches. Total nest counts in 2022 were 37,000 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s 17th-century British navigator/pirate/early naturalist William Dampier, on the Caribbean’s vast green turtle flotillas and the swarms of fish traveling in their wake:

“I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at Port Royal in the Bay of Campeachy [ed. note: then the capital of Jamaica] that was four foot deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six foot broad.  … [M]ultitudes of Turtles go from their common places of feeding and abode, to those laying eggs:  and at the time the Turtle resort to these places to lay their Eggs, they are accompanied by abundance of Fish, especially Sharks; the places that the Turtle then leave being at that time destitute of Fish, which follow the Turtle.”

By the mid-20th century the “multitudes of turtles” were nearly gone. When Florida wildlife staff began counting green turtle nests in the 1970s, they found only about 500 each year and sometimes fewer. NOAA’s unhappy summary reports a “catastrophic global decline of the species” with six causes: (a) “by-catch,” as turtles drown in nets towed by shrimp boats; (2) direct hunting, taking green turtles “in extraordinarily high numbers for their fat, meat, and eggs”; (3) loss of nesting grounds, through beach erosion, seawall construction, and bright hotel lighting that deter night-time nesting; (4) collisions with boats close to shore; (5) ocean pollution, in particular plastics and balloons; and most recently (6) climate change and warming ocean temperatures.  The green turtles’ decline is typical: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists all seven sea turtle species — greens, loggerheads, leatherbacks, Kemp’s Ridleys, olive Ridleys, flatbacks, hawksbills — as either “threatened,” “endangered,” or “critically endangered.”

Some of these threats — floating plastics, warming water — are daunting, global-scale issues.  Others seem cheap and simple to fix.  Most countries, including the U.S., have banned turtle hunting for food and jewelry, and excluded turtle products from international trade in 1977 through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  Congress in 1987 adopted a law requiring shrimp boats serving the U.S. — whether local or foreign — to equip their nets with “Turtle Exclusion Devices,” which are metal grilles with holes allowing unintentionally trapped turtles to swim out of the nets, costing $325-$550 each.  (See below for the WTO’s record of a celebrated U.S.-Mexico trade dispute over the application of this regulation to foreign boats, which the panels eventually decided in favor of the U.S.) And the Florida government under Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1991, meanwhile, imposed beach protection rules and night-time blackouts during nesting months.

A generation later, these cheap and simple fixes look like they’ve worked.  Florida’s green turtle nesting counts, measured in two-year cycles, show very strong recovery.  The Florida Wildlife Commission’s most recent report, out early this year, shows an 80-fold increase in nesting counts since the early 1980s: a few hundred a year then, about 40,000 per year in 2021 and 2022. The official count for the 2023 nesting season won’t come out until early 2024, but individual beach counts suggest a boom year with as many as 70,000 nests.  Nor again are green turtles unique; populations of the smaller and rarer Kemp’s Ridley turtle in Mexico has also rebounded, and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service has successfully started a new Texas nesting ground.

Not yet anything on the scale of Dampier’s “multitudes”, of course.  And looking ahead, the challenges of floating plastics and warming water aren’t simply and probably won’t be cheap.  But nonetheless, after many bad decades. the turtles have had a few good ones.

 

 

FURTHER READING

Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World (1699, Chapter 5) recalls the massive Caribbean turtle populations of the 17th century.

NOAA’s sad review of their 20th-century decline.

The Palm Beach Post reports a boom nesting season for 2023.

And the Florida Wildlife Commission reports on nesting totals for five turtle species at “index beaches” from 1989 forward.

Another example: 

The Kemp’s Ridley turtle, a smaller species that is unique as a daytime nester, is the world’s most endangered turtle. Until recently, Kemp’s Ridleys nested only on three stretches of beach in Tamaulipas (Mexican Gulf Coast, just south of Texas), and are thus especially vulnerable to oil spills and habitat loss. KR nest counts declined by over 99% in the later 20th century, from 30,000-40,000 recorded in a 1947 count to 702 in 1985. Since then totals have rebounded to about 9,000 per year in Mexico, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has created a second nesting site on Padre Island in Texas, whose nest counts are up from an initial 7 to 353 last year. Background from FWS.

Policy: 

The CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) homepage.

The State Department explains shrimping import and turtle conservation rules.

And the WTO’s record of “DS-58,” a five-year case eventually validating the U.S.’ application of TED requirements to foreign shrimping boats.

And some work to do in Asia, with some very modern advice from the classics: 

CITES Secretariat (2019) reports persistent illegal turtle trade in Southeast Asia.

And proto-conservationist Mencius, somewhere around 320 BC near present-day Kaifeng, has TED-like advice for King Hui of Liang:

“If you ban nets with fine mesh from ponds, there will be more fish and turtles than the people can eat.  If you ban axes from the forests on the hillsides except in the proper season, there will be more timber than the people can use.”  

Mencius, with the passage on nets, excluder devices, and turtles in Chapter A3.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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 U.S. does 28% of the world’s scientific research and development spending.

THE NUMBERS: R&D spending, 2020* –

World (known)	$2.4 trillion
United States	$668 billion
China**	$526 billion (?)
European Union	$440 billion
Japan	$173 billion
South Korea	$105 billion

* National Science Foundation estimates, 2022
** Estimate from 2022; 2023 likely will revise this downward.

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The National Science Foundation’s most recent tally of research spending around the world, published early in 2022, calculated in “purchasing-power parities,”* estimated about $2.4 trillion worth of science in 2019. The IMF’s guess at the 2019 world economy meanwhile (also using the PPP-basis option so as to match NSF’s R&D figure) was $138 trillion. So that year, $1.70 of each $100 of world income went back to labs to design quantum computers and write up artificial intelligence programs, give the last touches to the Webb telescope and open the first analyses of the COVID-19 virus, design new biotech crops, finance robot-sub dives to deep-sea black smokers, and work up ancient-DNA investigations of Neanderthal origins.

Dividing the $2.4 trillion global figure into country-by-country totals requires some social science best-guesses and adjustments to later revisions. For example, NSF put China’s R&D spending at $526 billion in 2019.  The OECD, though, has China at $465 billion in 2018 and hasn’t yet guessed at 2019. Meanwhile, if Chinese science is getting revised a bit down, the Brits have been scaled up. The NSF’s first guess for the U.K. in 2019 was a deflating $57 billion, putting the land of Darwin & Newton, Berners-Lee & Hawking, etc. at par with India and well below the $74 billion for France.  They’ve now recalculated and gotten something closer to $90 billion. But understanding there’s some blurriness around the edges, here are three big-picture perspectives as of 2019:

Largest R&D Centers: Five countries put more than $100 billion a year into science. The U.S. was top at $668 billion (and per NSF, ratcheted up to $717 billion in 2021 and a likely $792 billion in 2022). American science accordingly made up 28%, or somewhat more than a quarter, of all world research spending – nearly twice the U.S.’ 15.8% share of world PPP-basis GDP, and seven times its 4% share of world population. China was second at $526 billion and 22% of world R&D, followed by Japan at $173 billion, Germany at $148 billion, and South Korea at $102 billion. Together these five countries accounted for two-thirds of all world R&D spending. Adding France and the UK brings the total near three-quarters of the world total.

West & Rest: Traditional ‘western’, ‘developed’ countries account for over three-fifths of world science. Combining the NSF’s estimate for the U.S. with those for Japan, Korea, the 27 EU members, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Israel, Taiwan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, yields a total of $1.5 trillion, exactly five-eighths of the $2.4 trillion worldwide total.  China, whether at $526 billion or somewhere in the $500 billion range, is the secondary pole at 22%. The remaining 150 countries — all of Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa — together put about $400 billion into science each year. A Korea-like $135 billion comes from the nine non-Chinese big-population BRICS members and invitees (Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia). The remaining 120 provide $240 billion and 10% of the world total.

Most “Research-Intensive”: Dropping total-dollar figures and instead looking at research spending relative to national economies, the R&D shares of GDP in the world’s most research-intensive economies, and in nine of the world’s ten largest countries by population,** look like this:

Israel	4.9%
South Korea	4.6%
Taiwan	3.5%
Sweden	3.4%
Germany	3.2%
Japan	3.2%
U.S.	3.1%
China	2.3%
Brazil	1.2%
Russia	1.0%
South Africa	0.8%
India	0.7%
Mexico	0.3%
Indonesia	0.2%
Pakistan	0.2%
Nigeria	0.1%

And a Bit More: Brazil is the top Latin American research power, with $36 billion and 1.2% of GDP.  India has a very large dollar-value R&D program at $59 billion, eighth in the world after the U.K. and France. Indian science, though, remains modest as a 0.65% share of GDP. This is somewhat below the 1.6% average for middle-income countries. Russia had about the same total-dollar investment as Taiwan at $44.5 billion in 2019 (though it’s presumably lower now); relative to GDP, its 1.04% was about the same as Turkey’s R&D intensity. Thailand is ASEAN’s top researcher in dollar terms at $12 billion or 1.0% of GDP; relative to GDP, though, Singapore leads at 1.8%.

* The two common calculations of GDP are “exchange-rate basis,” and “purchasing-power parities.” The PPP-basis gives larger figures for developing countries, as it attempts to equalize prices paid for services.  Both have advantages and disadvantages; we’re using PPP here as that’s how NSF estimated science spending.
** Unfortunately missing #8 by population, not because we forgot Bangladesh, but as NSF hasn’t done an R&D estimate for them.

 

 

FURTHER READING

Data: 

The National Science Foundation’s R&D by country figures.

More NSF comparisons.

OECD’s data on R&D spending in total and relative to GDP, plus counts of scientists and publications, etc., for the 37-country OECD membership plus China, Taiwan, Russia, Argentina, Singapore, Romania, and South Africa.

The World Bank’s table of R&D/GDP shares by country, region, income level, etc., from the 1990s to the present.

And a bit on American science: 

U.S. spending leads the world in raw dollars, and ranks a strong seventh worldwide as a share of GDP. The U.S.’ relative weak spot is in big-picture, basic science, government-funded science. U.S. government-funded R&D is traditionally more focused on basic science with potential big returns in knowledge and innovation but not necessarily a near-term commercial payoff than the business sector’s work.  Though not small, this government commitment has (a) drifted down relative to U.S. GDP, from around 1.0% of GDP in the 1960s and 1970s to 0.5% more recently, and (b) dropped from 30% to 19% of U.S. research funding between 2011 and 2021.

Vannevar Bush’s 1945 “Endless Frontier” report to the Truman administration makes the classic case for public commitment to science.

PPI budget sages Ben Ritz and Brendan McDermott, 80 years later, have ideas for reviving public investment.

… and from Ritz and Stephen Verrall last month, Congress post-“CHIPs and Science” bill takes an ill-advised U-turn on the larger science budget.

And a Biden science boom? NSF’s estimates of a $124 billion Biden-era surge in research spending since 2020 ($668 billion in 2020, $792 billion in 2022) is a first estimate, with some future adjustments likely.  (And note that $105 billion of the estimate reflects new business spending.)  Nonetheless, an entirely different line of data suggests this is real.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly figures for R&D employment show a net gain of 150,000 R&D jobs — from 795,000 to 946,000 — from January 2021 to August 2023. By comparison, the 20-year growth total from 2000 through 2020 was 250,000 new R&D jobs. BLS’ (very detailed) R&D employment page.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: Worldwide HIV/AIDS mortality has dropped by two-thirds since 2003.

THE NUMBERS: Eswatini life expectancy at birth – 

20219        61
2005:       42
1990:        63

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

In this last week for Congress to reauthorize the expiring “PEPFAR,” the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief –

PEPFAR provides nearly $7 billion this year around the world for AIDS education, testing, treatment, and social supports. Since its 2003 launch during the second Bush administration, the program has earned a plausible claim to the mantle of the postwar Marshall Plan in its blend of ambitious concept, global scale, commitment to the common good, and successful implementation in practice. Its reauthorization this year has very unfortunately been linked to unrelated and longstanding debates on abortion, though PEPFAR (like other U.S. foreign aid programs) is, in fact, banned from funding abortions abroad. Some background:

Eswatini, a small inland country of 3 million bordering South Africa and Mozambique, has the world’s highest HIV-positive rate, at 27.9% of adults. In the early 2000s, Eswatini counted 10,000 AIDS deaths per year, and from 1990 to 2005, Swazi life expectancy at birth fell from 63 years to 42. To put this 21-year drop in context, life expectancy in China seems to have fallen by 1.5 years during World War II, and by half a year during the Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution decade.

On a larger scale, in the early 2000s AIDS deaths were running at two million per year, among 40 million HIV-positive people around the world. About 5% of HIV-positive people lived in the United States and other developed countries. Estimates elsewhere included 25 million in Africa, 7 million in South and Southeast Asia, and 2.1 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Governments and charities attempting at the time to respond in these regions found multiple large obstacles, each making all the others seem insoluble:

• Low patient awareness, with most HIV-positive adults in developing countries unaware of their status;
• Medicine scarcity, with antiretroviral triple-drug therapy developed only in the late 1990s, availability limited, and administration cumbersome;
• Difficulty delivering care, with millions of potential patients in rural areas and large city slums with few clinics and fewer trained nurses and doctors; and
• Finance, with developing-country health ministries small and lacking the money to meet any of these practical challenges let alone all of them at once.

PEPFAR has been the U.S.’ big response. Sustained for 20 years, the nearly $7 billion in its various bilateral accounts — prevention and education, testing, medicine, orphan and dependent care, and others — and contributions to the Global Fund and UNAIDS now combine to make up about a third of the worldwide $22 billion in HIV/AIDS support. Run by seven agencies headed by the Global AIDS Coordinator at the State Department, PEPFAR programs operate in 120 countries and most recently helped keep HIV treatment going during the COVID-19 pandemic by such measures as support for telemedicine development and decentralized distribution of HIV testing kits.

A few statistics suggest the scale of its activity: PEPFAR this year will provide anti-retrovirals to 20.1 million people, care and shelter for 7 million orphans, and “PrEP” preventative treatment for 1.5 million people. Since its launch, treatment has risen to nearly 30 million of the 39 million people now believed HIV-positive worldwide. Estimates of annual new infections have fallen to 1.3 million in 2022, the lowest annual total since the 1980s.  And world AIDS mortality has fallen by two-thirds, from the 2 million annual deaths of the early 2000s to about 600,000 per year now, with accompanying declines in maternal and child mortality, and rising childhood immunization rates.

Returning to Eswatini, hardest hit of all: The pandemic is far from over, but Eswatini is now meeting its main challenges. A 2021 national survey shows that 94% of adults with HIV are aware of their status; 97% of these people use antiretroviral medicines; and virus suppression is achieved in 96% of antiretroviral patients. In more tangible terms, some trend-markers: (a) HIV-positivity rates have dropped about 10% from their peak; (b) 200,000 Swazi are taking antiretrovirals, as against 500 in 2005; (c) AIDS mortality has dropped faster than the world rate, from the 10,000 deaths per year of the early 2000s to 2,600 last year; (d) life expectancy has recovered not quite to pre-pandemic rates, but just before the COVID pandemic had returned to 61.

Turning back to Congress: The PEPFAR authorization expires when the “fiscal year” ends this Sunday, September 30. It has accomplished a lot. Its work isn’t finished. It shouldn’t be stopped before it’s done.

 

 

FURTHER READING

Former President Bush on PEPFAR authorization this month.

… and in 2007.

… and President Biden in January.

The State Department’s PEPFAR data page.

… And its plan for the next five years.

Outside view from the Kaiser Foundation, with HIV/AIDS and PEPFAR dashboards/data/trends worldwide and by country.

Remember: 

UNAIDS’ grim December 2005 report.

Eswatini:

Ambassador Maloney on World AIDS Day in Eswatini.

Virus suppression trends.

The CDC’s Eswatini operations.

And the UNAIDS office.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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 U.S. Generalized System of Preferences program has been expired for nearly three years.

THE NUMBERS: Random sample of GSP imports, 2020 –

Armenia	486 tons of jam & $9.5 million in golden jewelry
Belize	$6.5 million of cane molasses
Bolivia	32,700 wooden doors
Cambodia	49 million handbags
Georgia	11,900 liters of wine
Haiti	567 tons of fresh mangoes, 870,000 woven flags
Liberia	5.7 tons of spices
Namibia	$5 million in stonework
Pakistan	$25 million in sports equipment
Solomon Islands	500 tons of canned tuna
South Africa	217 tons of essential oils
Thailand	27.3 million orchids, 10.6 million rulers & tape-measures
Timor-Leste	15 tons of vegetable oil from Timor-Leste
Tonga	411 tons yams, 182 tons taro root
Ukraine	8 tons of pickles, 316 tons of titanium-based paint
Uzbekistan	430 tons dried peppers, 19 tons dried apricot

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Live now at 2 p.m. EST: PPI’s Ed Gresser is testifying at the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee. Watch the live stream.

Background: The Subcommittee’s hearing is on the revival of Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, a program Gresser oversaw as a civil servant from 2015 to 2021.  This is a 50-year-old set of tariff waivers for 119 low- and middle-income countries, from small Pacific and Caribbean islands to big Brazil and Pakistan, for which Congress’ authorization lapsed at the end of 2020. The U.S. for the moment is the only developed country without such a system.

Some specifics: GSP tariff waivers apply to 3,616 of the U.S.’ 11,414 tariff “lines”* for all the countries on the list, and 5,138 “lines” for the 42 least-developed countries in the group.  Real-world cases, noted above, range from Ukrainian paint and Armenian jewelry, to Haitian mangoes, Thai orchids and mirrors, Fijian ginger candy, Mongolian pine nuts, South African citrus, Cambodian backpacks, and South Pacific yams and taro root. The tariff rates on these lines average about 4.8%, and peak at above 20% for backpacks and luggage. Balancing the additional bit of opportunity are 15 eligibility criteria — providing “reasonable assurance of access to markets” and “adequate and effective protection of intellectual property,” “taking steps to afford internationally recognized labor rights” — which Congress asks participating countries to meet.

During its last year in effect, depending on one’s point of view GSP trade made up (a) an impressive $17 billion in imports, or (b) a modest 11% of imports from the relevant countries (given some exclusions of products, the permanently duty-free status of most energy and resources, and some other factors ) or (c) a modest-almost-to-the-point-of-chastity 0.8% of that year’s $2.35 trillion in U.S. imports.  Two policy points for the Committee as Congress considers re-upping and revising it this fall:

1. Set clear priorities: If Congress’ main goals are encouraging supply-chain diversification and alternatives to Chinese sourcing, the GSP program’s benefits probably should be more significant and need to be pretty stable.  So: long new authorization; consider upgrading benefits either by adding products, revising the arcane ‘Competitive Need Limit’ system, or other options; and make sure removals of benefits on eligibility grounds are last resorts for severe non-compliance.  Alternatively, if the top goals are encouraging countries to work on particular policies through the eligibility criteria, think also about adding some value, and about limiting the number of new eligibility criteria and keeping them specific so that administration officials and GSP country governments can focus on the relevant topics.

2. Act with some urgency: GSP’s Congressional ‘authorization’ lapsed at the end of December 2020, and so the program has not provided benefits for three years. As we noted a couple of weeks ago with respect to the Solomon Islands and canned tuna, this means countries in the program, especially smaller and poorer ones, risk losing exports and employment as trade shifts back to larger and often non-GSP sources. At the same time, U.S. government hopes to use the program for particular policy goals, or to encourage diversification of sourcing and reduce China-reliance, remain on hold. So, act expeditiously.

* See the tweet below for an especially kooky real-life example of these “lines,” with a screenshot of the Borges-like list of wild animal tariffs on HTS pg. 12.

 

 

FURTHER READING

Live now, the Ways and Means Committee hearing page.

Gresser’s testimony.

And from 2022, Gresser on GSP Renewal: “Trade, the Poor, and America is Back”

Background:

The U.S. Trade Representative’s GSP Guidebook explains GSP program goals, product coverage, eligibility rules, and country participation.

The Obama administration (2016) evaluates U.S. trade preference programs (including GSP, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act) and their records on development, poverty alleviation, and policy.

And some international comparisons:  

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains the Japanese GSP.

The European Union

Australia

China’s “least-developed country” tariff waiver.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: Humanity is “aging” three months each year.

THE NUMBERS: Median age* –

Japan	49.0 years
Europe	42.0 years
U.S.	37.9 years
World	30.5 years
Africa	19.0 years
Niger	14.5 years

* Our World in Data

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Writing in retirement at Saladin’s court in 1185, the 90-year-old aristocrat ibn Munqidh goes in for some moping. In his youth, ibn M. recalls, he cheerfully rode off on weekends to spear Crusaders, political rivals, and charismatic megafauna.  Now he’s worn out by a bit of calligraphy:

When I wake up I feel like a mountain is on top of me
When I walk, it’s like wearing chains
I creep around with a cane in my hand …
My hand struggles to hold up a pen, when it once
Broke spears in the hearts of lions.

Yes, well, happens to us all these days.  In that era, and for most of human history, not so much.  Until the 19th century life expectancy at birth was about 30 — that is, only half the public got to 30 — and a 25-year-old expected (on average) to live to 50. Ibn M. was an extreme outlier, having avoided first the pre-1800 40% child mortality rate and then the high chance of getting carried off later on by plagues, accidents, predators, or competent enemies, and making it to his 10th decade.

Today, by contrast, the elderly demographic — already with 150 million people over 80 — is the world’s fastest-growing. This, plus the fact that birth rates have fallen by nearly half since the 1970s, means that humanity is aging. Our World in Data’s tabulation finds this year’s global “median age to be 30 1/2, meaning that (a) more than half of us are over 30, and (b) the person exactly in the middle was born in 1992. Our World’s figure is about ten years older than the 20-year median of 1970 and five years older than the 25-year median of 2000, and is projected to creep up by three months per year for the next half-century. The worldwide medians over the last 50 years, with a tentative estimate for 2050, look like this:

2050      36?
2022       30
2010       27
2000     25
1970       20

Worldwide averages, of course, conceal lots of variation.  Details by region below; but in general, East Asia and Europe are “old,” with median ages over 40; Japan is currently the “oldest” country* at 49.  Africa is “youngest” with a median age of 19 (and turbulent Niger is the world’s single “youngest” country at 14 and a half), with the Pacific islands second-youngest. The other regions are in the middle, with Latin America and the Caribbean exactly at the world’s 30-and-a-half-year average (but aging fastest of all), and South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East a bit below. The U.S. is above the world average at 39, but aging only about 2 and a half months per year, while Europe adds about 3 and a half months, Asia 4 months, and Latin America 5 months.

So: In Europe and East Asia especially, the next decades’ experience will probably be one in which people (whether or not they start wistfully putting down their spears) start getting tired as they push around the modern equivalents of calligraphy pens. Economists accordingly predict rising demand for health equipment and telemedicine services; labor shortages in western countries and East Asia, combined with lower GDP growth rates with which to pay the new workers; production and consumer booms in India, Africa, and parts of the Middle East; and politics increasingly dominated by arguments over how to pay for health and pensions. Still, as ibn Munqidh might reluctantly agree, better than any realistic alternative.

* Counting countries with populations above 100,000. The Vatican, with about 800 people, is technically the oldest country, with its various Cardinals, secretaries, and Swiss Guards at a median age of about 58.

 

FURTHER READING

  

Our World in Data’s interactive table of median ages by country, region, income group, etc., from 1950 to the present with projections to 2100.

The CIA’s World Factbook ranks countries by life expectancy.

The International Monetary Fund has thoughts on aging, growth rates, and finance,

The World Health Organization on new health challenges.

And Usama bin Munqidh on old age, medieval battle tactics, poetry, calligraphy, Crusaders’ odd gender habits and loony “trial-by-ordeal” and “trial-by-combat” legal theories, the mighty Saladin, etc.

Detail by region

Oldest: Europe is the world’s “oldest” region with a median age of 42 — that is, 12 years above the world median.  Italy, with a median of 47, has Europe’s oldest population with Portuguese, Germans, Greeks, and Bulgarians next at 45.  East Asia, at 40, is almost as venerable at Europe, and Japan is currently the world’s “oldest” country,* with a median age hitting 49 this year.  (Japanese also have the world’s longest lifespan, at 87.)  A bit north, Koreans are slightly more youthful at 43 but aging faster, with Korea likely to pass Japan by 2040 and hold the “world’s-oldest country” status for the rest of the 21st century. Mainland China’s median age of 38 — exactly equal to America’s — is the region’s youngest but rising fast. China is likely to catch Europe in the next decade and pass Japan somewhere around mid-century, as this fall’s Shanghai elementary schoolers begin contemplating retirement.

Youngest: If the median Asians and Europeans are middle-agers thinking about young children and home payments, the “median” African is a buoyant 19-year-old just starting a career.  In the world’s “youngest” country, the median Nigerien (hopefully steering clear of Niamey’s edgy military patrols last month) is a 14-and-a-half-year-old high school freshman born in the spring of 2008. Eight of sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 countries have median ages below 16, and 36 below 20. The Pacific Islands are just slightly “older” as the world’s second-youngest region, with the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu at medians of 19 years, and Samoa and Timor-Leste at 20.

Middle-aged: Other regions cluster closer to the world average. In South and Southeast Asia, median ages for India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma are all just a bit below the world average at 28 or 29. The Philippines and Pakistan are “young” at 24; Sri Lanka and Vietnam a bit older than average at 32. Singapore and Thailand are the region’s seniors, with the median Singaporean now 42 years old and the median Thai 40. In the Middle East and near neighbors, the age range is similar but skews a bit younger: median ages are in the teens in Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq; 28 or 29 in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Morocco, and Lebanon; and 31 and 32 in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iran. Latin America and the Caribbean, finally, perfectly match the worldwide median at 30 and a half, with Cuba the “oldest” at 41 and Haiti and Honduras “youngest” at 23; Brazil is 32, Mexico 29, and Peru 28.

The United States: The U.S. can look quite young, or a bit “tempered by experience,” or right in the middle, depending on what group you put it in. Three options:

• As a “western” country joined with the EU, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, etc., the U.S. is very much on the youthful side. All the Asian democracies are “older” than the U.S.; and in Europe, only Albania, Iceland, Ireland, Armenia, and Georgia have lower median ages than the U.S., and none of them by much.
• As a “Western Hemisphere” country, the U.S. remains for now on the older side, eight years above the Latin/Caribbean average. Over the next 20 years, though, norteamericanos will age only gently while Latin America’s age at the world’s fastest pace. By 2040, the U.S./Latin age gap will be only four years, and Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica will all be “older” than the U.S.
• Finally, in an “Anglosphere” group with Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., and Ireland, the U.S. looks pretty much average. As of 2023, this group bunches closely together, in a range from New Zealand’s 36-and-a-half median to Canada’s 40-and-a-half, with the U.S. exactly in the middle. Projections to the 2040s find them even closer, all within 2.5 years of one another, with the U.S. “youngest.”

 

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 Progressive Economy 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: First round of the globalization debate: 90 BC.

THE NUMBERS: Dates –

Lao Tzu: 300 BCE?
Sima Qian: 90 BCE

WHAT THEY MEAN:

A “globalization” exchange from the Chinese classics A-list:

Writing in the seventh Han Dynasty reign (~90 BCE by the western calendar), Grand Historian Sima Qian takes a tolerantly pro-consumer “neoliberal” position as he pans a famous romantic-localist passage from the Tao Te Ch’ing:

Sima Qian: “There must be farmers to produce food, men to extract the wealth of mountains and marshes, artisans to process these things, and merchants to circulate them. There is no need to wait for government orders: each man will do his part as he gets what he desires. So cheap goods will go where they fetch more, while expensive goods will make men search for cheap ones. When all work willingly at their trades, just as water flows ceaselessly downhill day and night, things will appear unsought and people will produce them without being asked.

“[But] Lao Tzu has said that under the ideal form of government:

‘Though states exist side by side, so close they can hear the crowing of each other’s roosters and the barking of each other’s dogs, the people of each state will savor their own food, admire their own clothing, be content with their own customs and delight in their own occupations, and will grow old without ever wandering abroad.’

“Yet if one were to apply this type of government, striving to draw the present age back to the conditions of primitive times and close the eyes and ears of the people, I doubt one would have much success. From ancient times to the present, eyes and ears have longed for the most beautiful forms and sounds, bodies delighted in pleasure and luxury, and hearts swelled with pride at the glory of power and ability. So long have these habits been allowed to permeate the lives of the people, that even if one were to go from door to door preaching [Lao Tzu’s] most subtle arguments, he could never succeed in changing them. Therefore, the highest type of government accepts the nature of the people, the next best leads the people to what is beneficial, the next gives them instruction and orders, and the very worst compels them to act against their nature.”

FURTHER READING

From the 90 BCE debate to a 2023 summer-reading reprise –

Historian Tara Zahra’s Against the World: Anti-Globalism Between the Wars (PPI trade staff’s choice for best 2023 global-economy book) looks at anti-globalization’s advocates, critics, and effects in the 1930s.

… and Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar’s Homecoming pitches industrial anti-globalism as a 2020s program.

And back to the classics –

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ch’ing (Waley translation, see chapter 80 for the roosters and dogs).

Sima Qian on kings, sages, assassins, merchants, tyrants, economics, and more (Watson translation; see Shi Ji Chapter 129 for the Lao Tzu evaluation and Sima’s survey of early-empire economics and business).

The same author’s panoramic look at the Warring States, the First Emperor (the one with the terra-cotta army), and the rise and fall of the Qin Dynasty.

& a P.S.: What was the point of the army? Edward Burman’s review of recent scholarship.

 

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 Progressive Economy 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 number of working satellites in space has doubled since the Biden administration began.

THE NUMBERS: Union of Concerned Scientists’ count of operating satellites –

2022        6,718
2021        4,852
2020       3,372
2016        1,459
2012        1,046

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The decade’s glamor rocket launch paid off: American- and Canadian-designed James Webb Space Telescope, pushed into space by a European Space Agency-built Ariane 5 two years ago, now sits contentedly far above the Earth at “Lagrange 2”* a million miles away, sending back messages about star formation, dark matter, exoplanets and the odd phenomena of early galaxies.

The Webb’s passage through the ionosphere brought it through a cloud of about 5000 smaller satellites — weather and climate monitors, maritime and automotive GPS guides, gaming stations, governments’ spying eyes, cable television forwarders — in low-earth orbits ranging from 300 kilometers to a few thousand kilometers above the earth. Twenty months later, this satellite cloud is appreciably thicker, numbering nearly 7,000.  In a sense, as the Webb opens up a large high-altitude bay window on the universe; far below, massive growth in private-sector launches of small, disposable commercial means the sky is filling up with eyes and voices.

Some data: Forty years ago in 1993, about 510 satellites were in orbit. By 2000, the total was just about 1,000; then each year from 2000 through 2010, about 100 satellites went into orbit. During the Webb launch year 2021, 1,400 smaller satellites went up, matching the entire decade-long total for the 2000s, and last year’s 2,000 was another 40% jump. Thus the count of working satellites has doubled since the Biden inauguration ceremony, and this year promises pretty much the same.

And some recent and near-future launches to illustrate:

• Diversity: Rocket Lab, from New Zealand’s Mahia peninsula on July 17, puts up (a) four NASA satellites meant to guide small fleets of future space vehicles; (b) a LEO (“low-earth orbital”) satellite for Canadian communications operator Telsat, and (c) two 3U satellites for Spire Global, a weather and maritime services provider.
• Commerce: Space-X Starlink launch, from Vandenberg Space Force Base (previously Vand. Air Force Base) a week from Friday (Aug. 17). This one carries 15 small satellites, weighing about 260 kilos each and meant for a 550-kilometer high orbit. A twin Space-X/Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral on the same day will add 22 more. Starlink’s eventual goal is a network of 42,000 small satellites providing “video calls, online gaming, streaming, and other high data rate activities” to areas the global fiber-optic cable system that carries most Internet traffic does not reach, at a cost of about $10 billion, more or less the same as the JWST’s one-satellite price.
• Science: Nine days later on the 26th, from Tanegashima, Japan’s space agency launches a moon-landing vehicle known as SLIM (“Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon”), weighing 450 pounds and packed with cameras and mineralogical survey material and meant as an initial demonstration of returnable moon-exploration devices. The rocket is a Mitsubishi H11A, first used in 2001.

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists, which does a running count of active satellites, reports that the very large majority of these satellites are American (in some way): 4,529 of the 6,718, including 3,996 private commercial satellites, 260 civilian government, and 247 military, carry a U.S. flag of some sort.  China operates 590, Russia 174, and other countries 1,425. About 88% — 5,938, by UCS’s very specific count — are in low-earth orbits. The largest single contributor to the growth is the “Starlink” internet service run by Space-X, which has put up about 4,698 satellites as of mid-2023 and ultimately hopes for a fleet of 42,000.  These last for about five years, then fall down and burn up on impact with the atmosphere. Webb’s lifespan is uncertain, but should be “significantly more than 10 years.”

 

FURTHER READING

Union of Concerned Scientists counts working satellites.

NASA passes on the latest James Webb Space Telescope observations.

… and recaps a June Space-X launch.

… while the European Space Agency explains “LaGrange 2” (a stable orbital point, about four times as far from Earth as the moon, one of five such spots discovered through calculations by 18th-century mathematician Joseph LaGrange, a Paris resident and Torino native).

Civilian launchers: 

RocketLab Electron

Virgin Galactic

SpaceX’s Starlink

Blue Origin

Calendar and count: 

On-line journal Spaceflight Now tracks launches and payloads.

A United Nations index of 16,327 “objects launched into outer space” since 1957 (their 2021 count was 8,089).

And last… Which generation-old sci-fi show got it right?

“Boldly go”: The public sector and, international cooperation for deep-space exploration, expanding frontiers of knowledge, and a search for the common good in Star Trek.

“20 minutes into the future”: Ruthless media conglomerates and vast fleets of disposable low-orbit satellites, floods of addictive low-quality information, and social collapse in The Max Headroom Chronicles.

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 Progressive Economy 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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