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PPI’s Trade Fact of the Week: U.S. trade with Russia is down by 80% since February

• September 28, 2022
• Ed Gresser

FACT: U.S. trade with Russia is down by 80% since February.

THE NUMBERS: American imports from Russia, 2022 –

January: 8.3 million barrels of crude oil, 35,700 carats of diamonds, 2,100 tons of Arctic crab
June: 0 barrels of oil, 0 carats of diamonds, 0 tons of Arctic crab

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Reporting on the impact of sanctions, war, and conscription on Russia now tends by force of circumstance to be anecdotal, sometimes hard to verify, and relate to larger systemic trends: A tank factory halting production in March as a result of parts shortages, retail chains and international auto manufacturers departing, 98,000 young Russian men leaving for Kazakhstan last week and lines of cars at Georgian and Mongolian border crossings, and so on. Macro forecasting provides some context for these individual stories but is very abstract: The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook update this July projects a contraction of -6.0% this year (comparable to the 2008 financial crisis experience) and -3.5% in 2023.

Visible trade flows also provide only a partial picture (and an unusually limited one since Russia has declined to publish monthly trade data since the invasion), and can perhaps bolster anecdotes and macro vistas with some of the information in between. Two international sources, and a more detailed look at the post-February trends in U.S.-Russia trade flows, seem to show (a) a significant, but far from total disengagement, from world goods trade, and (b) in the context of the IMF’s overall prediction, probably a sharp domestic-economy effect given that Russia’s energy revenue remains high:

(1) The IMF’s “Direction of Trade Statistics,” a standard source for top-line goods trade totals, has country-by-country data for exports through May of 2022. Their figure for “world exports to Russia” reports $23.6 billion in exports to Russia in January, and $14.6 billion — i.e. a drop of about 38% — in May. Reporting on individual countries suggests that this may understate the total decline in Russian imports, as the IMF database finds Chinese exports to Russia down from $7.3 billion in January to $4.3 billion in May, the EU’s from $8.1 billion to $4.2 billion, Japan’s from $600 million to $190 million, Korea’s from $813 million to $339 million. These trends are not universal; Kazakhstan’s and Turkey’s Russia export figures, though smaller than those of the big economies, were both slightly up. The database unfortunately does not seem to have 2022 figures for “imports from Russia.”

(2) Analysts at Bruegel, an economic think-tank in Brussels, carry this a bit further, collecting national trade data through June from 34 countries accounting for about 75% of Russian trade, and adding imports as well. This concurs with the IMF’s less up-to-date finding, with Russian purchases from the relevant countries dropping from $18 billion in January to a low of $8 billion in April, then bumping up to $12 billion in June. Bruegel finds Turkey the only major economy whose Russian exports are at or above pre-invasion levels. Russia’s sales to other countries have been less affected: Russian energy exports rose a bit as world prices rose (from $26 billion in January to $27 billion in June, with the other months in between), but non-energy exports dropped by slightly more, from $17.5 billion to $13.4 billion. This matches EU data, showing less purchasing of Russian manufactures and farm products offsetting higher energy prices.

(3) The U.S. data is complete through July and quite detailed, showing drops of 80% in both the export and import accounts. U.S. exports to Russia have dropped from $500 million to $83 million, with sales to Russian industrial buyers now close to zero: semiconductor sales, for example, fell from $8 million in January to $0.25 million in July, computer equipment from $8.3 million to $0.4 million, motors and generators from $6 million to $0.2 million. The remaining significant U.S. exports to Russia appearing to be mostly medicines and medical equipment.  Imports are likewise down by about 80%, from $2.5 billion in February to $484 million in July. The month-by-month figures looks like this, with energy-price related jumps in February and March followed by steady decline:

January:       $1.96 billion
February:      $2.56 billion
March:           $2.76 billion
April:              $2.08 billion
May:              $1.13 billion
June:              $0.66 billion
July:                $0.48 billion

Overall, energy and luxury-good bans have eliminated almost all U.S. purchases of Russian oil and gas, diamonds, and seafood. The remaining Russian exports to the U.S. are mostly metals (exempted in most cases from the import bans and also little affected by withdrawal of MFN tariff rates) and fertilizer. Aluminum imports in fact are up from $41 million to $89 million, and nickel from $9 million to $52 million.

As with the macro forecasts and anecdotal reporting, the goods-trade figures suggest an economy (a) contracting sharply though not in free fall, (b) continuing to raise money through energy sales, and (c) possibly seeing somewhat sharper industrial declines than the macro figure suggests.

FURTHER READING

Big Picture: 

The IMF (July) projects a contraction of Russian economic contraction of -6.0% this year.

Data:

Census’ basic month-by-month data on U.S.-Russian trade.

Bruegel analysts Zsolt Darvas and Catarina Martins review Russia import, export, and balance data for 34 countries. Sharp drop in imports, exports steadily more concentrated in energy, trade balance a secondary issue.

The IMF’s somewhat challenging “Direction of Trade Statistics” database.

And for comparison, the WTO’s stat portal.

PPI’s February reminder that non-MFN tariffs on the natural resource products that make up most of Russia’s exports are mostly low.

Sanctions:

Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control oversees Russia sanctions.

Peterson Institute for International Economics has a timeline of sanctions by country.

Anecdotes:

Toyota plant, shuttered since March, closes for good.

And a report from the Mongolian border.