ComentáriosConstataçõesPerspectivasExplicativos
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Correspondem a esses filtros: 23 textos
Textos
- PerspectivaTrade & Investment
Foreign delegations come to Washington to meet a counterparty that is not there
Twenty of the fifty-one jurisdictions in the federal collections file levy all five of the taxes it names, and two levy only two of them. The body that decides whether a foreign project works is usually a state, and it is not in the room.
- ConstataçãoTrade & Investment
Imports fell once in five years and that fall is the least reliable number in the series
Imports of goods and services dropped from 3.97 to 3.86 trillion dollars in 2023, the only decline in the run. Producer prices fell that same year, which means the one movement most often read as evidence of reshoring is the one that can least bear the reading.
- ConstataçãoTrade & Investment
The trade gap narrowed in one year of six, and 2025 is now the widest reading of the six
The deficit in goods and services widened from 53 billion dollars a month in 2020 to 75 in 2022, narrowed to 62 in 2023, then widened again to 78 in 2025. The current account, which counts investment income and transfers as well, moved the other way in the final year, so the two measures of the same external gap do not agree on which year is the widest.
- PerspectivaEconomic Security
Tell a ministry where to look, not where to go
Advice that names a destination expires the day the evidence moves. The six files behind any recommendation about the American economy carry six different as-of dates, and a ministry that was handed the conclusion cannot tell which one broke.
- PerspectivaEconomic Security
Openness and security are being reconciled by narrowing one channel at both ends rather than by closing the economy
Two-way U.S. goods trade with mainland China ran at 58 billion dollars a month in 2022 and 35 billion in 2025, a fall of 39.7 percent, while total imports and exports of goods and services both rose across the same three years. The channel narrowed at both ends, and no series cited here records whether a screen decided any of it.
- PerspectivaStrategic Technology
Technical standards decide admission where a tariff only sets a price, and nothing in the record counts admission
Goods exports to mainland China fell from 13 billion dollars a month in 2022 to 9 in 2025, and imports from 45 to 26. The series record that both legs shrank and attribute the fall to nothing, which is why a rulebook written years earlier cannot be told apart from a duty imposed last quarter.
- ExplicativoTrade & Investment
Why agricultural export values move when the harvest does not
An export figure is a price multiplied by a quantity, reported as a single number. Reading it as a measure of how much food left the country confuses the two, and this explains what it takes to tell them apart.
- PerspectivaTariffs & Trade Agreements
A bilateral arrangement locks in a counterparty, which is the part of a trading position most likely to change
Goods imports from China fell from a monthly average of 45 billion dollars in 2022 to 26 in 2025, and exports to it from 13 to 9, while total imports and exports of goods and services each rose by 0.28 trillion dollars across the same three years. No series on this site describes an arrangement of either kind, so what each locks in is argued here and not measured.
- ConstataçãoEconomic Security
Nearly two thirds of the five-year export gain arrived in a single year
Exports of goods and services rose 0.47 trillion dollars in 2022 and then 0.03, 0.15 and 0.10. A series that never falls looks like steady growth until you write it as steps, at which point it looks like one event followed by three quiet years.
- ConstataçãoTrade & Investment
Goods exports to mainland China are lower in 2025 than in 2020
The monthly average rose to 13 billion dollars in 2021, stayed between 12 and 13 for four years, then fell to 9 in 2025, the lowest of the six readings. Imports from China fell further in the same year, so the gap between the two series is at its narrowest while exports are at their weakest.
- PerspectivaTrade & Investment
A foreign ministry cannot spend attention on fifty states, and should not try
California holds 39,431,263 residents and Wyoming 587,618, and each sends the same two senators to Washington. A ministry with a finite diary has to decide which of those two facts it is optimising against, because the rankings they produce are not the same.
- ExplicativoTrade & Investment
What a bilateral tax treaty changes for an investor
A tax treaty is not a tax cut. By the end of this you will know which government gives up what, why the permanent establishment article decides more than the rate articles do, and which taxes a treaty never reaches.
- ExplicativoTrade & Investment
How the trade deficit is computed
Several different subtractions are all called the trade deficit. By the end of this you will know which is which, what the matching entry on the other side of the ledger is, and why a balance is not a profit and loss statement.
- ComentárioTrade & Investment
Trade policy built for containers is missing a trillion dollars of exports
Services exports run at $1.2 trillion on the Bureau of Economic Analysis measure. Tariff schedules, rules of origin and customs lines cannot see them, which means neither the protection nor the retaliation lands where a growing part of the exposure sits.
- ComentárioTrade & Investment
A tariff is borne at home, and the published data closes two of the three answers that say otherwise
Goods imports from China fell from a monthly average of 45 billion dollars in 2022 to 26 in 2025, while imports of goods and services rose from 3.97 trillion to 4.25, so the buying moved rather than came home. No series on this site measures a duty collected or an import price, so whether the exporter cut his own price cannot be tested here at all.
- ConstataçãoTrade & Investment
Goods imports from China fell 11 billion dollars a month in 2025, taking the series below its 2020 level
The monthly average rose from 36 billion dollars in 2020 to 45 in 2022, then fell to 26 in 2025, the lowest of the six readings. Exports in the other direction also ended at their lowest reading, so the narrower bilateral difference comes from buying less rather than selling more.
- ComentárioEconomic Security
The import bill is an input cost, not a scoreboard
The United States imported $4.25 trillion of goods and services in 2025. Reading that total as a loss column is what makes a broad tariff look like a collection from abroad rather than a tax on American production.
- ComentárioTrade & Investment
A trade agreement is worth the terms it fixes and not the exports it is credited with
Exports of goods and services rose at every step from 2021 to 2025, from 2.57 trillion dollars to 3.32, and any instrument in force across those years can be credited with a line that was rising regardless. The same window also prices what an agreement actually sells: the broad dollar index moved 8.7 percent between the low and high of six annual averages, and nobody negotiated that.
- ComentárioCapital Markets
A country should build its export credit agency for speed, because it does not set the terms
The base an export credit is priced against moved 3.40 points on the ten-year Treasury between 2020 and 2025, and the policy rate moved 3.34 points from one year to the next. Those are larger than any margin an agency concedes, which leaves the signing date as the one term it owns, and a fast agency is worth having only if it can also refuse quickly.
- ExplicativoTrade & Investment
What counts as foreign direct investment
Foreign direct investment is a category of financing, not a category of building. By the end of this you will know what the statistic records, why an announced project is not a flow, and why the money's origin is invisible in the activity it pays for.