Vietnam and Taiwan lead gains in US market

Vietnam, Taiwan and Canada lead share gains in total product imports to the United States over the past four years, according to Commerce Department data.

Between the first halves of 2018 and 2022, Vietnam’s share went from 1.8 to 3.9%, gaining 2.1 percentage points.

To give dimension to this figure, Vietnam’s gain is equivalent to increasing in just those four years all the exports that Italy directed to the US market in the first half of 2022.

With this, Vietnam climbed from the twelfth to the sixth position among the main foreign suppliers of the United States, reaching sales of 63,900 million dollars from January to June of the current year.

Vietnam’s increased competitiveness is due in part to changes in Asian supply chains (driven by rising production costs in China), its inclusion in trade agreements, and the trade war between China and the United States.

Vietnam is a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TIPAT) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), among other trade agreements.

In the same comparison, Taiwan – a country visited this week by US legislator Nancy Pelosi, in open defiance of China – increased its market share one percentage point, from 1.8 to 2.8%, to add 44.8 billion dollars in the first half of 2022.

Trade in goods between Taiwan and the United States has been on an increasing trend in recent years, and supply chains between the two economies involve a significant amount of production by Taiwanese companies in the People’s Republic of China for export to the United States. Joined.

Meanwhile, Canada’s gain was 0.7 percentage points, from 13 to 13.7% in total merchandise imports to the United States, reaching 222.7 billion dollars.

Mainly to the US market, Vietnam exports telephones, furniture, seats, microphones, shoes and computers; Taiwan ships computers, machine parts, integrated circuits, and telephones, and Canada ships oil, cars, gas, lumber, and auto parts.

Other top gainers in market share were South Korea (0.6 percentage point, to 3.5%), India (0.5 percentage point, to 2.7%), Thailand (0.5 percentage point, to 1.8%), and Switzerland (0.4 percentage point). percentage, to 2.1 percent).

In contrast, China was the country with the largest market loss, going from 20.2% in the first half of 2018 to 16.7% in the first half of 2022 (-3.5 percentage points).

In addition to higher production costs and higher tariffs at US customs, Chinese exporters have faced logistical problems. In the first months of the current year, waiting times were very high on the west coast of the United States (especially in Long Beach), while the effect of Covid-19 in China was seen more clearly in delays in Hong Kong. Kong, Yantiam, Shanghai and Ningbo, among the most relevant places.

The subsequent largest market losers were held by Japan and Germany, which have held fourth and fifth places among the largest suppliers to the United States in recent years.

Japan accumulated a loss of 1.2 percentage points in the referred indicator, going from 4.5 to 5.7%, reaching 73,600 million dollars. In general, the Japanese economy has registered a downward trend in its market share and faces higher production costs.