Trade and Oregon

From the Office of the US Trade Representative:

Oregon

Exports Support Jobs for Oregon Workers

Export-supported jobs linked to manufacturing account for an estimated 5.2 percent of Oregon's total private-sector employment. Nearly one-quarter (23.5 percent) of all manufacturing workers in Oregon depend on exports for their jobs (2009 data latest available).

Exports Sustain Thousands of Oregon Businesses

A total of 4,918 companies exported goods from Oregon locations in 2008. Of those, 4,384 companies, or 89 percent, were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with fewer than 500 employees.

SMEs generated close to one-third (32 percent) of Oregon's total exports of merchandise in 2008.

Foreign Investment Creates Jobs in Oregon

In 2008, foreign-controlled companies employed 46,900 Oregon workers. Major sources of foreign investment in Oregon in 2008 included Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada.

Foreign investment in Oregon was responsible for 3.2 percent of the state's total private-industry employment in 2008.

Oregon Depends on World Markets

Oregon's export shipments of merchandise in 2010 totaled $17.7 billion.

The state's largest market was China. Oregon posted merchandise exports of $4.0 billion to China in 2010, 23 percent of the state’s total merchandise exports. China was followed by Malaysia ($2.7 billion), Canada ($2.4 billion), Japan ($1.4 billion), and Korea ($937 million).

The state's largest merchandise export category is computers and electronic products, which accounted for $7.8 billion of Oregon's total merchandise exports in 2010. Other top merchandise exports are agricultural products ($2.3 billion), machinery manufactures ($1.5 billion), chemicals manufactures ($1.4 billion), and transportation equipment ($827 million).

Oregon's Metropolitan Exports

In 2009, the metropolitan area of Salem exported $325 million in merchandise. Other major metropolitan areas in Oregon that exported in 2009 included Eugene-Springfield ($314 million) and Corvallis ($241 million). A major metropolitan area exporter that included some counties of Oregon was Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton (including some counties in Washington as well) which exported $15.5 billion in merchandise in 2009.

*Data updated June 2011, by the Office of Trade and Industry Information, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.

Now, keep in mind this is from a source that is charged with promoting trade, but most of the facts are straightforward. Now you know.

Free Trade is Good Overall, but Creates Winners and Losers

This is the ultimate message of the theories of trade based on comparative advantage that I try to convey to my students.  In other words, trade makes societies richer, but depending on where production ends up, how groups feel about trade depends on whether they are in an industry in which their country has a comparative advantage.  For example, it may be true that trade makes us wealthier as a society, but tell that to US workers in wood products who are finding more and more of the production ending up occurring in other countries. They key is whether a country can use the benefits from trade to compensate and accommodate (retrain) the losers.

Which, by the way is an argument for the continuation of the timber payments for rural counties in Oregon, but that is a topic for another day.

Anyway, I am still battling a sinus infection and am getting further and further behind so I direct you to a good piece on the gains from trade from Greg Mankiw in The New York Times and a response from Uwe Reinhardt in the Times' Economix Blog.

Good, and thoughtful, stuff.

Oregon's Recovery: Asia and Exports

This article on the strong rebound in economic activity in Asia is good news for Oregon, whose economy exports substantially to the far east - Japan, China, South Korea and Malaysia accounted for about 32% for Oregon's exports in 2007 ($5.3 billion):

Asian economies slumped steeply when exports plunged during the winter, but most of the region is now rebounding quickly, the Asian Development Bank said in a report released on Tuesday.

The multilateral institution, based in Manila, declared that economic growth in China would be 8.2 percent this year, 1.2 percentage points higher than the bank’s forecast in March, and 8.9 percent next year.

The bank raised its 2009 growth forecast for India to 6 percent, from 5 percent predicted in March, and for developing Asian countries as a group to 3.9 percent, from 3.4 percent.

“Developing Asia is proving to be more resilient to the global downturn than was initially thought,” the bank said in a statement accompanying its semiyearly assessment.

A common factor among countries doing better than expected is that they have been able to offset weak exports by stimulating domestic demand more than anyone expected. Chinese banks have lent heavily, while the Indian government has gone on a spending spree.

Here are the total tonnage statistics for the Port of Portland. Note how 2009 is way down, but August was a strong rebound over the preceding spring and summer months. Not a trend yet, but could be a sign of things to come.

Trade and the Oregon Economy

Short on time this AM. From The Oregonian: Oregon Exports Drop. From the US Government (ITA):

"Export-supported jobs linked to manufacturing account for an estimated 7.6 percent of Oregon's total private-sector employment, the fifth highest figure among the 50 states. Over one-fifth (20.5 percent) of all manufacturing workers in Oregon depend on exports for their jobs (2006 data are the latest available.)"

As I have said before, Oregon is badly battered by the national recession, but gets a doubly whammy from the huge global downturn in trade.

From the WTO:

Quarterly world export developments, 2005-08 (2005Q1=100, in current US dollars)



Note: The Oregonian has some nice graphics but they are not on the OregonLive website.