90% of Export-Import Trade Moves By Sea? Well, That’s Misleading

I heard it again the other day, that 90% of all trade is by ship.

I always cringe when I hear it. I cringe because it’s misleading.

You see, exports and imports basically travel in one of three ways.

They sail, they fly or they go by land, whether by rail, truck or underground pipeline.

To say that 90% sails is only accurate if you are considering tonnage, or the weight of that trade. In the United States, that distortion is exacerbated because you can’t easily calculate the weight of land-based trade, which is not insignificant.

Remember, Canada and Mexico are two of the nation’s top three trade partners, both with long borders.

But what if I told you that six of the nation’s top 10 imports this year flew?

It’s true – once you measure the value, rather than the weight, of that trade.

And that’s a more reasonable and more helpful measure, given that planes simply aren’t going to carry heavy, bulky, less-valuable trade.

Call it an apples-and-oranges comparison. (They largely sail, by the way.)

Not a lot of cars flying in planes.

Or oil, about 58% of which enters this country by land, quite often by pipeline from Canada, by far the United States’ top foreign supplier.

Or, for that matter, motor vehicle parts, almost 73% of which travel via land, largely by truck, from Mexico and Canada.

But about those six top 10 imports that entered the United States when a plane skidded to a halt on a runway at some point this year.

They are:

•  computers;
• cell phones;
• medicines in pill form;
• exports being returned for one reason or another;
• the category of vaccines, plasma and other blood fractions;
• and computer chips.

Those top 10 account for about a third of all U.S. imports.  

On the export side, three of the top 10 fly.

That’s aircraft and parts, not surprisingly, as well as gold and cell phones.

Expand the list to the top 25 and you have to include:

• vaccines, plasma and other blood fractions;
• medical instruments;
• computers;
• medicines in pill form;
• machines for making semiconductors;
• diamonds;
• platinum;
• chemical reagents;
• taps, cocks and valves;
• knee and hip replacements and other orthopedic appliances.

So where are we?

Overall, the figures you should keep in mind when considering U.S. trade are the following:

Air cargo is accounting for 31.53 percent of all U.S. exports this year.

Ground transportation is accounting for 32.98 percent.

And ocean freight is accounting for 35.58 percent of the total.

It’s a little less even on the import side but still nowhere near that 90 percent total that makes me cringe:

For air, the percentage is 27.89 percent.

For land-based trade, that percentage is 28.20.

And for ocean freight, it’s the balance, 43.91 percent of the value of all U.S. trade.

This is by no means at attempt to denigrate the tremendous role our seaports play in U.S. trade. It is, after all, the cliched “heavy lifting.”

But airports and border crossings play an enormous and key role as well.