U.S. Trade Data Reveals an Economy Reshaped by AI, Tariffs, and Shifting Supply Chains
The latest U.S. trade numbers are in, and they tell a story of an economy in transition. In this quarterly trade update, hosts Lalo Solorzano and Andy Shiles welcome back trade-data expert Ken Roberts, joined by Tatiana Panzardi of WorldCity, to break down U.S. Census Bureau trade data through the first six months of 2026.
AI Investment Is Rewriting Import Rankings
Computer imports have surged to approximately $194.4 billion through the first half of 2026, up from roughly $101.4 billion during the same period last year. This dramatic jump is largely driven by servers and infrastructure supporting AI data centers. As a result, computers have overtaken categories historically dominated by oil and automobiles, signaling just how quickly AI investment is reshaping physical trade flows.
Mexico and Asia Take Center Stage
Mexico remains the United States’ leading trading partner, playing a critical role in both imports and exports. Meanwhile, Port Laredo has reclaimed its position as the nation’s top trade gateway by value. Beyond North America, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and other Asian economies are becoming increasingly prominent as companies continue shifting sourcing strategies away from China.
Turning Trade Data Into Business Strategy
Beyond the statistics, the episode asks a question that matters most to trade professionals: what do these numbers mean for sourcing, markets, contracts, and growth strategy? Ken and Tatiana emphasize that trade data isn’t just for economists. Importers, exporters, and business leaders can use commodity, country, and port-level data to identify emerging markets, rethink sourcing decisions, and spot opportunities before competitors do.
Transcript
Andy Shiles (00:05)
we’re going to talk about some numbers. And Lalo, this is one I always, always love to look at statistics and trends and things of that nature. And we have one of my favorite folks on, and he has one of his good folks on, Ken Roberts.
And Tatiana, what is Tati what what is your last name? I’m sorry.
Tat (00:28)
No worries, Panzarty.
Andy Shiles (00:32)
Panzarni? I got it.
Tat (00:33)
Panzardi. Mm-hmm.
Ken (00:33)
And Z R D with a D. Yep.
Andy Shiles (00:36)
I usually botch everybody’s last name, and Lalo has to really get my little backside out of the fire. the the the the one that was worse was Anna Hinojosa Did I say that one right? She
Lalo (00:50)
You did it. You did it. You nailed it.
Ken (00:51)
Yeah, that
Tat (00:51)
Right. Yeah.
Andy Shiles (00:54)
she probably would like that. boy, did I and and I embarrassed myself terribly.
Anyway, okay, so Tatiana and Ken. But low I I wanna t say that this is one that we’ve had some I guess this would be a another quarterly update for us that we try and have Ken on, right?
Ken (01:12)
Yes.
Lalo (01:12)
Yes, so
we do have Ken on every quarter and the numbers came out as soon as I’m I’m actually like watching it and it’s like, okay, now it’s time to invite Ken. And so he
Andy Shiles (01:21)
Yeah.
Lalo (01:22)
you know, so he very graciously told me, Well, they don’t come out till whatever date it was, and and I said, Okay, soon after that then and so here we are, you know, it’s fresh data, fresh numbers. And he said, I’m gonna bring in my top analyst or someone who really is really good with numbers. And so we’re talking to Ken and Tatiana.
From World City. I I don’t know. Do you go by that or US numbers or both or?
Ken (01:46)
World
C World Cities by Fine, but the website is Ustrade Numbers dot com where all the data
Lalo (01:49)
Right.
Ken (01:50)
resides. A lot of it’s public data. So
Lalo (01:53)
Great, great. So if y’all have a chance or an opportunity to go visit that website and check the show notes for links. But we really do appreciate they come in here and they they give us all this great information and we’ve we sometimes joke around and play around with the numbers and what ifs and all that kind of stuff. But Ken, we’ll leave that to you and go ahead and and and and enlighten us with this quarter’s numbers.
Ken (02:19)
Sure, a
Lalo and Andy, thanks for having me again. I’m excited to have Tatiana Panzardi join us here. And she’s I’d say my right hand, that’s exactly what she is. She’s a quick study and has really knows these numbers. And so we’re gonna run through this stuff together. And I thought well and first of all, I should congratulate you guys again on all the progress you’ve made over the years. And I think you’re now ranked number two among podcasts on related international trade. I think that’s right. Is that right?
Lalo (02:48)
Yeah,
yeah. You know, it’s it’s funny, I don’t know. We you need to start you need to start numbers on that too, Ken, ’cause I have no I know I have no
Andy Shiles (02:54)
Yeah.
Lalo (02:55)
idea where they’re getting those numbers from. And so I’m glad I’m glad people are saying that, you know, so so
Ken (03:00)
It
it might be that the guys who are number one just needed to have somebody at number two and they gave it to you guys. Maybe that’s how that works. I don’t know how that works either.
Andy Shiles (03:06)
There you go.
Lalo (03:05)
Yeah, exactly.
It could be. It could be.
Ken (03:11)
But anyway, no, you
guys do a great job and you’ve kept at it f you for four years and
and you and you provide a real service to the community, so it’s great. So I’m gonna I’m gonna turn it over to Tatiana in just a minute. So I thought what we’d do is let Tatiana give you a nice overview of where we are. This is the six month data, that’s why you have us back. It just was released a few days ago. She’ll sort of give you a good 30,000 foot view where we are and what’s going on. And then I’ll she’ll turn over to me and I’m gonna talk about a couple of specific areas. One where sort we’re sort of it’s a race to the future and how you can see that in the data. And other is sort of we’re sort of trying to cling to the past and and how that shows up in the data.
So I’m going to now turn over to Tatiana and let her and both of this all this I think a great deal of this will will be using data on our website, ustradenumbers.com. So I’ll turn it over to Tatiana and let her roll with it.
Andy Shiles (03:55)
And
and before you go into that too quick, let me for our listeners, there’s gonna be some things that we will show. So you need to look at this on the our YouTube channel, right, Lilo?
Lalo (04:07)
Yes.
That’s the best way. Yes. unless you’re watching this on LinkedIn. But if if you are watching this on LinkedIn, it’s really short, one minute clip. So go watch it on YouTube because that that’s where you’ll see the whole visuals here.
Andy Shiles (04:21)
So you’ll get
Ken (04:21)
Yeah.
Andy Shiles (04:21)
to hear this if you’re listening to us on the audio side, and then come back and take a look at it on the YouTube. But Tatiana, why don’t you take us away? I’m looking forward to seeing these strengths. But and one last comment. This is a podcast, folks, that this particular show, you need to listen to this from a strategic perspective. How’s your company doing w in compared to the overall imports and exports of the country and stuff like that? So Tatiana.
You’re up.
Tat (04:52)
Sure. Thank you again guys for having us. I do love the trade data. I anxiously await it every month. So
The latest data through June came out last month, and what we do is we analyze US Census Bureau data that’s collected by Customs and Border Patrol by CBP. I just give that a little bit of background so you know where we’re coming from, and I’m sure Kenneth said it in the past. But the best way to say
things and sum things up are always with a picture, and thank you for referencing to check this out on YouTube because then you can really see these tables and graphics and understand that full picture. And right now.
What we’re looking at is US trade is up through the first six months, and we’re looking at dollar value, which is the best way to compare all of our airports, seaports, and border crossings. It’s up the first six months, 5.04 percent. exports have been up this year, right now they’re up 15.19 percent. So that’s US exports increasing. And Ken will go into that a little bit when he talks about the deficit. while imports are actually year to date, they’re slightly.
I will make a note they were down a little bit more through the month of May, but this month of June imports increased 28.84%. So just the month of June really increased those imports and that.
decrease total for the year to date even though slightly down is faring a little bit better and that’s what you can see here in this graphic right where you’re looking at the very bottom one is year to date June through 2026. So accumulating those first six months you can see the growth in US trade happening through that growth we can tie it back to obviously our exports are up and our imports are slightly down but you’ll see Ken will talk about those particular imports
And commodities there. What I should mention as well here is within those airport, seaports, and border crossings, right now what we do are showing is that Port Laredo is again number one as a U.S. airport seaport. Last year, number one and number two were JFK and Chicago O’Hare were were the two leading ports in the U.S. Before that it was Laredo. So Laredo, again.
Is number one and I’ll show you what that looks like. But I referenced that just to get into the mindset of what’s happening on our national level. JFK is slightly is is down, so it’s a little bit knocked off of that top list. So when we’re looking at all of that trade, I’ll show you how those ports then stack up for the total year to date.
And then if Ken has any comments, I’m sure he’ll here he’ll you will jump in as well. So again, Chicago is still ranking highly among US airports, seaports, border crossings. JFK, year to date, is number three. Port of Los Angeles, number four, port of Houston. Again, this is year-to-date by value, all the ports themselves in the US. And when we’re looking at all these different ports, just for the month of June, you’ll see that there’s a shift.
With
Port of Los Angeles now ranking in the top three, and again, this is like I said, by value. If we’re looking at tonnage, it would be different. I’m not looking at containerized data or anything else. This is all by U.S. value. When we’re looking shifting over to our US trade partners, I’m sure you guys have heard a few times now, Mexico is definitely our number one U.S. trade partner, not just by imports but also by exports. So it’s a trifecta that’s happening
Lalo (08:32)
Okay.
Tat (08:35)
with Mexico 1-1-1.
Of course. Number two right now is Canada, then China, year to date. But what is also happening in this is we’re having some other Asian nations come in. In the past, we’ve had Germany as one of our higher-ranking trade partners.
But you’ll see that shift is happening here in Mexico, Canada, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan. And Ken recently wrote a Forbes article about this as well that I would reference. And I won’t go too much into it. I do recommend you go to Forbes.com and Ken Roberts, and you can read a little bit more on that there as well.
Andy Shiles (09:15)
Well, I will say that I’m kind of surprised. One, two,
three, four, five, six, s the number seven is South Korea. They’ve jumped up above Germany.
That that’s
Tat (09:28)
Definitely.
Andy Shiles (09:29)
moving up. I’m sorry, go ahead. I’m I I just just like I was surprised in that usually you you’ve got China, Mexico, and Canada being the top three and they interchange at times with Mexico’s definitely dominating right now. And then it’s Japan and Germany, and they usually trade off on number four or five position, but I’m surprised that South Korea is up in there.
Ken (09:57)
Yeah, a lot of cars and a lot of energy. Yeah.
Andy Shiles (09:59)
Yeah. So
Tat (10:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s
definitely one thing.
Ken (10:01)
In a free trade agre in a free
trade agreement.
Andy Shiles (10:05)
yeah. Okay. Sorry, I didn’t mean to I was just
Ken (10:09)
That’s good.
Tat (10:11)
No, no, no. No worries, no worries. So I think, you know, there that’s the lay of the the top trade partners, the top ports. I can break it down further and and go over what’s what’s going on with the ports themselves right now. And we are seeing a big increase on ports are obviously moving particular commodities.
In the US, which is AIR. We’re seeing some winners there, of course. Venezuela was one of our fastest growing trade partners. But now we’re looking at other Asian nations, including Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. And then we’re seeing, of course, across the border in Texas some growth in right there in El Paso, Laredo, El Paso as in the at the Isleta Saragosa International Bridge. Then we have Santa Teresa growing as well, Detroit and El.
Paso bridge itself, those are the five, you know, fastest growing bridges for ports, seaports, Houston, Corpus Christi, Beaumont, Texas, New Orleans, and Port of South Louisiana. Those five are the fastest growing and that’s really all energy.
as as you guys are familiar. for the air, the fastest growing since I gave you the two other modes of transportation. We have LAX, DFW, Anchorage, San Fran, and Cleveland Hopkins are the largest growing airports right now in the US. So a big mix of what’s happening with these different trade partners as well, as you saw, because South Korea, of course, is growing and some of these ports do that, do that business as well.
Andy Shiles (11:46)
Excellent.
Ken (11:48)
You ready for me? All right. So I’m going to talk about I’m going to play off of what Tatana talked about. So she mentioned that she showed that O’Hare, I think, was the busiest airport to mention, that the busiest port in the United States last year. And JFK was number two. And that’s the first time ever an airport has finished number one for many, many years, Port of Los Angeles, number one.
and then along came President Trump and the tariffs and that upended that. And at that same time Laredo had been growing as a a gateway for trade with you with Mexico and now handles about forty percent of that trade. And so Laredo was elevated to the top and Laredo’s trade grew handsomely last year, but O’Hare and Kennedy grew very rapidly. so I’ll skip what was going on at Kennedy, but it largely involved gold trade, and I think we talked about that probably last time if I had to guess.
And O’Hare was two things. One, it was GLP1 drugs. The numerical drug doesn’t just help you with diabetes, but helps you lose weight and get your cholesterol under control and make you taller and richer and all that all that kind of good stuff. So they those pouring in from Ireland all by into JFK, into I’m sorry, O’Hare. But I’m going to talk about computers and sort of what I call the race to the future, and then I’ll move on to passenger vehicle trade and that sort of clinging to the past. So let me share.
let me share my screen for a minute here and i’ll probably keep it up for a while so computer imports
Andy Shiles (13:21)
Wow.
Ken (13:22)
look at that growth
So that’s I’m on the month of June. Let me switch to year to date because it’s just it’s sort of where we should be. So year to date, look at that. So from about 2013 to 2023, even 2024, moderate growth, relatively consistent, right? So along comes artificial intelligence, and along comes multi-billion dollar investments by Meta and
so you know google facebook microsoft oracle and whoever I’m forgetting Amazon and they’re making these multi-billion dollar investments and so in this category called computers is servers and so that growth from 24 six months of the year to 25 I think is about 40 45% something like that. And you’re thinking holy smokes and then you look at this year it’s almost doubling it’s almost doubling okay
Andy Shiles (14:15)
almost double. Yeah. What
what we’re looking at just for our listeners is that the imports of computers year over year, June twenty twenty five versus June twenty twenty six.
Ken (14:29)
Yeah this
is year to date. So first six months of this year compared to the first yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Same story.
Andy Shiles (14:33)
got the first six months. I’m sorry. So it’s a hundred and one point
four billion last year and it’s a hundred and ninety-four point four four billion this year. my gosh. That’s the obviously you’re talking about the race of the future, hence the AI
Ken (14:48)
The race to the future.
Andy Shiles (14:51)
data centers and all that kind of stuff going on, right?
Ken (14:52)
And we’re getting some
pushback on some of those data centers, right? We’re getting some of that pushback on some of those, but these things are massive. And I don’t know about you guys, but I use AI every day.
Andy Shiles (15:03)
Mm-hmm.
Ken (15:04)
whether it’s to settle a bar bet or to understand how to help deal with a health problem,
Lalo (15:07)
You’re right.
Ken (15:08)
whatever it might be, because it’s it’s sort of like Google on steroids, right? You used to ask Google and get 10 possible answers. Now you ask AI and you get the answer. Now you gotta check it and research a little bit still, but it’s pretty amazing, right? What it can do.
So, what did that cause? So, this is last year. So, when we think about what we import into this country, for the last quarter century, it’s been one of two things that were number one. It was either oil or it was cars. Last year, for the first time, it was computers. More valuable than the oil, all the importing we all the oil imports and more valuable than car imports as well. It’s really
and look at cell phones number
Andy Shiles (15:46)
That’s huge.
Ken (15:47)
three. So it’s pretty shocking. So that’s how significant a sea change this is. It’s not small.
Lalo (15:52)
And Ken w w we’re talking computers in general, not necessarily just consumer pr computers, right? We’re talking about servers, we’re talking about like the w w
Ken (15:59)
It’s yeah, it’s laptops,
it’s tablets, it’s can desktops, it’s but it’s servers is what’s really happening.
Lalo (16:04)
It’s I I think
that I think that that jump was definitely servers, you know, so yeah. Right, right. Okay.
Ken (16:09)
no, it’s almost all servers. It’s all AI related to build these big data centers. That’s what that’s what’s
going on there. It’s all AI to build data centers.
I was
talking about. Computers and there’s there’s all of our imports in 2025, right? Computers are number one for the first time ever, as I mentioned. And then going to year to date, now it’s computers and cell phones. So again, the race to the future, right?
More than passenger vehicles, more than oil. And computer parts are right there around the corner. So now let’s switch to another tab here. And this is share this tab instead. Okay. And so there’s the ranking of the ports, which Tatiana shared with you. And then here’s the ranking of countries. And this is what I was going to tell you that Taiwan is almost at the same percentage of US trade as China. Think about that. China used to have, before the trade war, China was about 18% of all our US imports. And
Andy Shiles (17:01)
I was gonna
say though it’s I was gonna ask on your computers would that include chips or chips of step? Okay. Okay.
Ken (17:08)
it would be a different category. Different category. Yeah, and I don’t let
me see if I can I I’ll I’ll maybe on a f let me see if I can see it on here. Let’s go back to this tab here and see if we can see the computer. There’s computer parts and let me see if I can find computer there’s computer chips right there. Okay.
Andy Shiles (17:24)
Okay. All right.
So of all imports that’s one point five percent of all imports. That’s
Ken (17:31)
Correct.
Twenty-six billion dollars of that. And then where’s com where’s computer parts, another seventy-one billion, and computers another hundred and ninety-four billion.
Lalo (17:40)
Well, three out of the top ten are something having to do with computers.
Ken (17:44)
And I mean, I hate to say these days you can include cars in that because if I don’t know about your car, but cars are compute you know roaming computers now, right?
Lalo (17:49)
Yeah. Exactly.
Ken (17:52)
So all right, so that’s sort of the the race to the future. How it’s reordered, it’s sort of reordered what our top exports, top imports are. It’s had an impact on the trade deficit because that has flooded in. it’s had an impact on you know top port and so forth. So let’s now look at another category, and that’s gonna be
passenger vehicles. Okay. This is imports of passenger vehicles. And what you notice is that in 2024, it was a record first six months of the year, 107, first time over 100 billion dollars in six months. But since then, 25 and 26, those imports are down. Now, why is that? Because we put tariffs on those imports. Because we want to have more cars manufactured in the US and sold in the US, right? That’s the goal.
But at the same time, we put tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel, which are gonna be used in those cars. And that’s why you saw the the average price of let’s see if I have that clip here. Here we go. So new record, average new car prices surpass fifty thousand dollars.
Because you’ve got you’re blocking them on the import side and you’re making it more expensive to produce them on the domestic side. So let’s now then take a look back at this slide here. So that’s so for the last two years, those have gone down from 107 billion down to 80, 84, almost 85 billion dollars.
Tat (19:19)
I’ll mention one thing. when we’re looking at these at these commodities, we’re looking at the four digit HS code, which is the harmonized tariff code, which is what we’re looking at with AIBA tariffs, right? that’s
Ken (19:30)
Really.
Tat (19:31)
that numerical system. So that’s why you see the computer chips and computers all apart. they could fall under, I believe it’s HS code 87 at the two-digit level, Ken. Is that right for computers?
Ken (19:42)
Yes.
Tat (19:43)
So they fall under 87, but we break them down further than that.
Ken (19:46)
Or
So this just shows you the the drop month by month. But here’s the countries where we get our cars from. And Mexico is number one, Japan number two, South Korea, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom. And rem remember those countries. So
because it’ll be important for a second. So those are the countries gonna be affected by this drop in imports. And as you can see, this chart here, this for yeah, for those who don’t see this, that this chart shows the top 10 and what their change is year over year. And so Mexico’s down 15 percent, almost more than Japan’s down 11 percent, South Korea down almost four and a half percent, Canada down almost 14.5 percent, Germany down 20 percent, United Kingdom down 17 percent. So it’s across the board. the decrease.
In those imports from all those countries. And here’s the ports that are involved. That’s what I was going to show you a minute ago, but it looks like those pages were in the spin mode. So these are the ports year to date that are the biggest ports. So Baltimore, Detroit Ambassador Bridge, and the question may be is the new Gordy Howe Bridge going to be separated in the data? I I begged them to make a request that that be done, but I don’t think that’s going to be done. So I think in the future we’re going to have to change this name from Detroit Ambassador Bridge, which was the privately owned bridge for many years.
And it was a great private bridge to own because that’s how things came in from Canada, in and out of Canada. Now there’s another big bridge that Canada essentially built called the Gordy Howe Bridge. As many of you know, he was the star for the Detroit Red Wings for many years, so it was a very appropriate name for a bridge from Canada to the US. Port of Brunswick, Georgia is a huge vehicle port. and then Port Laredo, all the Mexican vehicles, then Winemian, California. And as you will see.
All these are experiencing a decline. Baltimore down 17%, Detroit down 13%, Brunswick down fifteen, sixteen percent, Rio down almost fourteen percent, Wa Nemee down about nine percent. They’re all they’re all experienced a decline in the imports of those vehicles because because of the tariffs. And again, on some level that was the goal. see if here we go. So here’s here’s Baltimore.
There’s Detroit. we’re on years, let’s go to year today so you can see it. So Detroit’s not doing so terribly. This is overall trade, not just vehicles.
Ken (22:06)
So this is exports. We’re going to switch over to exports. Let me see if I’m just hoping Brunswick would have showed yet. here we go. Here’s Brunswick. So Brunswick, the reason I wanted to show you Brunswick, because Brunswick really depends on exports, imports, and exports of cars. And you can see what’s happened in Brunswick. It’s just on the border with Florida, south of Savannah. so big drops in in those. this is all trade, but it really depends on on vehicles, and I can show you that if we scroll down our page past some of this data. So
On exports, 82%, 80% sorry, is passenger vehicles. So really dependent on that and on imports.
Lalo (22:49)
Yeah.
Ken (22:50)
When the year to date here is 77%. So they really, really depend on those vehicles. Hueneme is not quite as dependent, but you can see their trade has suffered a little bit year to date, although it’s caught up a little bit in June. That was what I switched from. But let’s scroll all the way down here to their exports, passenger vehicles are 20. so for the year to date, it ain’t number one anymore. They’re down to 12%. Okay.
And if you look at it last year, I’m gonna switch to last year’s data. they were at f almost 15%, so they’re they’ve lost a little ground there on in in terms of relative value with all exports. But look at the import side. 80% of their imports
Andy Shiles (23:34)
Yeah.
Ken (23:34)
are passenger vehicles, so those tariffs are really hurting some of these smaller ports. But let’s look at exports then. Let me share that tab. And let’s look at what happened. So at the same time our imports are down, our exports are down, okay.
So that’s not good news. And let’s look at we’ll skip down to by the way, this is kind of interesting. Here’s COVID, by the way. I always like to show you where COVID is.
So who’s our market for passenger vehicles? Remember those countries we’re looking at for imports of vehicles? They’re some of the same countries: Canada, Germany, Mexico, China, South Korea, some of the same countries. And those exports are down because at the same time we’re bringing fewer in, we’re sending fewer out to those country those countries. So Canada down 13.5%, Germany down slightly, two percent, Mexico’s up, South Korea’s up, China down
Forty percent, UAE down fifty fifty two percent.
So you’re seeing some problems there, and that’s gonna affect you know these these ports that I already went through that you saw on the import side, they’re the same ports. So in case some of your listeners or may not or viewers may not know, certain ports specialize in vehicles. It takes a special kind of ship, I call it a roll-off, roll off, roll on, roll off ship that opens sort of underneath, if you will, as opposed to containers on top. and so those kind of so Winemi and Brunswick are two in particular.
Jacksonville to some extent. Detroit’s a bridge, obviously. so that gives you a sense of what’s going on there. So
Let me see what this tab is. This tab is, I don’t know what this tab’s for. I see. Here we go. So I think I’ve gone through this already. So that’d be my sort of end point is that you know, at the same time, there was an article. I don’t know how many of your viewers or listeners pay attention to read the Wall Street Journal, but they just had an article in the journal yesterday talking about how good the the US war with Iran was.
Because what has it done to gas prices? It’s lifted gas prices. What is China making a full bore push on is electric vehicles. And we have now eliminated the Biden era benefits to selling those vehicles in this country. So electric vehicle exports from China in the first six months of this year. Remember, I showed you our vehicle export, they’re down. Their electric vehicle exports are up 120% in the first six months of the year.
that’s a phenomenal increase. And I’ll give you a few other data points from the article. So they they make twenty-nine, thirty percent of the EV sales in the world now.
And more than half of all the cars in China are EVs. Now, know if you know this, but for many years, GM’s largest market for car sales, including the US, was China. We sell a lot of cars in China. but we’re we’re we’re we’re losing that. So EV sales have been falling in the US because of the changes in the tax law. And so we’re sort of making our bet on on
Cars using gasoline and oil, right? And those are leading exports. Let me see if I have yeah, let me let me share it. I’ll share this chart with you quickly because it’s kind of a helpful chart to sort of think about this. I think it’s this one. So this is our exports, right? So civilian aircraft and parts. That’s mainly a Boeing story. And for most of the last 25 or more years, that’s been the leading export from this country. But oil is now our number two export.
Now, as more and more people make the conversion to EV or hybrid vehicles, that’s not great for us, but we have changed the geopolitical dynamic with all this energy that we’re exporting now, right? We’re the largest producer and I think exporter of oil of any country in the world now. Which, if you’re as old as I am, and at least a couple of people on this are, we remember when there was virtually no oil. I mean, not a lot of oil produced in this country, right? We were s enormously dependent on that
Andy Shiles (27:47)
Right.
Ken (27:48)
oil. We now are exporting.
Exporting enormous amounts of oil, we’re exporting enormous amounts of gasoline. And after gold, which is another story, the number five export through June is LNG, natural gas LNG, right?
Andy Shiles (28:00)
Natural gas. Yeah.
Ken (28:03)
and that’s
That’s where we showed we could really pivot and Europe showed it could pivot because a lot of those exports of that LNG are going from the Gulf Coast here over into Europe. Because why? Because Europe stopped accepting pipeline gas from Russia when the European War started. But anyway, so that’s a quick look at how as we race to the future with AI with all these computers, and we race we sort of try to cling to the past with oil and gas powered cars, we’re how how
Technology can point the way forward sometimes, but our politics sometimes will run counter to that. So I’m that’s what I’ve got. Now see we’re pretty much bumping up against our time here. So I did pretty well on the time, I think.
Andy Shiles (28:45)
Well, the one thing too on this last chart, I I noticed that the was it the number seven is the low value shipments, which would that’d be your e commerce type
Ken (29:00)
Yeah.
Andy Shiles (29:02)
thing that’s as far as exports go. So there’s people buying you know, US products that’s being shipped out. So that’s that’s interesting.
Ken (29:12)
Yeah, yeah.
Andy Shiles (29:14)
So, you know, one of the things I was looking at too is figuring out and the general rule seems to be that for every billion dollars of trade equates to ten thousand jobs. So when we’re talking about these numbers, let’s bring it back around. figuring up with what you were saying year to date, so far we’ve got about twenty nine point nine, almost thirty million jobs tied into imports and exports.
into as far as the effect here. So that’s all you know, that’s quite a bit.
Ken (29:51)
There’s
there’s a slight chance the US will top six trillion dollars in trade this year. Which I mean, we just topped five trillion a few years ago. And I was
Tat (30:00)
Mm-hmm.
Ken (30:00)
stunned when we did that. Because I’ve I mean when I started, two trillion was a big deal. I’m just I guess I’m aging myself, but two trillion is a big deal, then three, then four, then five. I mean, it’s it’s amazing.
Tat (30:10)
We
have we have record trade this year and June has been a record month for trade for the US. Highest trade month, June. This this June.
Ken (30:18)
Some of that’s some of that’s inf
inflation, some of it’s related to energy pricing, but and some of it and a lot of it’s related to all these computer servers. Yeah. And gold. The gold trade,
Andy Shiles (30:26)
Well and
Ken (30:27)
that’s another story.
Tat (30:28)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Shiles (30:28)
yeah,
well and and the other is some some of the new trade deals that have been agreed to and and some of that is coming through. So here’s where I was gonna say for our listeners you can get kind of bogged down and it’s like kinda lose it on some of these when we’re talking about numbers, but folks, which one of the things you need to look at, especially if you are in the executive level
small business owner and all that. What what what’s all this mean? This means is even from a legal perspective, you’re you’re dealing with contracts and you need to look to see where the hot buttons are for the countries. If we’re exporting, you know, what are countries importing? What do they want? And from a US perspective, if you’re in the in some of these commodities, you look at it, you need to be looking at breaking into some of those countries
and expanding your markets. On the flip side of that is your sourcing or your importing. What is the what is it that US companies are needing? One of the things that I noticed, Ken, on your your list of top commodities that are imports, we were talking about so much in I think Lila, you said like the top three of the top ten are computer related with the chips and and the computers and the hardware. And then you got cell phones, which I would think
Some of these data centers are having, you know, cellular communications probably in that kind of realm, but also
Ken (32:01)
And that category includes
includes parts that make cellular phones work, by the way. And it’s it’s a big piece
Andy Shiles (32:05)
Right. And
Ken (32:06)
of it.
Andy Shiles (32:07)
it and it’s huge. Well, one of the other things too is I noticed on that was the insulated cable was a big category. Well, these data centers, I mean, you’re laying out lots of cable and connecting all these servers together and all that. So all that comes into play. If you are a small business owner, a medium business owner or whatever, and you’re looking for markets.
This
is some of the stuff that you you need to be tapping into.
Ken (32:37)
right? Yeah.
Andy Shiles (32:38)
yeah, try that that that’s a better way of putting it. Yeah. so well, Ken, Tatiana, thank you so much for all of this. This is, I mean, there is so much more into this. You definitely need to look at this on from a YouTube perspective. Secondly, we’ll have the links to Ken and Tatiana and their company
in our show notes because this is something again, look at it. I highly, highly this isn’t like a commercial for you guys in a sense, but I’m like, seriously, w World City Publishing, it is definitely worth your time and effort to look at it. And Ken, you’re still writing articles for some folks aren’t for Forbes, yeah. So
Ken (33:24)
Forbes website. Yep. All right. I write supposed to write five
a month. I don’t always get to five, but I I posted one this morning on the trade deficit and how
Hard it is to eliminate the trade deficit and how
Andy Shiles (33:37)
Mm-hmm.
Ken (33:37)
it’s sort of bedeviled many, many presidents before President Trump. And he’s he’s the one that certainly put a lot of energy into it and you know pulled all the tools out of the toolbox he can think of. And but as long as America is such a big economy and we want so much stuff, it it’s tough. You know, I mean it it’s it’s usually a sign of a robust economy when the deficit is going up, sadly, but it is the truth. So I wrote sort of how how it’s gone up the last four months in a row.
So yeah.
Andy Shiles (34:04)
Phenomenal. Phenomenal.
Well, thank you so much, you two, for being on with us. Lalo, any closing thoughts from you?
Lalo (34:13)
No, none at all. I mean I just I really enjoy these. I like to just sit back and listen
Andy Shiles (34:17)
yeah.
Lalo (34:18)
to all of this ’cause it’s very fascinating and and I know if we had two or three hours to to talk about this, we still would run out of time. But th this
Tat (34:26)
yeah.
Lalo (34:27)
is really good update and amazed that you’re able to put all this in thirty minutes or so. So thank you very much, both of you, Tatiana and Ken. And you know, we really appreciate you coming on our show.
Ken (34:39)
No, it’s been a great time. Thanks for
Tat (34:40)
Thank you for telling
Ken (34:41)
having us.
Tat (34:41)
us. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Andy Shiles (34:42)
Folks,
like us, share us. Thank you for your listenership and with that, have a great day.
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