In 2022, U.S. Exports Could Top $2,000,000,000,000 For First Time

U.S. exports might top $2 trillion for the first time this year, though the total won’t be revealed until early February.

U.S. imports, on the other hand, first topped $2 trillion in 2008. Imports have yet topped $3 trillion.

Based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, U.S. exports will end up either slightly above $2 trillion — $2,000,000,000,000 — or slightly below. Currently, U.S. exports are increasing at an annual rate of better than 21%.

You can learn more about each of the nation’s top exports by reading posts from my recently completed series.

This series follows similar series I did for the countries that were, at the time, the nation’s top 10 trade partners and one for the airports, seaports and border crossings that were, at the time, the nation’s top 10 “ports.”

The first article in the export series focused on an overview of the top 10 exports. The second looked at the top 10 countries that are markets for U.S. exports and how they differ from our overall trade partners, which would include imports.

The third was about refined petroleum, the top export; followed by one on oil, which ranks second; natural gas, which includes LNG and ranks third; the primary commercial jet category, which ranks fourth; passenger vehicles, at No. 5; computer chips, which actually rank seventh, though at the time this series started, ranked sixth; vaccines, plasma and other blood fractions, which ranked seventh when the series started; motor vehicle parts, the No. 8-ranked U.S. export; medicines, largely in pill form, which ranked No. 9 when the series began but had slipped to No. 10 by the release of the September data; and medical instruments, which ranked 10th at the start of the series but 11th now, falling behind gold earlier in the year.

I have chosen to ignore the low-value shipment category, which, while important, is relatively opaque in governments data. It consists primarily of e-commerce as well as courier shipments from the likes of UPS, FedExFDX
and other similar carriers but with little information about what the products are.

As you can see from the top 10 list above, U.S. exports are now increasingly driven by petroleum-based products — gasoline and other refined petroleum products, oil and natural gas. Today, they account for 17.1% of the value of all U.S. exports.

That was not the case when U.S. exports first topped $1 billion, in 2006. The top three were aircraft and parts; computer chips; and passenger vehicles. Refined petroleum ranked sixth but neither oil nor natural gas made the top 10.

The balance of the top 10 that year, in 2006, were No. 4 motor vehicle parts; No. 5 computers; No. 6 refined petroleum; No. 7 computer parts; No. 8 medical instruments; No. 9 medicines, largely in pill form; and No. 10 parts for heavy machinery.

While the top 3 differed completely, seven of the top 10 when I started the series were in the top 10 when U.S. exports first topped $1 billion.

What has fallen out? Computers, computer parts and parts for heavy machinery.

What has replaced them? Oil and natural gas, for starters, the former the result of the effective end of the prohibition of oil exports, which had been enacted in the Carter Administration during the Arab Oil Embargo, and ended during the Obama Administration., and the latter the result of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.