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Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: a Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 By: Yingying Xu, Ph.D

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Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: a Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 By: Yingying Xu, Ph.D Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: A Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 By: Yingying Xu, Ph.D. Economist [email protected] Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation 1600 Wilson Blvd, Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209 | T 703.841.9000 | F 703.841.9514 | mapi.net PA-105 Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: A Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 By: Yingying Xu, Ph.D., Economist [email protected] PA-105 Over the past two decades, trade in intermediate inputs (goods and services that are incorporated into other products) has been Download growing steadily, accounting for 56 percent of world trade in the MAPI goods and 70 percent in services, and the share varies greatly by App for iPad. country (Figure 1).1 The fragmentation of the production chain across borders and the increasing importance among global manufacturers of outsourcing and for- eign direct investment explain the growth of intermediate trade. As more and more products are effectively “made in the world” and intermediate inputs cross national borders several times before being transformed into a final product, traditional customs- based trade statistics—which record the full value of trade flows at each border crossing (rather than the net value-added)—have become less reliable as FigureFigure 1 –– Trade Trade in IntermediateIntermediate Good Goodss and and Services, Services, Share Share in Total, in Total, 2006* 2006* a measure for understanding the importance of trade as 90 a source of economic growth. With trade-related issues 80 still a considerable cause of friction among major econo- 70 mies, relying on conventional trade statistics can lead 60 to unsuitable decisions for trade policy and multilateral 50 trade negotiations.2 Percent 40 30 The limitations of the official trade statistics have long 20 been recognized by researchers and policymakers. There 10 is increasingly widespread agreement that focusing on 0 the value-added part of trade flows can distinguish the UK U.S. India Brazil China Japan OECD foreign and domestic content in gross exports and better Trade in Intermediate Goods Trade in Intermediate Services reflect the contribution of trade to economic growth and * 2006 for trade in goods and 2005 for trade in services job creation. However, an accurate assessment of value- * 2006 for trade in goods and 2005 for trade in services Source(s):Source(s): Miroudot, Miroudot, Lanz, and Lanz, Ragoussis and (2009)Ragoussis (2009) added in trade has remained a challenge since it requires cross-country cooperation in order to construct a consistent and systematic global input-output (IO) table.3 Truly global analysis of value-added in trade has become possible only in recent years with the development of a worldwide time series of multi-country IO tables, which are expected to be made public in 2012.4 It is important to state that analyzing trade flows and reassigning the value-added contribution to different countries in the supply chain does not change the top-line U.S. trade deficit. The United States imported $1.77 trillion manufacturing goods and exported $1.09 trillion in 2011—incur- ring a $673 billion trade deficit in manufactured goods. Ultimately, the U.S. trade imbalance is the result of the larger macroeconomic imbalance that comes from low saving (particularly large federal budget deficits) relative to investment. The economic adjustment process that would bring the trade deficit back into balance is impeded through currency manipulation, tariffs, import restriction, discriminatory standards-setting, and a host of other impediments to free trade by many countries. These larger issues are not within 1 See Sébastien Miroudot, Rainer Lanz, and Alexandros Ragoussis, “Trade in Intermediate Goods and Services,” OECD Trade Policy Working Paper No. 93, TAD/TC/WP(2009)1, Paris, November 2009, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/14/44437205.pdf. 2 Pascal Lamy, (director-general of the WTO), “‘Made in China’ tells us little about global trade,” Financial Times, January 24, 2011, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4d37374c-27fd-11e0-8abc-00144feab49a.html#axzz1lGL4EAF3. 3 For a detailed discussion about the related challenges, see the National Research Council’s 2006 report, “Analyzing the U.S. Content of Imports and the Foreign Content of Exports,” www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11612. 4 The OECD and the WTO have been collaborating on this issue since early 2009 and have launched the Made in the World initiative and the Global Forum on Trade Statistics. An inter-country IO table covering 50 countries for three benchmark years (1995, 2000, and 2005) is under construction. A worldwide time series of multi-country IO tables called the World IO Database (WIOD) is expected in 2012 as well; it includes 27 EU members and 13 other major economies and runs from 1995 to 2009. Four international organizations (United Nations Statistics Division, Eurostat, WTO, and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) set ambitious goals for 2020, including establishing a specialized satellite account of trade in value-added. Copyright © 2012 MAPI. All rights reserved. 1 Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: A Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 the scope of this paper. Rather, the purpose of the analysis is to disentangle flows of trade and determine who really benefits from the globalization of the production network and by how much. The findings show that the usual suspect, China for example, has not benefited nearly as much as shown in the top-line trade data. First, case studies on popular Apple products are used to illustrate the challenges in measuring international trade on a gross basis. The main feature, though, is to present a more comprehensive picture of global trade by showing how much various countries add value to trade and where global manufacturing output is distributed by region and by production factors. Related policy implica- tions and the challenges that countries at different development stages have to face to prosper in a globalized environment are also discussed. ISSUES WITH GROSS TRADE STATISTICS In a globalized production network, various stages of production are regularly performed in differ- ent countries. At each stage, a producer purchases inputs and adds value that is included in the cost of the next stage of production. As intermediate inputs cross national borders for further process- ing, their values are implicitly counted multiple times in traditional trade statistics that record the full value of trade flows on a gross rather than net basis. This well-known “double counting” problem means that conventional export statistics overstate the domestic value-added content of exports, making it difficult to identify the real contribution that exports can make to economic FigureFigure 2 – Domestic Content Content of ofGross Gross Exports Exports in Goods in Goods and Services and Services growth and employment in a country (Figure 2). By assigning the total commercial value of an import to the 90 last country of origin, import statistics (1) understate 80 the degree to which the importing country’s own firms 70 benefit from trade (because part of their output might be 60 incorporated in the goods); and (2) overstate the degree 50 of competition that comes from one’s trading partners, Percent 40 30 leading to miscalculations about the economic dimension 20 of bilateral trade imbalances. 10 An often-cited case study that clearly illustrates this 0 issue relates to the iPhone, for which the production pri- U.S. Korea Japan China* Taiwan marily takes place outside the U.S. though it is designed Thailand Malaysia Indonesia 2000 2008 and marketed by Apple. The major producers and sup- * Adjusted for re-exports pliers of iPhone parts and components include eight Source(s):* Adjusted for IMF,re-exports “Changing Patterns of Global Trade,” 2011 Source(s): IMF, “Changing Patterns of Global Trade,” 2011 companies from Japan, Korea, Germany, and the U.S.; in 2009, they accounted for 70 percent of the $179 total manufacturing cost. All components were eventually shipped to mainland China for final assembly, where Chinese workers added only $6.50 to each iPhone, less than 4 percent of the total manufacturing cost. However, when a ready-to-use iPhone is exported from China to the U.S., the traditional method of measuring trade records all of the $179 as a U.S. import from China when most of the value should be attributed to parts and components from countries that precede the final assembly. Breaking down the value-added along the manufacturing value chain suggests that the contribution of the product to the bilateral trade imbalance between China and the U.S. has been significantly exaggerated (Table 1).5 Table 1 – 2009 U.S. Trade Balance in iPhones (Millions of USD) China Japan Korea Germany ROW World Gross -1901 0 0 0 0 -1901 Value-Added -73 -685 -259 -341 -543 -1901 *Rest of the world Source(s): WTO, Global Forum on Trade Statistics, April 2011 5 Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert (2010), “How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People’s Republic of China,” Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper No. 257, December 2010, http://adbi.org/files/2010.12.14.wp257.iphone.widens.us.trade.deficit.prc.pdf. Copyright © 2012 MAPI. All rights reserved. 2 Understanding International Trade in an Era of Globalization: A Value-Added Approach Policy Analysis | March 2012 Furthermore, because of the need to link and hold the global production chain together, the service content of manufactured goods has been rising over time. Conventional trade statistics, however, do not reflect the use of services as inputs for manufactured goods destined for overseas markets and thus underplay the role of services in trade. As a result, official trade data will not necessar- ily be able to reveal those sectors of the economy where value-added originates.
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