Series

No.

417 B7

45

(Z)

3

(Z)

13

17

1724

40

56

(Z)

∞1112

(Z)

(Z)

397

(Z)

NNN

(Z)

NN

383

Z Less than $500,000 or net minus (-) of less than $500,000.

1 Beginning 1964, Department of Defense transactions estimated.

2 Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Association, and International Finance Corporation.

Net new grants not adjusted for settlements for postwar relief and other grants under agreements, and net new credits exclude prior grants converted into credits, which were as follows: July 1945-December 1955, $2,198 million; 1956-66, $491 million. Repayments on these settlements included in net new credits.

Developed countries include Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of South Africa, and countries of Eastern and Western Europe except Spain, Yugoslavia, and Malta. Developing countries include all other countries.

5 Outstanding credits on Dec. 31, 1970, totaled $27,568 million representing net credits extended since organization of Export-Import Bank, Feb. 12, 1934, less chargeoffs, and net adjustments due to exchange rates ($989 million), and excluding World War I debts. The amount repayable in dollars at U.S. Government option was $20,131 million; the remainder was repayable in foreign currencies, commodities, or services, at the option of the borrowers.

Equivalent value of currencies still available to be used, including some funds advanced from foreign governments and after loss by exchange rate fluctuations ($1,334 billion), was $1,446 billion on December 31, 1970.

7 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.

Separate data became available during 1954. For earlier periods, data shown as Indochina.

U 187-352. General note.

Statistics on foreign trade of the United States are among the most useful, revealing, and, in spite of their deficiencies, reliable series relating to the growth of the American economy. This situation is especially true for the first 100 years of the Republic. The United States was more heavily dependent upon foreign markets and sources at that time than it has been in the 20th century. For a fuller discussion of the usefulness of such data, see G. G. Huebner's review of foreign trade of the United States in Emory Johnson, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C., 1915. This study has an excellent bibliography of material on foreign trade available at that time. Since the first appearance of the Statistical Abstract of the United States in 1878, official time series on foreign trade have been presented in that publication and it is, therefore, cited here as a primary source for certain of the foreign trade data shown.

Foreign trade data are subject to a variety of special statistical problems relating to compilation, publication, coverage, valuation, and classification as to composition and direction. The record of gold movements, in particular, has been found to be subject to considerable error owing to its peculiar qualities which make it both a useful form of money and a likely candidate for smuggling (see R. G. D. Allen and J. Edward Ely, International Trade Statistics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1953; and Oskar Morgenstern, Validity of International Gold Movement Statistics, Special Paper in International Economics No. 2, International Finance Section, Princeton University Press, November 1955).

The first Congress of the United States provided for the compilation of statistics on foreign trade, and the Treasury Department, through its customhouses, began keeping a record of foreign trade beginning August 1, 1789. According to the Treasury Department, government records of the total values of our imports for 1790 to 1820 are fairly complete but do not show, except for a few years, the articles imported. They show, however, domestic exports by articles, but do not distinguish the values of merchandise from coin and bullion imported and exported, nor the value of the commerce with each country (see Statistical Tables Exhibiting the Commerce of the United States With European Countries From 1790-1890, Washington, D.C., 1893, p. vii).

Compared with currently compiled statistics, these earliest records left a great deal to be desired. J. Edward Ely, writing on the historical development of foreign trade statistics, observes that:

The United States may be said to have had an adequate set of import and export statistics only since about 1821. Prior to that time no information was compiled on the amount of imports of articles which were free of duty upon importation into the United States. No value figures were compiled on imports subject to specific rates of duty and the dollar value for imports subject to ad valorem rates of duty, although apparently accurate, was compiled only as a total with no information on how much of each commodity was imported. Existing figures on the total dollar value of imports during the years 1795 to 1801 were apparently estimated at the time by the Secretary of the Treasury, and the figures for 1790-1794 and from 1802-1820 were apparently estimated many years later. (Allen and Ely, cited above, p. 269.)

Douglass North observes that the 1789-1820 figures were "officially overhauled and published in the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on Finances for 1835" (see North's "United States

Balance of Payments, 1790-1860," Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 24, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1960). In employing the early records, North found a number of deficiencies, and users of figures for 1790-1820 should note his revised figures and consider the criticisms in the appendix to his paper. The adequacy of the early records, of course, depends upon the use made of them. Some of the earliest records were not published officially and scholars have had to depend on information from A View of the United States of America, published by Tench Coxe in 1794, giving official documents for 1790, 1791, and 1792; A Statistical Manual for the United States of America, by Samuel Blodget, Jr.; A Statistical View of Commerce of the United States of America, by Timothy Pitkin, New Haven, 1835 (reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation in 1967), presenting many tables obtained directly from the Treasury books; and Statistical Annals by Dr. Adam Seybert, covering the period 1789-1818, and giving statistics of population, commerce, public land, etc. Such data as were published annually for 1790-1820 were brought together later in U.S. Congress, American State Papers, Class 4, "Commerce and Navigation," two volumes, Gales and Seaton, Washington, D.C., 1832 (vol. I) and 1834 (vol. II).

In 1820, Congress passed a law to provide for obtaining accurate statements of the foreign commerce of the United States and, at the same time, established the Division of Commerce and Navigation in the office of the Register of the Treasury. It required collectors of customs to compile and transmit annual reports to that office showing the detailed trade with foreign countries and the navigation employed therein. Beginning with 1821, these reports were consolidated and published annually in Commerce and Navigation of the United States.

Foreign trade statistics published by the Federal Government after 1820 are regarded as superior to those for the earlier period but still subject to some deficiencies, notably with respect to valuation of imports. They also suffered in respect to coverage of overland exports (see North, cited above, app. II, and Allen and Ely, cited above, pp. 270–271).

The Civil War introduced two special difficulties. For the last three quarters of fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, certain ports of the Southern States failed to make reports, and it was necessary for the Treasury Department to introduce estimates of the exports of cotton by the Southern States during the war based on records of the main recipient countries in Europe (see Treasury Department, Statistics of the Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1864, p. 39).

The second difficulty was introduced in 1862 when the United States abandoned the specie backing for its money. The dollar fluctuated against foreign currencies and gold with each reverse or success of the northern forces. While imports and reexports continued to be valued in specie (dollars of a fixed parity to gold), since these goods were initially expressed in foreign currencies, domestic exports were recorded in "mixed values"-partly gold dollars and partly dollars of a fluctuating value-from 1862 until the resumption of specie payment in 1879. These deficiencies were recognized at the time both officially by the Director of the Bureau of Statistics (established in the Treasury Department in 1866) and by private observers (see, for example, Louis Blodgett's criticism and evaluation of U.S. foreign trade statistics in the early 1860's in The Commercial and Financial Strength of the United States as Shown in the Balances of Foreign Trade and the Increased Production of Staple Articles, King and Baird, Philadelphia, 1864). Treasury statisticians sought to adjust mixed currency values to specie values of total imports and

exports and some other broad aggregates. The adjustments, however, were not carried through completely to country and commodity detail, and only a limited number of domestic export series are available for 1862-1879 in terms of "specie values" while the domestic export figures for countries and individual commodities are only available in mixed currency values.

When Congress established the Bureau of Statistics in 1866, it also specified that the kinds, quantities, and values of all articles exported and imported should be distinctly set forth in the statistical accounts, by countries of destination or of shipment, and that the exports of articles produced or manufactured in the United States should be shown separately from the reexports of foreign articles imported into the United States. Prior to 1866, only annual statistics of the foreign commerce of the United States were published; since then, monthly statistics have also been published.

The first report of the Director of the Bureau of Statistics in 1867 contains several pointed criticisms of the previous statistics, and the subsequent annual reports of Foreign Commerce and Navigation emphasized the shortcomings of the figures presented, especially the difficulty which became important in the post-Civil War period of reporting on trade with Canada in the absence of any mandatory reporting requirement on the railroads (see, for example, the Annual Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics on the Commerce and Navigation of the United States for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1877, 1878, pp. xii-xiii, table showing ". . . the imports into Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, from the United States in excess of the domestic exports from the United States to Canada, as returned to the Bureau of Statistics by U.S. collectors of customs during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1877."). An act of March 3, 1893, provided for obtaining information on exports by rail and apparently eliminated this deficiency in the subsequent figures, but prior to that time trade totals and figures on trade with Canada suffer lack of coverage in varying degrees.

For additional comments on foreign trade data for 1861-1900, see Matthew Simon, "Statistical Estimates of the Balance of International Payments and the International Capital Movements of the United States, 1861-1900," Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 24, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1960.

In 1923, the function of compiling foreign trade statistics was transferred to the Department of Commerce; however, the release and publication of the annual figures had been done by that Department since 1903. In 1941, the function was transferred from the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce to the Bureau of the Census.

A problem affecting comparability of value statistics arose between January 31, 1934, and March 10, 1953, when the foreign exchange value of the dollar was permitted to depreciate as a result of the restriction placed on gold shipments to foreign countries. For this period, unless otherwise noted, values stated are in U.S. dollars without reference to changes in the gold content of the dollar.

World War II and the special foreign aid programs following it introduced new complications into the handling of U.S. foreign trade statistics. Lend-lease during the war, surplus property disposal immediately after the war, War Department shipments to relieve disease and unrest, economic and military aid, and security shipments have all complicated the presentation as will be noted below.

Import data compiled by the Department of Commerce are from import entries (various Customs forms) which importers are required to file with customs officials for each shipment arriving. Import values are, in general, based on market or selling price and are f.o.b. the exporting country. Values do not include import duties. The country of origin is defined as the country in which the merchandise was grown, mined, or manufactured. If the importer cannot obtain the information as to the country of origin, the merchandise is credited (for statistical purposes) to the country of shipment.

Imports are classified either as general imports or imports for

consumption. General imports represent total arrivals of imported goods (except for intransit shipments), that is, merchandise released from Customs custody immediately upon arrival plus merchandise entered into a customs-bonded storage, manufacturing, or refining warehouse immediately upon arrival. Imports for consumption comprise merchandise entered into the U.S. consumption channels, that is, merchandise released from Customs custody immediately upon arrival, merchandise entered into a customs-bonded manufacturing warehouse (other than smelting or refining warehouse), merchandise withdrawn from a customs-bonded storage warehouse for release into domestic consumption channels, and imported ores and crude metals which have been processed in a customs-bonded smelting warehouse and then withdrawn for consumption and export.

During past periods, data for some low-valued imports have been fully compiled while data for others have been estimated. The following changes have occurred in the methods of compiling data on low-valued imports: Effective January 1954-1957, imports valued at $250 or less, reported on formal consumption and informal entries, were estimated from a 5-percent sample. From January 1958-June 1965, formal entries valued under $100 and informal entries valued $250 or less, were estimated from a 1-percent sample. Effective July 1965, all formal and informal entries valued $250 and under have been estimated from a 1-percent sample except a 5-percent sample, in effect every 3 years, was used to estimate data for 1967 and 1970. The estimated import values are excluded from detailed commodity statistics but are included in the over-all totals and are distributed in the appropriate country, district, and economic class totals, and in the totals for groupings of commodity classifications (i.e., commodity group or subgroup). The total value so excluded generally amounts to about 1 percent of the annual import total. Some indication of the undercounting in the detailed commodity statistics for imports is presented in the appendixes to the annual issues, from 1954-1965, of Bureau of the Census, Report FT 110, United States Imports of Merchandise for Consumption, and beginning 1967, Bureau of the Census, Report FT 135, Imports, Commodity by Country. Explanations of the sampling procedures are given in Report FT 110 for 1956; monthly issues of Report FT 135, Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States, 1965; and annual issues of Guide to Foreign Trade Statistics.

Export data are from Shippers' Export Declarations which exporters are required to file with customs officials for each shipment leaving the United States. Export data include shipments made after World War II under the Department of the Army Civilian Supply Program only for 1948 and subsequent years. In addition, export data include United States exports under the Lend-Lease, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Economic Cooperation Administration, Mutual Defense Assistance, and other mutual security programs. Shipments to U.S. Armed Forces for their own use are not included in export statistics for any period. Export value figures are based on the selling price (or on the cost, if not sold) of the commodity shipped and include inland freight, insurance, and other charges to the U.S. place of export. Transportation and other costs beyond the United States port of exportation are excluded. The country of destination is defined as the country of ultimate destination or country where the merchandise is to be consumed, further processed, or manufactured. In the event the exporter does not have definite information as to the country of ultimate destination for a shipment, it is credited (for statistical purposes) to the country to which it is consigned.

Certain export commodity classifications were grouped for security reasons into special categories beginning with May 1949, with periodic amendments to include additional commodities. With the adoption of new security regulations, effective July 1950, the publication of the country of destination and customs district detail for the special category commodities and groups was discontinued. Effective January 1965, some changes were made in the security restrictions primarily because of revisions in export commodity classifications. Permission was granted to release data on exports of some commodities