Blog Post #2

Mackenzie Connolly

The UN Comtrade data provided by SAS is remarkable and allows the viewers to analyze specific countries, commodities, and trade habits among other things and compare them with the information from other countries. It allows users to see the areas in the world that are the most and least successful and how they came to be that way. I chose to analyze South Africa, and immediately when I clicked on the section of the data that says “trade balance”, it shows which sections of products South Africa is a large importer of as well as what it is a large exporter of. The products that are most imported by South Africa are mineral fuels, oils, and distillation products followed by nuclear reactors, boilers and other types of machinery. This makes sense because these types of resources aren’t readily available in South Africa and they need to have these resources imported from other countries. Some of their other top exported commodities, with the exception of pearls, precious stones, metals, and coins which is their top exported good, are vehicles other than railway and tramway, and iron and steel. Their top country for importing oils was Saudi Arabia, which is not a surprise because Saudi Arabia is one of the top suppliers of fuels, oils, and distillation products in the world.

Their largest exported product which wasn’t surprising was pearls, precious stones, metals, and coins. Africa in general is a large hotspot for these types of natural resources and they are in high demand and are of high value in the first world society, especially in the United States. Their top country for exporting precious stones metals and coins was to the US and this is also not surprising because we value things like precious stones and metals that have a paradoxical value. This means there isn’t necessarily a high use for these types of goods, but we place a high value on these products. For example, a diamond may not have a high usage even though it is highly valued, but something like water that has a high usage because it is necessary to survive, has a low overall value because it is readily available and doesn’t have a high cost. In the trade history section, which you can see in the screenshot below, if you analyze South Africa, you can see that the United States is on the line for being one of their top importers as well as exporters, but it is more above the line, meaning that the US imports more goods from South Africa, specifically these precious stones and metals. These trends can be seen in all sectors of the trade data and it is interesting to note how much revenue they bring in to South Africa even though the goods themselves don’t have a high usage, there is simply a high value placed on them by our society.

South Africa is also listed in the top 20 commodities in the Mirror Statistics Import section of the UN Comtrade data, because of their high exports of precious stones, metals, and pearls.  They are also high exporters of ores, slag, and ash. Under the trade history plot you can see that China is quickly becoming a country that often trades with South Africa and as China becomes more powerful especially with increasing their net exports, this will become a trend with China and most other countries as well. China recently passed the United States as being the number one exporter in the world and you can see the evidence of this with countries like South Africa.