Although, those elephants wouldn’t be Asian, but rather Irish, because for once the leading supplier of something isn’t China. The top country exporting organic chemicals to the United States is actually Ireland. Ireland shipped about $11.7 billion worth of organic chemicals to the United States in 2012 and China’s exports were about $6.4 billion.

So what are organic chemicals and what’s so Irish about them? The U.S. trade commission classifies organic chemicals under chapter 29 of the harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) and Webster defines them as any chemical containing carbon. The leading organic chemicals imported include aromatic compounds used as drugs, cardiovascular drugs, lactam products and much more. So basically, it’s a lot of carbon-based drugs and Ireland produces a significant amount of them.

U.S. imports for March decreased by 15% from February and by 12.5% from March of last year. The drop is mainly due to Chinese factories closing their doors during the Chinese New Year. Even though U.S. imports have now decreased for two consecutive months, quarter one of this year is still slightly above last year, by 0.11%.

You can read more about March's imports in our Press Release Here.

  Methodology:
Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne vessel goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as Freight Remaining on Board (FROB), and may contain other data anomalies.       

U.S. imports for February were unexpectedly high this month. Total TEUs were up from last February by over 15%, even with one less day. February imports haven't been this high since 2008, making this the second month in a row that has posted pre-recession levels of imports. Although, as expected from a short month, imports were down from January by about 5%, which is what we typically see from January to February.

You can read more about February's imports in our Press Release Here.

  Methodology:
Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne vessel goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as Freight Remaining on Board (FROB), and may contain other data anomalies.       

U.S. imports for January increased fairly significantly from December by 6.9% and even had a slight rise from January of 2012 by 0.1%. Surprisingly, January imports have not been this high since 2007, which signals some steady rebounding growth for 2013.

The increase in imports mainly came from Asia, which rose in TEUs by 11.5%. Large export increases were seen more specifically from the countries of China and South Korea, which both rose almost 13%. You can read more about January's imports in our Press Release Here.

  Methodology:
Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne vessel goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as Freight Remaining on Board (FROB), and may contain other data anomalies.