On August 9th, we completed the data for July in our U.S. Customs trade data tool, TradeIQ. With a 0.19% decrease in total shipments during the month, July ends the trend of increasing import shipments witnessed in the previous five months. Though this July's numbers failed to overtake June, we can still see a 15.52% increase over July of the previous year, indicating that 2010 import activity is rebounding from its weak numbers in 2009.

Below is a table showing port regions of the world where shipments originated:

As evidenced in the chart above, shipments from Asia decreased slightly from June, but grew 19.19% over July 2009. A look at July shipments from Asia in previous years shows us that July 2009 shipments marked a significant low time and July 2010 is a return to the strong numbers seen in July 2007 and 2008.

Below is a graph of Asia's historical July shipments, starting with July 2005:

 

The collection methods used by U.S. Customs for AMS data can lead to an overstatement of shipments for some ports, as imports and exports from Prince Rupert and Vancouver are often recorded as imports for the U.S. Moreover, the data includes shipments from empty containers, may overstate totals from transshipments, and may contain other data anomalies as well.

Zepol's U.S. Customs trade data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This indicator is the earliest data available for the previous month’s trade activity.