Over the Global Trade Rainbow

iStock/Thinkstock

Interesting post over at Crisis Talk, The World Bank Group, on searching for bright spots in trade.

According to Caroline Freund, the global trade rainbow comprises of:

Necessities:

• Medical equipment trade is thriving (such as catheters and pacemakers in the U.S. and MRI equipment and artificial body parts in Japan).
• Various foods items are up (bananas and meat in both nations, grains and rice in Japan).
• Tobacco is up over 100 percent in the U.S. and 30 percent in Japan. Vodka imports are up 37 percent in the U.S.

Innovations:

• Cell phone imports are up 24 percent in the U.S. and 12 percent in Japan. Proof that improved technology still sells—the new generation of smartphones are really cool.
• A number of chemicals are ahead in both countries. For example, heterocyclic compounds (a big category, $600m in February in the US) are up 48 percent in the US and 67 percent in Japan—these are used for a wide variety of things, such as drugs, pesticides, dyes and plastics.
• Wind-powered electric generating sets are up 18 percent in the United States.

Read more here.