Dominican Today, Dom. Rep., August 22, 2007

Dominican exports to U.S. fell 4.9 percent in Q2; trade grows, report

MIAMI.- Dominican exports to the United States fell by 4.9 percent in the first half of the year, reaching a total of $2.1 billion. But, thanks to an increase in imports from the United States, total trade grew by 4.4 to $4.9 billion, according to an analysis from Latin Business Chronicle based on data from the US Census Bureau. Dominican imports of U.S. goods grew by 12.4 percent to $2.8 billion.

The growth in Dominican trade with the United States was better than the average growth for Latin America as a whole, which boosted its U.S. trade by 2.7 percent. However, it was weaker than the average within the CAFTA trade group, which saw U.S. trade growth of 6.8 percent. Within CAFTA only Nicaragua had weaker growth than the Dominican Republic when it came to trade in the first half.

All in all, U.S. trade with Latin America reached $266.5 billion in the first six months of 2007. While U.S. exports grew by 4.6 percent to $110.2 billion, imports from Latin America fell by 0.5 percent to $156.3 billion. The U.S. trade deficit with Latin America fell by 15.6 percent to $46.1 billion. Paraguay posted the strongest increase (24.5 percent), while Ecuador posted the worst decline (10.6 percent) in U.S. trade the first half of the year, according to Latin Business Chronicle.

The trade figures mark a strong slowdown compared with the first half of 2006, when U.S. trade with Latin America grew by 14.1 percent thanks to export growth of 16.1 percent and import growth of 12.7 percent. The slowdown is partly due to reduced economic growth in the United States. The U.S. economy expanded by a mere 0.6 percent in the first quarter before recovering in the second quarter with 3.4 percent growth. By comparison, GDP in the first and second quarters last year grew by 4.8 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.

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