XSI® US
After only a small decline in July (2.9%), the XSI for US imports dropped a sizeable 14.9% in August, reaching 197.0 points. This index now sits 65.2% below August 2022.
As one door opens, another shuts – one strike threat abates, but another materializes
Diving down into the details, a range of sub-indices show large-scale falls in prices out of China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, into both the US Pacific coast and the Atlantic. These range from 19.3% to 62.3%.
The outlier here is southern African exports to the US, increasing by 2.0% in August and by a whopping 46.3% year-on-year.
Imports as well as exports are increasingly being affected by the restrictions in place for Panama Canal transits. And while we begin to see that long-term contracts are now ticking up for Far Eastern imports – this is still not ‘preventing’ a decrease in the level of all valid contracts month-on-month.
The XSI® for US exports proved more resilient than its imports counterpart, falling just 0.8% from July, down by a single point to 134.5. On the face of it, the waters appear relatively calm, but the sub-indices reveal a different, highly volatile month-on-month picture. US East Coast exports to Asian destinations and the Indian sub-continent are down by 10.6% to 26.3% from July, while US West Coast exports to the Mediterranean are up by 3.4% month-on-month, and a huge 88.6% year-on-year.
