Inside Services Trade

Introduction

In order to demonstrate how the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) would benefit America, Team TiSA has compiled government trade data to show services exports to many of the countries currently negotiating the TiSA.

Overall, from the 12out of 22 economies for which services-specific trade data is available, U.S. services exports totaled $436 billion in 2013, showing 3.7% growth from the previous year. U.S. services imports also grew, from $287 billion in 2012 to $298 billion in 2013. The TiSA would provide for increased market access in the participating countries, creating further opportunities for growth because the U.S. has a comparative advantage in producing services. With greater market access and lower barriers to trade, U.S. businesses will be able to expand their exports further and improve the U.S. economy.

In nearly all cases, the U.S. has a trade surplus in services, and exports of services support thousands of jobs – about 4000 jobs per $1 billion of exports, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. These jobs tend to be high-paying and high-skill, which suggests that the market for services-exporting jobs will grow as barriers to the services trade are removed.

The data in this report comes from public U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis websites. Census data was available for 2012 – 2014, while BEA data was not yet available for 2014. Therefore, Census data was used when possible. For countries where data was available from both sources, exact figures differed slightly, but trends remained the same.

Australia

Canada

Chile

E.U.

Hong Kong

Israel

Japan

Mexico

New Zealand

Norway

South Korea

Switzerland