Geographic Seasonal Adjustment of International Merchandise Trade Data

• Activity Number: 129
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Business and Economic Statistics Section
• Author(s): Renee Reeves*+ and Andreana Able and Neeta Lall
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: time series ; moving holiday effects

Abstract

The Foreign Trade Division (FTD) of the U.S. Census Bureau publishes detailed statistics on U.S. import and export merchandise trade in the monthly release of the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services Report (FT-900). Prior to January 2014 statistics, international merchandise trade data were seasonally adjusted solely by commodity. Although data were published by geographic area, these geographic data were not being seasonally adjusted. Users of international merchandise trade data were interested in seeing seasonally adjusted trade data by geographic area. The FTD along with the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) undertook a project to determine the feasibility of seasonally adjusting value data by geographic area. We identified seasonality in the import and export data for several primary trading partners, determined which countries and world areas should be adjusted and which we would publish, considered additivity issues, evaluated potential moving holiday effects, and developed seasonal models for production. This paper details our analysis and comparison of seasonal models for data that had not previously been seasonally adjusted.