Category: Trade

Floyd Norris in the New York Times last weekend put together some interesting comparative charts for twelve countries including Ireland showing trends in their trade up to the beginning of this year. The relatively small dip in Irish exports during the recession comes through clearly. He draws attention to the welcome rebound in trade globally, but classes Ireland among the four Euro laggards including Greece, Portugal and Spain. However, the data for Ireland only go to the end of 2009, whereas for other countries the data includes the first three months of 2010. As all of the rebound in the other countries has occurred in this first quarter of 2010, the charts give an unfavourable, but misleading, impression of Ireland’s comparative trade performance.