Following India and China, the USA are the third systemically most important country in the global antibiotics trade networks.
Major trading partners for APIs include China, Italy, India and Belgium. Substantial trade deficits with China and Italy but trade surpluses with India and Belgium are reported. This is reflected in the dependence ranking, where the highest dependencies are observed for China and Italy. The US report much higher imports than exports in APIs for penicillin, tetracyclines and chloramphenicol (mostly from China), whereas it is a strong exporter of erythromycin, for which it hosts a manufacturing site (compare Table 1).
Major trading partners for APIs include China, Italy, India and Belgium. Substantial trade deficits with China and Italy but trade surpluses with India and Belgium are reported. This is reflected in the dependence ranking, where the highest dependencies are observed for China and Italy. The US report much higher imports than exports in APIs for penicillin, tetracyclines and chloramphenicol (mostly from China), whereas it is a strong exporter of erythromycin, for which it hosts a manufacturing site (compare Table 1).
Source: COMTRADE Note: This graph shows the countries from which the US sources APIs (HS4 2941). Shown are imports (blue) and exports (red) values for all trade activities between 2010-2015 (top line) and for 2016-2021 (bottom line), respectively. Countries are ranked from top to bottom by their system trade risk indicators in 2016-2021.
The strongest direct US trade partners in unpackaged antibiotics include Germany, Italy, the UK and Canada. For penicillin, there are also particularly high imports from China and India, followed by Austria and India. The US further show a trade surplus with Germany, Canada, the UK, and Ireland. Most of its packaged products are imported from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Switzerland. In this category, our analysis reveals the highest systemic trade risk from India (rank #1).
Source: COMTRADE Note: This graph illustrates the countries from which the US sources packaged supplies (HS4 3004). Shown are direct (gray) and total (blue) ranks for all trade activities between 2010-2015 (upper line) and for 2016-2021 (lower circles), respectively.
Overall, the US are tightly integrated with several European countries in the antibiotics trade networks and thereby, by extension, also with China. The indirect, network-mediated dependence on China is particularly strong for APIs (where China has rank #1 for the US) and unpackaged products (rank #2). For packaged products, however, India plays a much bigger role for the US (rank #1) than China (rank #13).
