Pablo H. Paladino

Cada día, más de 2 mil millones de dólares cruzan la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México 🇺🇸🇲🇽. Esto no es solo comercio; es coproducción, y es esencial para la competitividad de América del Norte. Hoy estamos felices de lanzar Valor de Frontera (Border Value .com), una plataforma que explora lo que se necesita para fabricar productos en América del Norte. Combinamos cadenas de valor y datos de comercio para mostrar que fabricar productos en América del Norte puede requerir docenas de cruces fronterizos. México exporta automóviles a Estados Unidos, pero importa procesadores y motores de su vecino. Los motores estadounidenses, a su vez, contienen piezas que a menudo se fabrican en México, como motores de arranque y generadores. Estas piezas, sin embargo, se construyen con varillas metálicas e insumos producidos en Estados Unidos. El comercio entre México y Estados Unidos es como una bola de nieve que agrega valor cada vez que los insumos “ruedan” a través de la frontera. Ese valor agregado es esencial para que América del Norte compita con otros bloques comerciales, como RCEP, que hoy exporta casi tres veces más que el USMCA (antes NAFTA). Para las cadenas de valor, la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México no es un límite, sino una costura. Únete a nosotros para explorar y compartir esta visión basada en datos de la economía norteamericana (enlace en el primer comentario).

Do you have what it takes to forecast International trade? Today, we are launching AI4trade, a global challenge where teams compete for cash prizes by submitting their best trade forecasts. But it comes with a couple of twists: 1. This is a future out-of-sample challenge, so teams will need to forecast data that will not exist at the time of submission (impossible to train to the test 👹). 2. Forecasts must be better than simply using the latest trade data available at the time of submission (e.g. using July data as a prediction for October numbers ⏰). This should be a fun global competition. People from all parts of the world are welcome to participate and all methods are allowed. We hope the challenge stimulates more work at the intersection of AI and economics. Link in the first comment: 👇

On paper, the US seems to be importing less electronics from China. But recent data suggests this trade is just being rerouted. Read more at: oec.world/en/blog/how-tariff…

Twelve years ago we asked the question: how can we put public data "on wheels"? Datawheel was born from vision that data alone doesn't get far. It needs vehicles to reach hearts and minds. Vehicles that make data easy to find, explore, and understand. Today, Datawheel turns twelve. In these twelve years, we have built dozens of solutions that are helping define the state of the art in public data distribution. Today we celebrate this journey. A journey with a great team and amazing clients. The journey to make public data all it can be. datawheel.us oec.world datamexico.org datausa.io datasaudi.sa pantheon.world are some of the tools defining all that public data can be. Thank you!!!

Why is trade important? You might have heard that trade is beneficial without fully understanding why. Here is a simple explanation illustrating the importance of trade that everyone should be able to understand. Imagine a shipwreck that leaves Bruce Wayne and Homer Simpson stranded on a desert island. To survive, each of them needs to eat five coconuts and five fish every week. Bruce can collect a coconut or catch a fish in an hour. If he works alone, he needs 10 hours a week to satisfy his needs. Homer is less skilled, so he needs four hours to collect a coconut and two hours to catch a fish, for a total of 30 hours a week. So, should Bruce Wayne trade with Homer Simpson? He is clearly better than Homer at everything. But the theory of comparative advantage shows that the answer is almost always yes. Let me show you why. The key is noticing that Homer is relatively better at catching fish than collecting coconuts. So, he can decide to focus on fishing and offer Bruce 5 fish in exchange for 4 coconuts. After this trade, Bruce needs to work only 9 hours a week (5 for his coconuts and 4 for the coconuts he will trade with Homer) and Homer 24 (20 hours to fishing and four hours to collect one more coconut). Even though Bruce is better than Homer at everything, trade benefits both. In our world, productive countries are like Bruce and less productive countries are like Homer. Workers in rich countries trade a few hours of work, (e.g., designing software) for many hours of work in less productive economies (e.g., shoe manufacturing). This deal benefits both parties. In the island scenario, tariffs are like a demigod erupting from a volcano demanding Bruce to pay him a tax for each fish he buys from Homer. If the tax is large enough, trade could even stop. This basic model is the idea of comparative advantage. A concept that can be counterintuitive at first, but easy to verify with a bit of careful thought. For the last two centuries, it has been a cornerstone of the way in which we think about trade. Trade isn’t a zero-sum game. Comparative advantage proves that even the most productive economies benefit from exchange. So next time someone says, “We should make everything ourselves,” remember that it didn’t work for Bruce and Homer either.