A Facebook post claimed that according to the U.S. customs data, “trade between Russia and the U.S. has increased by 20% and reached $332 million”.
“Only in April of this year Russian exports to the U.S. increased by 37% and reached $298 million. In addition, U.S. exports to Russia have decreased by 48% and reached $34 million. The main products that Russia supplies to the US: (a) fertilizers (increased by 1.6 times to $164 million), (b) platinum (increased by 32 times to $94.2 million), (c) turbojet engine parts (increased by 3 times to $10.1 million)” – reads the post.
The primary source for the mentioned claim is the pro-Kremlin propaganda media outlet RIA Novosti, which disseminates statistics based on “the U.S. customs.” However, such data cannot be found on the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection or on any websites of U.S. official structures.
The data spread by the post author can be found only on Russian propaganda media pages, such as “RIA Novosti”, “Sputnik”, Lenta.ru, Vesti.ru, smotrim.ru, and others. But none of them cites a source that would confirm its validity. At the same time, as already said, such statistics cannot be found on the websites of U.S. official structures or in other open sources.
On the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, 2022 trade statistics are visible, however, not broken down into specific countries. Therefore, the 20% increase in trade with Russia and the 37% increase in product imports from Russia are not given. Data on trade with Russia are published on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative website, where we read that compared to 2021, exports from the U.S. to Russia decreased from 4.7 billion to 1.7 billion USD, and imports from 29.6 billion to 14.4 billion USD. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, trade in 2023 between Russia and the U.S. fell to the lowest point of the two-decade period as Moscow faced unprecedented isolation from the West due to full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Source: Statista
According to Forbes, which also relies on 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, compared to the same period in 2021, in the first eleven months of 2023, U.S. exports to Russia fell by 91%, imports by 85%, and total trade by 86%. As for 2024, according to international trade data visualization website OEC World, in March 2024, compared to the same period last year, U.S. exports to Russia increased by 34.2%, from $66.4 million to $43.7 million, and imports by 24%, decreased from $562 million to $427 million. Overall, since Russia’s full-scale and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, there has been a sharp downward tendency in trade between the U.S. and Russia. It must be noted that even if the trade between the mentioned states increased by 20% compared to the data of the same period of the previous year, which is not confirmed, there would still be an acute difference from the pre-war trade index.
Thus, the claim that trade between Russia and the U.S. has increased by 20% is false. The latter is proliferated by Kremlin propagandist media outlets without references to reliable sources, and similar statistics in the data of the official structures of the U.S. and other open sources cannot be found. Moreover, statistics show that trade between the U.S. and Russia has decreased.
