I was helping a student with some trade data analysis for an exercise, he picked caskets, and rarely have I seen such "off numbers." One reason the numbers should to be put into a spread sheet and analyzed is so those anomalies do in fact jump out.
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| Just in case casket design |
Trade data problems are nothing new, and the USA and China are working to sort out some of the problems. Some of it has to do with rational people trying to get around goofy restrictions, but as the Chinese press reports:
Major causes of the discrepancy in China's export data include differences in trade moving directly from China to the U.S., the amount of goods shipped via intermediary countries and value added in those countries, as well as conceptual and methodological differences, the report said.
Fair enough... Here is the info on metal caskets, it's a jpg, I think you can enlarge it by clicking on it, if not, email me and I'll send you a .pdf...
So here are my notes on this analysis...
| colormute.com |
The zero year in 2007 is probably a year before they made a new HTS number just for these metal caskets. Note that there are wood and paper caskets too... so those would be a different HTS number.
| Something less expensive? |
1. As an overview, the Chinese numbers are nonsense. Data entry errors or something...if caskets were your thing, you'd bug the specialists at usitc.gov for a "how come?".
a. I-15, china export 31 million metal caskets in 2008? One for every 10 americans? At 46 cents each?
b. By 2011, chinese caskets are $30,000 each? This would take a bit of research, somebody is not doing their job.
2. The Chinese numbers screw up all of the other analysis, so they'd have to be backed out until rectified. But Canada UK and France look goofy too...
3. If you look at 2010 and 2011, things begin to look a bit more rational... seems the going price is about $250 a casket... whereas France is making high end caskets...
4. What this report seems to suggest is as far as sourcing caskets worldwide, Mexico is the source for a standard model, Dom Rep for cheapo models, and France as designer models looks like what the report says. So you have to decide what your market is, and at the small biz level it should be specialty, so France would be the place to look for suppliers for a small, start-up casket company.
| odditycentral.com |
5. China figures need to be rectified before they can tell anything... but as the article notes, this is being worked on. In any event, you can always track down the commodity expert at the usitc.gov and get his opinion.
The Vegetarian?| dailymail.co.uk |
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