Youngstown-Warren MSA a leading trade partner with North America

Staff report

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The Brookings Institution on Thursday released yet another report that shows the Youngstown-Warren metropolitan statistical area is a national leader in North American trade with cities in Canada and Mexico.

According to the report, the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman MSA — which includes Mahoning and Trumbull counties and Mercer County, Pa. — is ranked fifth among the country’s top 100 metro areas, as North American trade accounts for 39.3 percent of all its global trade.

In September, Brookings released another report that ranked the Youngstown MSA No. 1 in the country for global export growth between 2009 and 2012.

In the latest report, its authors found that the economies of the U.S., Mexico and Canada are “deeply integrated” through advanced manufacturing-supply chains that have their anchors in large cities and major metropolitan areas.

As global exports from North America have consistently dropped over the past two decades, recent global trends — such as rising labor costs overseas, new energy sources in the U.S. and Canada and improving technologies — are providing a reversal of such decline, and the report was aimed at providing North American countries with recommendations to reposition themselves back at the top of global trade.

Brookings found that the Youngstown area traded $2.05 billion worth of goods with Canada in 2010, ranking it 42nd in trade with that country, while the area exchanged an additional $1.04 billion worth of goods with Mexico, ranking it 55th in trade south of the border that year.

Combined, that’s $3.10 billion worth of North American trade, putting the Youngstown area at No. 47 and ahead of more than half the country’s metropolitan regions in the category.

Motor vehicles and auto parts were the leading trade goods, with $1.17 billion traded with Canada and $558 million exchanged with Mexico.

In all, U.S. metropolitan areas traded $512 billion in goods, or 58 percent of all global trade in 2010.

The report also found that metropolitan areas with populations of at least 100,000 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico contain 77 percent of the three countries’ population, but they generate 86 percent of combined North American gross domestic product.