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What’s The Impact Of These Trends On The U.S. Printing Industry?

There are two components of “global printing” in the United States. First, there are direct exports and direct imports of printed products. These products are either produced by foreign printers and imported into the United States(printed imports). Or produced by U.S. department of commerce and we will refer to them as “direct exports and imports.”

A second category of “global print” is more difficult to track. This category of “indirect imports and exports” includes the value of print production included in other exports and imports. For example, this may include packaging an downers manuals of those products that are imported or exported. The U.S. department of commerce data does not distinguish the value of this type of printing in its data.

According to U.S. Department of commerce data, both direct printing imports and exports have been growing since 2000. Total exports of printed materials increased from &4.508 billion in 2000 to &5.169billion in 2005, an increase of 14.7%. In contrast total U.S. printing shipments increased by only 1.4% over the same period.

Total imports of printed products grew from $3.491 billion in 2000 to $4.662 in 2005, an increase of 33%.

Over the past five years the U.S. Printing industry industry was a net exporter of printed products with a trade surplus of over $500 million in 2005. However, this figure was down from over$1 billion in 2000, a decline of 50%.

To put these numbers in perspective, about 3% of the print consumed in the United States is directly imported and about 3% of the printing produced in the United State is directly exported.

There is no data available on indirect U.S. printed imports and exports comprised of printed materials.

Over the past five-year the U.S. printing industry was a net exporter of printed products with a trade surplus of over $500million in 2005. However, this figure was down from over $1 billion in 2000, a decline of 50%.

To put these numbers in perspective, about 3% of the printed produced in the United States is directly exported.

There is no data available on direct U.S. printed imports and exports. To construct an estimate, we utilized the following methodology:

Examine trends on U.S. merchandise imports and exports over 2000~2005 period to determine their composition and probable degree of printed material such as packaging, labels, wrappers, and user manuals.

Develop an estimate of the likely percentage of value of imports and exports comprised of printed materials.

Over the five-year period, total U.S. Merchandise exports increased from $780.4 billion in 2000 to $904.4 billion in 2005, an increase of 15.9%. At the same time U.S. imports of merchandise increased from $1.217 trillion in 2000 to $1.671 trillion in 2005, an increase of 37%.

For the most part, the top categories of both import and exports do not have a high degree of printed materials associated with them. PIA/GATF’s estimate of the dollar volume of indirect printed imports and exports in 2005 is:
Indirect printed exports $2.26billion

Indirect printed imports $4.18billion

For a total impact perspective we aggregate both direct and indirect printed imports and exports:
Direct and indirect print exports $7.43billion

Direct and indirect print imports $8.884billion

In total, the U.S. Print market consumed approximately $1.5billion more print than it produced in 2005 or around 1% of total production(or consumption). On a slightly large scale, direct imports comprised about 2.7% of total domestic consumption and indirect imports about 2.5%. In total, direct and indirect imports amounted to slightly over 5% of domestic consumption in 2005.

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