United States in Global Exports at the Beginning of the Third Decade

The article contributes to the discussion of the United States’ role in the international trade developments, focusing on its position in global merchandise exports under new geopolitical and economic conditions, as well as the export policy of Washington's administration. It highlights the latest trends in international trade, including America’s trade balance. While trade growth after the COVID-19 pandemic has been positive (both merchandise trade and services have exceeded pre-pandemic levels), this trend and its outlook remain unstable due to a number of risks including sanctions, geopolitical tensions. The transformation of the United States’ position in global exports at the beginning of the third decade occurring amid the formation of a new world order. While tensions between United States and China as the world's two largest trade partners remain, the United States is actively diversifying its trade partnerships. The effects of the U.S. export policy at the beginning of the third decade are not only short term but also long term, posing new challenges to international relations.

Previous articleNext article FreeCommentGeorge M. von FurstenbergGeorge M. von FurstenbergIndiana University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI. Introduction, Outline, and Making Up for the Lack of Hypothesis TestingBergin and Lin pick up a venerable distinction that, poorly represented with disaggregated trade data now accessible, has become the dernier cri of trade theory. The general issue of the new literature is what influences the division into intensive and extensive margin of the growth of a country’s share in the global exports going to another country. The specific issue raised in a subset of papers like the one here that is of interest is how, and then why, that division is influenced by the exchange rate regime between pairs of countries.This comment first conveys the essence of the historical distinction and then shows how the data currently used fail to reflect that distinction. This raises the question of what a contemporary implementation of the classical concept, largely preserved in Bergin and Lin’s model but not in its empirical implementation, could imply. It then discusses the absence of substantial uncertainty about future real exchange rates in the model, which detracts from the paper’s main theme. Other aspects that are crucial to the industrial organization of cross‐border trade, such as foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade in components, also are missing from the model. This makes it difficult to test hypotheses with it or to account for its findings.One crude validation test could be to check on the growth of trade shares for Canada and Mexico with the United States since the Canada‐U.S. Free Trade Agreement 1988 or the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) 1994 and examine how this growth has been divided between the extensive and intensive margins. My hunch is that the expansion of the bilateral trade shares of these countries is about as large and as concentrated at the extensive margin as Bergin and Lin estimated for currency unions sans euroland. But in fact the currencies of all NAFTA countries have been floating against each other, and real exchange rates have swung widely between them since 1994.II. The Classical Definition of Expanding Trade at Extensive and Intensive MarginsFor over 2 centuries, international trade has been rated as beneficial whether expanded at its intensive or extensive margins but for different reasons. The benefits on the intensive margin stem from getting more for producing exportable goods than available in exchange for other goods produced under autarky. Exploiting this margin to raise real income was the subject of the theory of comparative advantage. The extensive margin refers to the benefits of enjoying new goods not produced, and perhaps still too expensive to produce, at home, after the technique for doing so has been learned.Setting the terms of exchange for such natural monopoly goods poses special challenges. The difficulty is that for them there is no bracket on the equilibrium terms of trade that is created by internal relative production‐cost conditions in each of the partner countries, as under incomplete specialization. Classical economists referred to the sagas of the salt, spice, and silk trades, however, to point out that any increase in a unique imported “variety” that a country chooses to enjoy on any terms would have to be at least somewhat beneficial. Variatio delectat, though not without limit: we now have theories of habit goods and rational inattention that explain what to fall back on when variety gets bewildering and the choices too many and complex to think through.Classical economists’ discussions of international trade thus invariably emphasized two benefits: (1) increased abundance and real income through improvement in the terms of exchange for one’s exportable output compared with autarky, and (2) greater variety than available under autarky producing hedonic gain.Adam Smith assigned several different functions to trade, such as providing a vent for “surplus” domestic production and allowing the exploitation of scale economies through specialization since the division of labor was seen as limited by the extent of the market. Yet he chose to emphasize that free trade is essential for the maximum development of wealth for any nation because, through such trade, a variety of goods becomes possible. Ricardo notes that foreign trade “increases the amount and variety of the objects on which revenue may be expended, and affords, by the abundance and cheapness of commodities, incentives to saving, and to the accumulation of capital” (see Ruffin 2002, 741). Being the principal discoverer of the theory of comparative advantage, he thus put more emphasis on benefit 1 than benefit 2. Later theories, such as the Scandinavian theory of comparative advantage that was also based on factor immobility and incomplete specialization as the normal outcome, involved trade as a bringer of variety even less: the production function specific to a good was assumed to be the same in all countries, but factor endowment ratios, and hence the factor content of goods traded, differed between them.The gist of all the classical distinctions is that “extensive” types of goods involved in the expansion of trade are specially made and hence new, based on technical and taste innovations, or firmly identified with a geographic region that can produce them. Trade in “intensive” goods, by contrast, involves standardized auction‐type goods readily available and in continuous and habitual supply from several sources and in general use.III. Lost in Translation to Canned Data CategoriesTo implement their search for differential effects of exchange rate regimes at the two margins, Bergin and Lin rely on a system of Standard International Trade Classification (SITC)—a four–digit classification ending in 2000. Adding proportionately more than competing suppliers from other countries to existing exports within a four‐digit category would expand trade at the intensive margin; exporting in more categories would boost trade at the extensive margin. To see whether such a definition is economically meaningful requires looking into the content of the statistical categories. All these categories, except for unprocessed foods, live animals, and crude materials, relate to manufactured goods. They do not include services, which now account for two‐thirds of personal consumption expenditures and the greatest increase in hedonic variety. Only one of the 10 one‐digit SITC categories starting at 0—number 8, Miscellaneous Manufactured Articles—contains a high proportion of finished consumer goods. Lower categories include intermediate and capital goods traded between firms.The SITC classification scheme does not establish categories that deserve to be called varieties or composite products in a hedonic sense but uses quite different principles of grouping. For example, 8427 is the category for blouses, shirts, and shirt‐blouses for women and girls of woven textile fabrics, while 8447 is for the same but of knitted or crocheted textile fabrics. Growth at the extensive margin of trade thus would be produced by expanding the types of processed fabric used in exported blouses, not by providing a greater range of quality or variety of design. So if a country that previously exported only blouses of woven fabric started to export knitted blouses of the same design and intended for a similar occasion, it would be expanding trade at the extensive margin under Bergin and Lin’s measure. If the country instead started also to export blouses of a stunning new design and for different occasions, but still of woven fabric, it would expand trade at the intensive margin. This example shows that whether trade is boosted inside a four‐digit category or in different categories depends entirely on the configuration of these boxes and does not relate to any distinguishing consumer or producer economics that I can recognize. Certainly classical economics would be more inclined to credit the design innovation with creating benefits at the extensive margin than at the intensive margin, for it would distinguish between the upscale trade that contributes to variety and the downscale trade in basic, fairly standardized, goods contributing to abundance.One more example to drive home the point: children’s toys is category 8942, and 8947 is sporting goods. Assume that a firm that had specialized in exporting gloves and mittens used in sports (89477) decided to apply its facility in working specialty fabrics to also manufacture outfits and accessories for dragons, dolls, and knights for export. Once again, by entering the toy category in which the country had not exported before, it would expand trade at the extensive margin according to Bergin and Lin’s measure. If the firm instead had decided to take up the production of fishing rods (89471), an entirely unrelated new venture, it would have increased trade at the intensive margin since the country was exporting appreciably in the associated four‐digit category already before.Hence, the more one looks into the categories, the less suitable they appear to convey the “classical” or any other predictable economic content or difference that Bergin and Lin are seeking—or simply asserting as if such a relevant difference did not first need to be constructed in the categories they work with. Contrary to what Bergin and Lin presume, many different goods are bunched together in four‐digit categories according to noneconomic and incoherent principles of classification. Hence, innovation and augmentation of variety in exports can occur within, as well as between, SITC categories without obvious distinction.Depending on what theme researchers pursue, they must first obtain a relevant grouping of goods. Grouping criteria might include R&D and factor intensity or might serve to distinguish knowledge goods, IPR‐protected goods, ICT goods, design‐intensive goods, fashion goods, goods tied to geographic origin, customized goods, differentiated goods, and standardized goods with ISO number, and so forth. Investigating how various degrees of integration and types of regimes affect the volume and distribution of trade in such goods may prove insightful. For instance, exchange rate regimes could be among the factors that differentially affect the growth of exports by such industry characteristics. If so, this might give a clue to why such regimes matter for the structure of export growth. Such a structured approach would avoid pressing economic interpretations on exports expanding within and between SITC product categories that these categories cannot support.There are at least three other match‐up problems between economic theory and data:a Bergin and Lin’s model variety refers only to finished consumer goods and their “AL” (a nod to the labor theory of value?) production function does not take in semi‐finished inputs or capital. However, the data used are not nearly so exclusive: both France and Germany, for instance, export more capital goods than consumer goods, and the import content of Germany’s export goods is 40%. Goods other than consumer goods account for the lion’s share of the data and dominate the results, but these are to be understood with a model not containing such goods.b Classical economists did not consider fragmentation trade nor do Bergin and Lin. Yet an explosion of such back‐and‐forth trade inside Europe is likely to register as a big expansion of trade at the extensive margin in the authors’ scheme. For the representative consumer in their model, trade in more categories of components could add to variety only to the extent that these components were incorporated in variety‐enhancing final products. Fragmentation trade in components is governed by considerations of cost efficiency and greater abundance, not hedonic variety.c There is more in the data than appears in the model. Conversely, firms, whose number is endogenously determined in the model, do not appear in the data. Berthou and Fontagné (2008, 15) estimate with French firm data (collected at the HS‐8 level) that the market share of the 10% largest exporters was 95% in the period 2000–2003. Hence, if French exports to country N become significant in additional categories, large established firms already exporting in many categories to country N are more likely to be involved than small firms exporting for the first time. By dwelling on set‐up costs, Bergin and Lin imply the opposite. Discussions of set‐up costs for entering foreign markets also do not distinguish among those involving preparations in production (e.g., producing with higher productivity and quality), distribution (logistics), and final sales abroad (retail outlets and marketing). Retail giants like Carrefour or Wal‐Mart and regional producer cooperatives mediate between the small and the large by scaling up and cutting costs in the latter stages of the export business. Deutsche Bundesbank (2007) estimates that, in 2005, 87.5% of German enterprises with an annual turnover of more than €50 million were directly engaged in the export business but that only 10.5% of those with an annual turnover of less than €10 million were so engaged. IV. On Their Own TermsI have gone beyond the Bergin and Lin paper in places. Taking the paper on its own terms, there is more that can move the two margins of export trade than the paper lets on. The operational definition used by Bergin and Lin is to break country J’s export (JX) share in global exports (GX) to country N, JXN/GXN, into two factors that are positive and not greater than one. Only one additional variable is used in the denominator and the numerator of these margins: it is that subset of GXN, GX[J]N, that consists of global exports to N in only those categories in which J participates appreciably by some binary criterion. The multiplicative decomposition is Now any increase in J’s share of the value of global exports to N that is due to improvement in the terms of trade in the categories in which J exports to N would (under short‐run inelasticity of demand) raise JXN and GX(J)N equiproportionately and by more than GXN. Such a development would be credited mechanically to expansion at the extensive margin, according to formula (1), as GX(J)N rises by a greater percentage than GXN. Also, under pricing‐to‐market (PTM), exchange‐rate depreciation improves the terms of trade. Then, as the exchange rate fluctuates, PTM could produce fluctuations at the extensive margin of trade without signifying anything for “varieties.” Since no “new” trade would be involved, clearly these assignments of the export share change to the extensive margin would not correspond to the classical definition at all.The same applies if country J had maintained its share of exports to country N in all those categories in which it exports to N but total exports in these categories had simply grown faster than in the other categories: Again, JXN would rise at the same rate as GX[J]N, leaving the intensive margin unchanged, while GX[J]N would grow faster than GXN, raising the extensive margin without increasing the number of varieties consumed.This leaves the case, the only one subsumed in Bergin’s discussion, where GX[J]N/GXN rises because country J participates in more categories of global exports to country N. Here difficulties may be created by Viner’s trade creation for Bergin and Lin’s interpretation. When production of electronics such as home entertainment systems sold in the U.S. market first shifted from the United States to Mexico on account of gains in the competitiveness of using Mexico as an export platform under NAFTA, there was an expansion at the extensive margin of Mexico’s export trade with the United States. But variety in the U.S. market did not increase; only costs fell. Trade in standardized components tends to be directed, and quickly redirected, on the basis of cost efficiency alone. Production and trade flows in differentiated products are more entrenched.V. Lessons from the Failure of Past Predictions and Persistent Exchange Rate ErrorsResearch on the trade effects of a monetary union that is currently of interest relates predominantly to the euro area. Yet it is already well known that data for currency unions collected by Rose mostly for groups of small and frequently backward countries far away from Europe cannot successfully be projected on euroland. Running regressions with data that are dominated by Equatorial and sub‐Saharan countries has produced egregious errors when the regression results were used to predict the effects on the growth of trade within the euro zone. Outside resource‐extraction investments, these African countries got little FDI and were not part of a major regional, let alone global, supply chain. Whatever they achieved from a very low starting base under a currency union has no conceivable relevance for the euro zone for lack of comparability of almost all transmission conditions. The euro is a major international currency and the EMU (European Economic and Monetary Union) is a monetary union, not just a currency union. Currency unions based on a minor currency are usually subject to dollarization/euroization in their financial business and trade contracts. They tend to have no pricing power in international markets, and recurring foreign‐exchange shortages (balance of payment [BOP] crises) may well have a strong effect on the extent of their trade with other members of the union. Any resulting real depreciation of the common currency relative to the rest‐of‐world (ROW) would divert imports from ROW to countries inside the union, thereby strengthening trade between them (cf. Baldwin 2006, 44).Rose and van Wincoop (2001, 389), managed to whittle Rose’s earlier prediction of the trade‐creating effect of currency union down to 58% for the euroland members of that time. This was still several times greater than the range of 5%–10% (up to twice as much in the long run) actually found by Baldwin (2006, 48) when he evaluated the evidence that had emerged for the euro zone in the meantime. Simply adding observations for the euro‐area countries to the Rose data would yield a blend of two very different effects fitting neither African and other such currency union countries nor the euro zone.To analyze data on the development of the intensive and extensive margins of trade in the euro zone in fixed physical categories, one should start with data for Europe and not for the Central African Republic (population 4.5 million), neighboring Chad (10 million), or other frequently troubled and financially backward countries. Their names appear in the list of 65 pairs of currency union countries for Bergin and Lin’s estimation period 1973–2000. Berthou and Fontagné (2008) and several contributions analyzed in Baldwin (2006) have pointed the way in using European data for Europe’s one‐of‐a‐kind experiment. That experiment has created a monetary union over an area of great and diversified trading power, with increasingly integrated banking, finance, and goods and services markets. The technical, regulatory, and legal infrastructure required for such integration is largely in place. Mini–money currency unions in Africa and elsewhere can only contribute sample abnormalities leading to error in predicting the trade consequences of EMU.There can be no doubt that exchange rate regimes and the economic size and level of development of the area they cover matter for the expansion of trade and the location of FDI (see Ethier 1998). The reason is that these regimes also affect the extent and depth of financial integration and the long‐term predictability of real exchange rates among the members of that regime. However, in Bergin and Lin’s model, the real exchange rate expected in year t for any future year after t is known and constant as prices are free to adjust to any money supply shocks after 1 year. Modeling each bilateral exchange rate as a deterministic function of the ratio of the corresponding money supplies is a throwback to the monetarist formulations of the 1970s with puchasing power parity. It provides no room for exchange rate uncertainty per se. Rather, random disturbances in money supplies—which could be neutralized by simply fixing the exchange rate so as to endogenize the money supply of the stabilizing party—in Bergin and Lin’s model cause only temporary disturbances of the real exchange rate under for‐the‐year‐ahead price setting if these disturbances are allowed to stand. Even if the government accepts the consequences of stochastic money supply shocks for exchange rates, common inflation targeting “assuming full symmetry across countries” would seem to guarantee a very close approximation to equilibrium when combined with any exchange rate regime in the monetarist model. Indeed, meaningful differences in exchange rate regimes would cease to exist if exchange rates were tethered to relative money stocks as Bergin and Lin specify.If real exchange rate fluctuations, under floating, were indeed just random to a known that money supply they would out over be to in major and be among the least of for business. It is only of the real exchange rate from what and could have expected that for to into foreign markets through foreign or through cross‐border trade. 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While COVID‐19 had the potential to be extremely disruptive to the Canadian pork supply chain, the sector showed resiliency by adjusting to market changes to ensure industry continuation. Unlike other non‐agricultural firms that were mandated to close at times, the pork sector was deemed an essential service and allowed to continue operating throughout the pandemic. Evidence of this resiliency is seen in three main ways. First, market access to the United States was maintained for both live pigs and pork exports. Second, Canada not only maintained market share in global pork exports, but it also actually increased shipments because of strong demand from China caused by African swine fever. Third, the challenges of processing plant closures and labour shortages were overcome in a variety of ways including increasing interprovincial shipments and increasing live pig exports to the United States. Pork consumption on a per capita basis continued the historical downward trend, and it is expected that consumers will return to their normal consumption patterns (e.g., dining at restaurants) despite job losses. At the meat processing level, it is anticipated that there will be an acceleration in the process to automate.

Zoonotic transmission of Salmonella infections causes an estimated 11% of salmonellosis annually in the United States. This report describes the epidemiologic, traceback and laboratory investigations conducted in the United States as part of four multistate outbreaks of Salmonella infections linked to small turtles. Salmonella isolates indistinguishable from the outbreak strains were isolated from a total of 143 ill people in the United States, pet turtles, and pond water samples collected from turtle farm A, as well as ill people from Chile and Luxembourg. Almost half (45%) of infections occurred in children aged <5years, underscoring the importance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to keep pet turtles and other reptiles out of homes and childcare settings with young children. Although only 43% of the ill people who reported turtle exposure provided purchase information, most small turtles were purchased from flea markets or street vendors, which made it difficult to locate the vendor, trace the turtles to a farm of origin, provide education and enforce the United States federal ban on the sale and distribution of small turtles. These outbreaks highlight the importance of improving public awareness and education about the risk of Salmonella from small turtles not only in the United States but also worldwide.

This study provides a comparative evidence of global non-oil commodities export competitiveness. Analytically, this study employs descriptive statistics to highlights and overview the global non-oil commodities export competitiveness. The study used the reports of the world competitiveness index, world merchandise exports and imports by commodity, world economic forum ranking and the African industrial competitiveness for the comparative analysis. The findings show that United States, Singapore, China, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Netherlands are the most competitive economies in terms of non-oil commodities export, while, Mauritius, South Africa, Morocco, Seychelles, Tunisia and Algeria are the most competitive economies given the Africa ranking. The study presented significant recommendations: product quality, production capacity, export capacity, export market shares/size, market access and technological upgrading and innovation dynamic are considered as the main pillars that determine countries non-oil commodities competitiveness in the global market towards economic growth.

U.S. seafood consumption has changed dramatically in recent decades and has become increasingly dominated by the consumption of a limited number of species that are primarily imported and predominantly sourced from aquaculture. In getting to this point, the United States has been, and still is, at the forefront of some of the most important trends in global seafood markets. Hence, discussing the factors influencing U.S. seafood consumption patterns is an interesting and informative endeavor and will most likely also have strong predictive power for the continued development of seafood markets in the United States. In this article, we will discuss the transitions in the U.S. seafood market, primarily focusing on the period from 1990 to the present, highlighting the main factors that facilitated this development. This article provides an overview of U.S. landings, aquaculture production, exports, and imports and also explores contributing trends in global export and import markets. This will be followed by a discussion of U.S. per capita consumption patterns and an examination of the consolidation of species consumed over time. Finally, implications for future trends in seafood consumption and production are discussed.

This article analyzes the main parameters of world trade in goods and services by aggregated export and import items, by regions of the world and leading countries. As a result of the changing geopolitical situation in the world, when developing countries are trying to change the old world order (with the hegemony of Western countries over the United States), the conditions of world trade and the share of certain countries in global export and import indicators are changing. The analysis of world trade is based on statistical data from the UN, WTO and other international organizations. The change of world trade leaders at the regional level has been revealed. Thus, Asia's leadership is fixed in commodity exports and imports, but the developed countries of the West lead in the export of commercial services. The leader of world trade is currently China, ahead of both the United States and Germany.

Biological invasions are synonymous with international trade. The direct effects of trade have largely been quantified using relationships between imports and the number of alien species in a region or patterns in the global spread of species linked to shipping and air traffic networks. But trade also has an indirect role on biological invasions by transforming the environments and societies of exporting and importing nations. Here, both the direct and indirect roles of trade on biological invasions, as well as their interaction, are examined for the first time. Future trends in international trade, including e-commerce, new trade routes, and major infrastructure developments, will lead to the pressure on national borders soon outstripping the resources available for intervention. The current legislative and scientific tools targeting biological invasions are insufficient to deal with this growing threat and require a new mindset that focuses on curbing the pandemic risk posed by alien species.

The Indomitable Renminbi

Secondhand clothing has undergone a significant transformation from a vital household asset in the pre-industrial era to a dynamic segment of global trade in the 21st century. However, the advent of fast fashion has led to overproduction and mass consumption of inexpensive garments, fueling a surge in the secondhand clothing trade. Between 2002 and 2022, the market value of this industry quadrupled, with exports accounting for 1.17% of total global clothing exports in 2022. This study examines global secondhand clothing exports using export competitiveness tools such as revealed comparative advantage (RCA), the index of export market penetration (IEMP), the trade intensity index (TII), unit values, market shares, and the compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The top eleven secondhand clothing exporting countries are analyzed for a ten year period (2013 to 2022) using the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. The analysis reveals notable trends: the United States and China dominate the market, while Pakistan and the UAE exhibit the highest growth rates. The study also reaffirmed that trade patterns for secondhand clothing continue to flow from the Global North—including China—to the Global South, a trend observed since the early 2000s. This research provides a comprehensive, current analysis of the ever growing secondhand clothing export market within the sustainable management of the secondhand clothing context.

Visualizing the services embodied in global manufacturing exports

In this paper, a global soybean trade network (GSTN) is constructed based on the international trade data from 1987 to 2020. The results are as follow: (1) From 1987 to 2020, the scale of the network continued to expand, the number of trading countries continued to increase, and the trade links between countries gradually deepened. (2) The power function curve of the node degree distribution shows that the GSTN satisfies the power law distribution, which fits to be a scale-free network. (3) The global soybean export market is highly concentrated. The United States, Brazil and Argentina account for more than 80% of global soybean exports. China is the world’s largest soybean importer. (4) The control ability of core countries in the GSTN has gradually declined, which is shown from that the importance of nodes has gradually weakened, while the trade between peripheral countries is gradually increasing, showing the phenomenon of trade multilateralism. (5) South America has become the global soybean export centre, and Asia has become the global soybean import centre. The trade status of North America has declined, and the overall strength of Africa and Oceania is the weakest.

There has been considerable growth in global meat trade recently in line with globally increasing population and changing diets. The paper analyses competitiveness patterns in global meat trade between 1989 and 2018. The article applies the method of revealed comparative advantages on global meat trade data and reaches a number of conclusions. First, results show top 10 countries in global meat exports and imports as well as most traded products. Global meat exports are dominated by the United States, Brazil and the Netherlands, whole main meat importers were Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom. The paper shows that global meat trade is highly concentrated by country and product but this concentration has decreased considerably in the previous 20 years. By analysing specialisation in global meat trade, a diverse picture becomes apparent where export positions and comparative advantages are not always moving together. Last but not least, Hungarian positions are also analysed in context throughout the paper.

The cultural history of the Americas is partially defined by African continuities, reinventions, adaptations, and significations. As in any culture, these constitute actual modalities of representing and negotiating the self as subject in the social world through expressive values. One reading of the sociopolitical history of the Americas is the attempt to control this aesthetic and its black producers, while simultaneously appropriating it for economic gain and for forging various national cultural identities (i.e., Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, Brazil, the United States). Hip-hop youth culture is the current cultural practice in a long history of vital black expressivity lodged within the ambivalent realities of U.S. cultural history. Dance Studies scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild reveals that in the new-millennium-hip- hop-era, “it is not only rap’s content that rankles; it is also the form. This genre is all about rhythm, a component that can inspire fear in a Europeanist culture that knew enough about the power of African rhythm to prohibit drumming by enslaved Africans.”1 The exploration of this seductively powerful and often threatening Africanist aesthetic in hip-hop, as a global export, is the subject of this chapter.

Using the concepts of water intensity of production and international trade in virtual water developed in the economic literature, the authors show that in the countries of Central Asia, with the exception to a certain extent of Kazakhstan, a highly water-intensive model of economic growth has developed. The record-breaking by world standards water intensity of economic growth in the subregion is explained by the massive use of fresh natural water to serve the needs of agriculture, which is also among the world leaders in water intensity. Despite the pronounced trend towards a decrease in the water intensity of the economy in the period 2000–2021, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan remain world leaders by fresh water consumption per unit of gross domestic product and value added in agriculture. Uzbekistan is a striking example of a country whose specialization in global exports was formed irrespective of the availability of such a resource as water. In 2022, Uzbekistan exported in virtual form a fifth of fresh water taken from natural sources. In absolute terms Uzbekistan by export of its own virtual water ranked sixth in the world, behind only China, India, the United States, Iran and Pakistan. The water stress indicator in Uzbekistan exceeds 100, which shows that the economy and population are consuming part of the fresh water that should be used to maintain the stability of natural water systems. It is only possible to maintain and, even more so, develop such a wasteful model of water consumption if the price water for consumers remains very low, which in turn presupposes an increase in the withdrawal of fresh natural water. If the present economic growth model is maintained, the negative consequences of water scarcity and water stress in Central Asia will only increase in the future. Water conservation can make a significant contribution to solving the problems of water scarcity, what involves modernization through large-scale investments of water transportation, distribution, accumulation and storage systems, as well as the use of water-saving technologies and practices in agriculture. A positive effect on water scarcity can be achieved by the wide use of industrial water cleaning technologies. However, both of these solutions are palliatives. Fresh natural water should receive a relevant price. In the short term, a relevant price for water will strengthen the policy of reducing water intensity. In the medium and long term, the price will set the right guidelines for investment and sectoral policies aimed at forming a model of sustainable economic growth.