The importance of the trade in goods between Spain and the United States
In this article we analyse the role played by the US economy in our country’s trade relations: although it is an important trade partner, Spain’s exposure to the US is relatively low, although there are significant disparities between sectors.
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the restrictive trade policy he has proposed could include a significant tariff hike, which would have a marked negative impact on Europe, given that current tariffs on European imports are very low. In the case of Spain, the potential impact of this measure is analysed
in the Focus «Impact of tariff hikes on Spanish exports to the US: which sectors could be the hardest hit?» included in this same report, while in this article we focus on the role of the US economy in our country’s trade relations. Generally speaking we can say that, while it is an important trading partner,1 Spain’s exposure to the US is relatively low, although there are significant disparities between sectors.
On the export side, the US is the sixth most important destination for Spanish goods – the second non-EU destination behind the UK – with exports valued at 18.7 billion euros in 2024 (trailing 12 months to September), which represents 4.9% of the total sales of Spanish goods abroad. This figure has grown in recent years, having been 4.5% in the pre-pandemic period (average for 2014-2019), although it remains well below the weight of the US market in Italy (10.7%), Germany (9.9%) or France (7.3%). In terms of GDP, Spanish exports to the US account for around 1.3%, much lower than the euro area average (3.1%) or that of countries such as Germany and France, at 3.8% and 1.6%, respectively.
- 1. If we consider all trade (exports and imports), the US is Spain’s sixth most important trading partner and our second largest non-EU partner, behind only China.
By product, the groups that are exported the most are equipment (especially industrial machinery and electrical equipment) and semi-manufactured goods (mainly chemical products), which account for around 60.0% of the total; they are followed some distance behind by food products (around 18.0%), with oils and fats being of particular importance.
Although the proportion of the total exports to the US does not seem very high, if we analyse the role of the
US market at the product level, some differences emerge. There are goods in which the degree of dependence on the US market is greater; for example, while 7.5% of equipment exports and 5.6% of semi-manufactured goods exports go to the US, engines stand out in the former group of products (17.6%) and construction material in the latter group (13.5%). In the case of food products, while they are below average overall (4.7% of their sales go to the US), oils and fats stand out, at 14.0%.
By analysing the latest trends in exports to the US, we see that the post-pandemic rally has been truncated by two years of setbacks, of 0.3% in 2023 and 1.2% year-on-year in January-September this year. In any case, compared to the period 2014-2019, in 2024 (annualised data up to September) they have grown by 55.0%, surpassing the 43.9% increase recorded for all exports in total.
The third chart shows the contribution of different product groups to the growth in exports to the US between 2014-2019 and 2024 (cumulative data up to September). Almost all of the growth in this period is explained by the main items (equipment, semi-manufactured goods and food), which, consequently, now make up a larger proportion of the total than previously. At a more disaggregated level, oils and fats stand out, and most notably chemicals, contributing 6.3 and 12.9 points to the growth, respectively (i.e. these two product groups account for 35% of the total growth). On the other hand, the only exports that have contributed negatively are those of the automotive sector, which have seen their share of total exports shrink significantly to 3.1%, less than one third their level in 2014-2019.
As for imports coming from the US, they have increased in 2024 (annualised data up to September), reaching 28.38 billion euros, or 6.7% of the total. This makes the North American country our fifth most important supplier and the second most important outside the EU after China. This percentage has increased relatively sharply in recent years, up from 4.5% in 2014-2019. The products which Spain buys from the US mostly include energy products (35.2% of the total), semi-manufactured goods (29.2%) – above all, chemicals – and equipment (21.4%), especially transport equipment and engines.
Special mention should be made of energy imports, which have soared following the outbreak of the war
in Ukraine, driven by purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG).2 In this respect, Spain currently buys one sixth of its total energy imports from the US – compared to 3.5% before the pandemic – and 8.6% of its imports of semi-manufactured goods, especially chemicals (11.5%). Within the equipment category, where the weight of purchases from the US is similar to the overall average (6.4%), the main product groups are precision appliances (11.4%), transport equipment (14.5%) and, above all, engines (44.3%).
- 2. At a time when the circumstances forced us to reduce our dependence on Russian energy, and taking advantage of the fact that Spain is the EU country with the greatest regasification capacity (7 plants), imports of LNG from the US increased from just over 1 million tonnes (273 million euros) on average in the period 2014-2019 to 4.2 million tonnes (2.0 billion euros) in 2024 (annualised data up to September). In 2022 they peaked at 8.43 million tonnes and 8.9 billion euros.
In recent years, imports from the US have followed a similar pattern to that discussed above for exports to the country: they fell sharply in 2023 (–16.3%), followed by a slight rebound this year (0.5% year-on-year in January-September). However, this overall reduction has not offset the exceptional growth of 2021-2022. Therefore, based on the cumulative data for the 12 months to September 2024, the level of imports is more than double the 2014-2019 average (exceeding it by 117.4%, compared to 43.9% in the case of all imports).
More than half of the growth accumulated by imports between the period 2014-2019 and 2024 is explained by the energy component, which has tripled its weight in the total, reaching 35.2% (it is the only product group that has seen its share of the total increase). Trailing some way behind are semi-manufactured goods and equipment: in the former group, chemicals stand out, accounting for around 25% of the total growth in imports.
Finally, trade with the US traditionally generates a deficit for Spain, and in recent years this deficit has increased significantly, driven by the energy balance. Specifically, the deficit in 2024 (9.644 billion euros, of which 8.212 billion comes from energy) is 10 times greater than the average for 2014-2019 (972 million) and it is our country’s second largest trade deficit with other countries, only surpassed (by far) by the deficit with China (36.287 billion).
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