Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

CHAPTER 4
FOREIGN TRADE
The US market, in the words of a former Spanish trade commissioner, is “like
Troy was for the Greeks – very difficult to conquer from without, very
expensive to conquer from within.” 1 The easiest thing to do is to ignore the
market and concentrate on others, such as Europe and Latin America, which is
what the vast majority of Spanish companies do. But it is too important to
overlook, and success in it often means that a company is ready to be a global
player. Spain’s efforts to sell to the world’s largest market (excluding intra-
European Union trade) have so far not amounted to very much. The United
States takes around 4% of the country’s total exports, roughly the same as the
proportion that goes to all of Latin America and less than half that to
neighbouring Portugal (see Exhibit 4.1). It is normal for a country to trade
more with its immediate neighbours (in the United States’ case Mexico and
Canada), but what reveals a weakness in Spain’s case is that the United
Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France trade much more with the United States
as a proportion of their total trade. For example, the United States takes around
15% of the United Kingdom’s total exports.
According to US figures, Spanish exports account for a mere 0.5% of
America’s total foreign purchases (0.7% in 1989), one-sixth the UK share, onefourth
the French share and one-fourth the Italian share and compared with
Spain’s 2% share of global trade (see Exhibit 4.2). Spain’s share of the US
market is more in line with that of medium-sized EU countries, such as Austria,
Belgium or Denmark, whose economies are much smaller. Although the
volume of exports is small, the United States is Spain’s sixth-largest market,
making it a top-tier trading partner, only exceeded by Spain’s “natural”
markets of France, Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Italy. The
1. See the article by Manuel Valle, a former trade commissioner in New York, in the autumn 2001 issue
of Economía Exterior.