Nigeria’s foreign trade with the United States has averaged N2 trillion in the last 3 years but is on track to fall to its lowest since 2015 as Covid-19 lockdowns affect trade between both countries.
Nigeria’s expanding trade deficit with the US is due to a fall in exports in the third quarter of the year. Nigeria only exported N212.75 billion of goods to the country compared to an import of N1.3 trillion.
The drop in Nigeria’s export to the US this year is mostly due to Covid-19 as the world’s largest economy also doubles as the epicenter for Covid-19 cases in the world.
According to the latest foreign trade report by the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria recorded its lowest foreign trade with the United States since 2015 slumping to N1.5 trillion as of September 2020 compared to N2.1 trillion recorded in the same period in 2019.
The situation is worse for Nigeria which continues to operate a trade deficit with the world’s largest economy swinging from a surplus between 2016 and 2018 to a deficit in 2019 and on track to report the highest trade deficit since 2013.
Since the Shale Oil Boom shut out US global demand for oil in 2010, demand for Nigeria’s crude has fallen annually and contributed to taking the US out of the top 10 export destinations for Nigeria.
Meanwhile, as Nigeria and US trade continues to falter, China remains a stronger and growing trade partner with the largest economy in Africa. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China/Nigeria trade topped N4 trillion in the first 9 months of 2020 compared to N3.6 trillion in the same period in 2019.
