Trade Balance

Get the Trade Balance for a variety of countries over time from the Global Macro Database (GMDB). The Trade Balance is the difference between the total value of goods and services a country exports and the total value of goods and services it imports. A positive trade balance (a “trade surplus”) means a country exports more than it imports, while a negative trade balance (a “trade deficit”) means a country imports more than it exports.

Formula:

Trade Balance = Exports - Imports

The balance is annual and expressed in millions of national currency, with a negative value marking a trade deficit and a positive value a surplus.

Data comes from the Global Macro Database (GMDB), further information about the variable can be found within https://www.globalmacrodata.com/documentation.html

Also known as: net exports, balance of trade.

Trade Balance in Python

get_trade_balance is part of the Economics module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_trade_balance as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Economics

economics = Economics(start_date='2020-01-01', end_date='2023-01-01')

economics.get_trade_balance(countries=['United States', 'Germany', 'China'])

Which returns:

Parameters

get_trade_balance accepts the following parameters:

• countries (list[str] | str | None, optional): A list of countries or a single country to include in the results. Defaults to None.
• rolling (int, optional): The rolling window size to use for smoothing the data (simple moving average). Defaults to None.
• trailing (int, optional): The trailing window size to use for summing the data over trailing periods (e.g. a trailing-4-quarter sum). Defaults to None.
• growth (bool, optional): Whether to return the growth data or the actual data. Defaults to False.
• lag (int, optional): The number of periods to lag the growth data. Defaults to 1.
• standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.
• rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None.

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