Um, how much does North Carolina depend on other countries?

Here's a quick snapshot of the things our state sends to, and gets from, the rest of the world.

Shipping containers at the Port of Wilmington (via NC Ports)

On Wednesday afternoon, the president announced a bunch of tariffs which, if implemented in their current, haphazard, the-math-doesn’t-make-sense form, would likely have the effect of cutting off a lot of global markets to a lot of American businesses. If you’re wondering whether North Carolina depends on world markets, here is a heading in a report, updated in March, from the president’s own trade representative:

North Carolina Depends on World Markets

Okay!

Look, I’m not here to talk about what is going to happen (although at the moment I’m writing this, the stock market is headed straight down). But it’s worth knowing what the playing field looks like as of now.

First off (again, this comes from the president’s own trade representative): “North Carolina exported a record $42.8 billion of goods to the world. In 2022, exports from North Carolina supported an estimated 145 thousand jobs (latest data available).” If you work at a company that’s supported by shipping stuff to other countries, congratulations! You have a job that pays an average of 18 percent more than the national average.

Where does all of our stuff go? Canada gets about 20 percent of it, followed by China and Mexico. We send a lot of chemicals to other countries. In particular, North Carolina’s farmers depend on sending food and plant products overseas. No state sends more tobacco and broiler meat to other countries than us. Our top export by value is pork ($781 million worth in 2022), so it should come as no surprise that the world’s largest pork processing plant (i.e. slaughterhouse) is in the small town of Tar Heel in Eastern North Carolina.

The Smithfield pork processing plant in Tar Heel.

As for money coming into this state from overseas, some 321,400 people worked for companies that are based in other countries. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan in particular have invested a lot of money here. Just last October, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper opened an international business conference in Charlotte meant to bring southeastern states and Japan closer together. That country’s ambassador showed up! You can see the results in places like Liberty, North Carolina, where Toyota is getting ready to open its first-ever North American battery plant.

So what, exactly, does North Carolina import? Let’s take Canada, for example. Axios Charlotte reported in February that they send us a lot of “equipment and machinery, agriculture and forest products.” It makes sense. There are a lot of trees up there to cut down and use in, say, new homes in the United States. Cars are assembled up there. There’s also a lot of stuff called potash, which is an important ingredient in fertilizer. The United States imports 90 percent of the potash it needs, and 85 percent comes from Canada (or more accurately, Saskatchewan). Why? Because that’s where it is. (For what it’s worth, there’s an extremely large potassium mine in Aurora, out by the coast, owned the Canadian company that does a lot of potash mining, but they don’t get potash from it).

All that said, almost half this state’s imports come from Europe. Only Indiana gets more stuff from the EU.

Last thing here, all of the things we’ve been talking about to this point have been actual, physical goods. Services can also be exported, and that doesn’t seem to be included in the data here, nor the calculations that led to the most recent round of tariffs.

I know. It’s all complicated. And sort of abstract! But just know that, as predictions follow, some things get scarce, many other things get more expensive, and peoples’ investments and retirement accounts ride a roller coaster, it might become clear that we’re a little more dependent on faraway places than it might seem.