EasyExport Blog

Understanding Our Reports – EasyExport Insights™ Monthly Analysis

Written by Jeff Grody | 05 31, 2020

EasyExport Insights provides actionable information to U.S. exporters to help them grow their international sales.

EasyExport Insights reports are derived from data collected by the U.S. Government and published monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau. Data is released about 35 days after the close of a month.

This month’s reports reflect data through May 31, 2020, which was released on July 2. The issue of EasyExport Insights we release in August will cover the month of June 2020.

The Government collects the data via Electronic Export Information (EEI) filings exporters submit at the time of export. EEI filings group products into categories identified by what are known as “Schedule B numbers.”

Most product categories in our reports include a single Schedule B number; in four instances, we believe more meaningful information is provided by combining data for two Schedule B numbers.

Our Spotlight reports also incorporate data published by the U.S. International Trade Administration and output from a market diversification tool that is available at the International Trade Administration website.

Grow Your Exports reports, available only to EasyExport customers, combine proprietary EasyExport data with publicly available data to identify opportunities for growth. Monthly Grow Your Exports reports are included with EasyExport subscriptions.

More information about the sources of our data is available in the Sources of our Data section at the back of this report.

Report Formats

Our Monthly Export Reports cover 20 product categories, three-year periods and sales in each product category to the top 25 countries. We opted to present most information in table format rather than graphs because we believe tables do a better job with so much information.

The reports are provided for your benefit, however, so feel free to share your ideas with us if you believe additional formats would be useful.

Data Limitations

The data available to us suffers from some limitations, two of which are worth noting now. One is that the data does not capture all exports.

The other limitation is that some data relating to optics is categorized with data not relating to the firearms industry, preventing the industry-relevant data from being segregated. We will dive into data limitations in a future issue.

Ammunition

We are not currently tracking ammunition exports. This will change soon. We appreciate your patience.