A report released yesterday by the US International Trade Commission shows that American Samoa was among the top three Pacific island countries exporting goods to the United States in the period from 2017 to 2021.
The 400-page report titled US Pacific Islands Trade and Investment Opportunities said Pacific Island exports to the United States decreased by $18.7 million from 2017 to 2021 or 2.4 percent, compared to the 15.6 percent growth of Pacific Island exports to all destinations.
Large export increases to the United States from French Polynesia ($27.2 million) and Fiji ($19.0 million) were offset by larger decreases from Papua New Guinea ($45.6 million) and New Caledonia ($20.1 million). Though total Pacific Island exports globally decreased from 2019 to 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, exports to the United States increased by $29.4 million, making 2020 exports to the United States the largest of the five-year period.
“This was facilitated by a $53.1 million increase in exports from American Samoa, driven by increased U.S. demand for canned tuna,” said the report.
Pacific Island economies’ exports to the United States were highly concentrated by exporting economy.
The top three exporting economies during 2017–2021—American Samoa, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea—accounted for 83.3 percent of all Pacific Islands’ export value to the United States. Exports from American Samoa largely consisted of prepared and preserved tuna classified (99.5 percent).
According to the report, tuna exports to the United States from American Samoa averaged $348 million annually and accounted for 82.9% of the Pacific Islands region’s canned tuna exports to the United States.
Exports from Fiji included mostly water (46.8 percent), and prepared and preserved tuna (30.5 percent).
Goods exported to the United States from Papua New Guinea were mostly coffee (52.2 percent) and cocoa beans (23.8 percent).
22 Pacific Island economies covered in the report are American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna.
