DT n° 2024-02, January 2024
International trade in healthcare products took off in the 2000s at the height of hyper-globalisation. Twenty years on, the Covid-19 shock drove home to governments the importance of health security and trained the spotlight on the industrial sovereignty issues raised by the international organisation of production. However, the tangled web of international value chains has compromised the traceability of the manufacturing of these essential goods. In addition, the classification of healthcare products across a multitude of industries in the trade and production nomenclatures makes them hard to identify and muddies the picture further. In this paper, we have painstakingly identified these products and classified them together in one industry grouping to assess the scale of and trends in trade to meet the needs of national health systems. Covering a vast range of products (medicinal products and their compounds, medical technology equipment and small medical materials), this healthcare industry grouping has posted the strongest relative growth since 2000, rising to take the number two share of world trade in 2021 just behind electronic products. This paper details the nature of world trade in the healthcare industry grouping and its five branches by production stage (intermediate and final), type of trade flows (one-way and two-way) and quality/price range. It goes on to present how the advanced countries are positioned compared with the rest.
Authors
Pierre Cotterlaz; Guillaume Gaulier; Aude Sztulman & Deniz Ünal
- Pages
- 62
- Published in
- France
Table of Contents
- Abstract 2
- 1. Introduction 4
- 2. Identification and classification by healthcare product branch 5
- 2.1. The different lists drawn up since the 1990s 6
- 2.1.1. The Pharma Agreement list put together by the Uruguay Round 6
- 2.1.2. The list drawn up by Matthias Helble following the Great Recession 6
- 2.1.3. The lists produced by the Covid-19 pandemic 7
- 2.2. The CEPII list 9
- 2.2.1. Exhaustive long-run coverage 9
- 2.2.2. An industry grouping approach based on industrial branches and production stages 10
- 3. A key industry grouping in international trade 12
- 3.1. Increasing trade in products, especially in pharmaceutical preparations 12
- 3.2. Predominance of trade in intermediate products 18
- 3.3. Leader in two-way trade in products 19
- 3.4. Polarised unit value ranges 21
- 4. Increasing interdependencies between advanced and emerging countries 22
- 4.1. Sustained strength of engagement by advanced economies 22
- 4.2. Growth in trade between advanced and emerging countries,47F but also in trade between emerging countries 24
- 4.3. Predominance of advanced countries in two-way trade 25
- 4.4. Emerging countries positioned in the low range 26
- 5. Conclusion 27
- 6. Appendix: additional figures and tables 29
- 7. Methodological appendix 43
- 7.1. Databases used 43
- 7.2. Breakdown by branch of HS-6 products in the CEPII list 43
- 7.2.1. The chemicals usable in health branch 43
- 7.2.2. The basic pharmaceutical products branch 50
- 7.2.3. The pharmaceutical preparations branch 54
- 7.2.4. The medical technology equipment branch 56
- 7.2.5. The small medical materials branch 58
- References 61
