A Year Later: Evaluating the Impact of the Ukraine-Russia War on US-Russia Trade Relations

It’s been a year since the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war. The war has since significantly changed the state of global geopolitics and economy. Among the plethora of consequences, the sanctions levied on Russia by the United States altered the state of trading relations between the two superpowers. We went in depth and studied the overall impact of the war and ensuing sanctions on trade. Here are our major findings:

The US imports from Russia hit the lowest during this period since 2018. Their total value in June 2022 was $704M, way less than the monthly average imports of $2.5B.

Similarly, the US exports to Russia also were at an all-time low, falling to a low of $89M in April 2022, as opposed to the monthly average export of $532M in 2022.

It remains to be seen how the trade relations between the two countries will evolve in the coming years.

Such a remarkable impact of the war on the trading relations between the two countries led us to wonder how the state would have been given the war never happened. To evaluate the hypothetical trade outcome in the absence of the war, we utilized the forecasting technique of moving averages. This method utilizes the average of past data to predict future trends.

As per our analysis, assuming that the war between the US and Ukraine had not occurred, the trade flow between the US and Russia would likely have remained stable or even increased.

Looking at the state of Russia’s performance on the global trade front, the scenario is totally different. Russia is doing well in multiple sectors and even growing significantly. We will be exploring Russia’s growing trade relations in other sectors and with different global partners in our next insights. Stay Tuned!