So Much Blood

In a recent post about trading stuff for money, I mentioned: Europe had a [blood plasma] shortage of around 38%, which it met by importing plasma from paid donors in the United States, where blood products account for 2% of all exports by value. The internet’s reaction was: “TWO PERCENT?” “TWO PERCENT OF U.S. EXPORTS ARE BLOOD!?” Well, I took that 2% number from a 2024 article in the Economist: Last year American blood-product exports accounted for 1.8% of the country’s total goods exports, up from just 0.5% a decade ago—and were worth $37bn. That makes blood the country’s ninth-largest goods export, ahead of coal and gold. All told, America now supplies 70% or so of the plasma used to make medicine. I figured the Economist was trustworthy on matters of economics. But note: That 1.8% number is for blood products, not just blood. It’s a percentage of goods exported, excluding services. It’s wrong. The article doesn’t explain how they arrived at 1.8%. And since the Economist speak ... Read full article.