Ecuador's food exports are a rare bright spot amid economic crisis

Ecuador's economy has had a rough 2024, but one of the bright spots has been international demand for the nation's tropical crops and farmed seafood.

CEIC recently added data from the nation's Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. We created a chart comparing price indices for agricultural goods consumed domestically and exported foodstuffs.

After several years of flat prices, exported foods shot higher at the start of 2024 – driven by two goods in particular: cocoa and shrimp. In October, this index was up 25% year on year. These gains have outpaced price increases for other Ecuadorean goods; the international price increase for Ecuador's total exported products (which is also available in the new dataset) is up about 12% in that time.

Foods consumed inside Ecuador, meanwhile, have seen their prices fall about 5% on average over the past 12 months; after four straight monthly declines, they are barely above 2016 levels. This reflects waning consumer demand and purchasing power linked to the nation's ongoing economic crisis – itself the result of a combination of gang violence, drought and emigration.

These trends are having a deflationary effect. Ecuador's consumer price index (CPI) fell 0.2% month-on-month in October. (Electricity discounts have helped too; the government knocked 50% off power bills due to blackouts in April.) The economy is likely to have tipped over into an official recession; GDP shrank 2.2% in the second quarter – the steepest decline since the pandemic.

Luckily for Ecuadorean farmers, their costs are going down too. Our second chart tracks prices for fertilizers and other agricultural inputs. Both of our indices dropped more than 15% compared with a year earlier.

To be sure, much of this dynamic reflects the ongoing integration of Chinese inputs into Southeast Asian manufacturing; increased ASEAN exports are only possible with rising Chinese imports by those countries.

Will the ASEAN "connector economies" trade model be more directly affected by Trump's tariffs this time? The president-elect has proposed tariffs of up to 20% on all foreign goods, which would include friendly ASEAN states. However, Trump has proposed even higher levies on imports from China.

The president-elect's hawkish tone might moderate, but the potential for a Republican majority in both the House and Senate could mean Trump's administration would be relatively unrestrained in pursuing its policy agenda.

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