The 2016 Import and Export Market for Wheelchairs and Their Parts in the United States

On the demand side, exporters and strategic planners focusing on wheelchairs and their parts in the United States face a number of questions. Which countries are supplying wheelchairs and their parts to the United States? How important is the United States compared to others in terms of the entire global and regional market? How much do the imports of wheelchairs and their parts vary from one country of origin to another in the United States? On the supply side, the United States also exports wheelchairs and their parts. Which countries receive the most exports from the United States? How are these exports concentrated across buyers? What is the value of these exports and which countries are the largest buyers? This report was created for strategic planners, international marketing executives and import/export managers who are concerned with the market for wheelchairs and their parts in the United States. With the globalization of this market, managers can no longer be contented with a local view. Nor can managers be contented with out-of-date statistics which appear several years after the fact. I have developed a methodology, based on macroeconomic and trade models, to estimate the market for wheelchairs and their parts for those countries serving the United States via exports, or supplying from the United States via imports. It does so for the current year based on a variety of key historical indicators and econometric models. In what follows, Chapter 2 begins by summarizing where the United States fits into the world market for imported and exported wheelchairs and their parts. The total level of imports and exports on a worldwide basis, and those for the United States in particular, is estimated using a model which aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive