Oregon Office of Economic Analysis
Oregon is benefiting from strong exports, but a state economist thinks growth will slow over the next few years.
Oregon's five largest markets in order are: Canada, China, Japan, Korea and Malaysia. Combined, they take about 60 percent of Oregon's exports.
But state economist Josh Lehner said both Canada and China have problems. For Canada, it’s falling oil prices.
“While you and I are benefiting from lower oil prices, cheaper gasoline, things like that, it’s helping us. It hurts the producers of energy and so we’re seeing that in the oil sands up there in Canada and so the Canadian outlook is much more subdued today than it was just a year ago,” said Lehner.
China's problems include a slowing economy and the fact that it just devalued its currency.
“We have a strong U.S. dollar that makes Oregon products and U.S. made products more expensive to foreign buyers," said Lehner.
"It also makes the products from foreign countries cheaper for us, so we see some more imports. And so that kind of is going to weigh on our export outlook," said Lehner.
Oregon's main exports are electronic components, heavy equipment, food and wood.