Swiss National Bank · monthly

Foreign trade by goods category

Switzerland's monthly foreign trade split by goods category, the canonical trade series in the catalog. It is a three-way cube: trade flow (exports / imports / balance) times a deep goods hierarchy times a value-or-change axis. The goods axis goes two levels deep (e.g. group CHEM -> C21 pharma preparations, C20 chemicals), which surfaces the pharma and watches drivers that dominate Swiss exports (C21, C2652). The quirky axis is D2 "Value/Change": the source nests a level (WMF value in CHF millions) with two year-on-year %-change leaves (N nominal, R real) under one dimension. The nominal change N is exactly the YoY % of WMF, so it is dropped as redundant with the app's YoY toggle; the real change R (price-deflated, not recomputable from the value) is kept. That leaves D2 = {WMF nominal value, R real change} — two genuinely different series, so the value column still means CHF millions for WMF and a percent change for R. Despite a 2012 catalog start, the CHF-million level rows begin 2012 while the %-change rows begin 2013 (a year of base needed first).

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