Trade assesses the net of exports and imports of an economy at the county level. A large surplus indicates very little “leakage” from the local economy and suggests a high amount of self-reliance and diversification for that county.
How is it scored?
The per capita trade balance at the county-level was converted to a 0–100 scale using the equation, y = 0.0017x + 50. Under this scoring scheme, a trade balance of $30,000 per capita was scored a 100 and a balance of -$30,000 per capita was scored a 0. County scores were population-weighted and summed to calculate a watershed score. Watershed scores were population-weighted to calculate an overall score for southeast Michigan.
Data source: Data from 2020 (https://implan.com/).