SCB, June 1988

A new end-use commodity classification system for merchandise trade data was developed and introduced. The new system presented considerably more commodity detail than previously, was more analytically useful, and included several reclassifications among and within broad commodity classes. The new end-use system also incorporated the Harmonized System (HS) of commodity classification. The HS was developed under the auspices of the Customs Cooperation Council to establish an internationally accepted standard for the classification of internationally traded goods. Many countries adopted the system at the time of its introduction in the late 1980s, and in 1989 the Census Bureau and BEA adopted it as the basic building block for the U.S. trade data. BEA developed a concordance of the HS codes to its end-use commodity system and introduced statistics on the new classification basis in 1989. Commodity trade flows on the newly developed end-use basis were carried back to 1978.