The reports suggest that trade policies and attitudes in the United States are costing domestic businesses billions of dollars in lost revenues from cross-border e-commerce and trade.

If Americans don't look beyond their own borders, they will lose out to countries such as China, which have embraced the economic reality of global trade, UPS says. With, global e-commerce sales are projected to reach $4tr by 2020, this market represents what UPS calls a “tremendous growth opportunity.”

In a second report, UPS found that almost half of the economies along the north-south air cargo trade lane in the Western Hemisphere are looking for new international suppliers, suggesting that “there is an opportunity for exporters to find new buyers,” according to the 2017 UPS “Business Monitor Export Index Latin America” (BMEI) report.

UPS found that, despite the immense potential of cross-border e-commerce (1.6 billion digital buyers worldwide), less than 1 percent of America’s 30 million companies export. A lot of these companies are mom-and-pop businesses, where it’s not viable to do so, but China’s global export share climbed to 14.6 percent in 2015, well ahead of America’s 8.9 percent.

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