Exports to European countries may have gone down as a result of the economic slowdown overseas, but New Jersey’s global trade has seen its second consecutive annual hike.

Figures released by the World Institute for Strategic Economic Research finds the dollar value of exports from New Jersey increased by about 19 percent in 2011 over the year before, to $38.2 billion.

“Exports are really dependent on the GDP, of the growth rate of the other countries we trade with. It’s not really exchange rates as some may think,” said Farrokh Langdana, Director of the Executive MBA Program at Rutgers University. “People think, the dollar’s strong or the dollar’s weak and that’s only a distant second. Exchange rates aren’t the big determining factor. It’s rate of growth.”

“While New Jersey generally trades most with the United Kingdom, we also trade with Canada, South Korea and Mexico and those countries are doing rather well,” said Langdana.

The popular items New Jersey exports include petroleum oil products, cosmetics, scrap metal, platinum, aircraft parts and pharmaceuticals.

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