In January 2020 the US imported 1.88m mattresses. This is up by 39% or 128,000 more than were imported in January 2019.

In January 2020, the US imported 574,000 refrigerators. This is up by 24% on January 2019 and  is equivalent to 110,134 more than in that month.

World car registrations in February 2020 were down 19.9% compared with the same month in 2019 at 5.08m units, according to LMC Automotive. Higher US sales could not compensate for an 80% fall in car sales in China.

West European car registrations in February 2020 were down by 7.0%  compared with February 2020 at 960,000 units.

The US imported 6.9m refrigerators in 2019, a 61% fall on 2018, when the country imported 17.7 m units. 

Automotive retail sales in the US are likely to be 1.02m in February 2020. This is because of a calendar quirk that has given the month five weekends.

Coronavirus in China reduced January's car sales in the country by 20%. It also helped to drag the worldwide number of registrations worldwide down, according to consultants LMC Automotive.

Polyurethane production in Japan reached its second highest level since the crash of 2009, but was down by 3.2% on 2018.