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comexr

The comexr package provides a complete R interface to the ComexStat API from the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC). It allows programmatic access to detailed Brazilian export and import data.

Features

30 functions covering all API endpoints
General trade data (1997–present), city-level data, and historical records (1989–1996)
Auxiliary tables: countries, economic blocs, NCM/NBM/HS product codes, CGCE/SITC/ISIC classifications, states, cities, transport modes, customs units
Only 2 dependencies: httr2 + cli
Multilingual: Portuguese, English, Spanish
Typed results: metrics come back numeric, year/monthNumber integer

Installation

# Install from GitHub
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("StrategicProjects/comexr")

Quick Start

library(comexr)

# Exports by country in January 2024 (monthly detail by default)
exports <- comex_export(
  start_period = "2024-01",
  end_period = "2024-01",
  details = "country"
)

# Imports with CIF value
imports <- comex_import(
  start_period = "2024-01",
  end_period = "2024-12",
  details = "country",
  metric_cif = TRUE
)

# Filter: exports to China (160), grouped by HS4
# (the package translates "hs4" to the API's `heading`)
soy <- comex_export(
  start_period = "2024-01",
  end_period = "2024-12",
  details = c("country", "hs4"),
  filters = list(country = 160)
)

It is fairly common for the ComexStat API to return rate limit errors (“Você excedeu o limite de solicitações. Por favor, tente novamente em 10 segundos.”) or to report timeouts. There are three package options you can adjust to work around these errors:

comexr.retry_time - the number of seconds to wait after a failed request before trying again (default 10, increase if you get errors about exceeding request limits)
comexr.max_tries - maximum number of times to repeat the same failed request before giving up (default 3, adjusting comexr.retry_time is generally a better approach to avoid errors without overloading ComexStat servers)
comexr.timeout - maximum number of seconds to wait for the ComexStat servers to respond (default 60 for simple requests and 120 for complex requests; increase if you get errors about timeouts)

You can set any of these using the options function: e.g. options("comexr.retry_time" = 30) to set the retry time to 30 seconds.

Discover available options

# What grouping fields are available?
comex_details("general")

# What filters can I use?
comex_filters("general")

# Look up country codes
countries <- comex_countries()
countries[grepl("China", countries$text, ignore.case = TRUE), ]

# Economic blocs in Portuguese
comex_blocs(language = "pt")

API Coverage

Query Functions

Function	Description
`comex_query()`	General foreign trade query
`comex_export()`	Shortcut for export queries
`comex_import()`	Shortcut for import queries
`comex_query_city()`	City-level data query
`comex_historical()`	Historical data (1989-1996)

Metadata Functions

Function	Description
`comex_last_update()`	Last data update date
`comex_available_years()`	Available years for queries
`comex_filters()`	Available filters
`comex_filter_values()`	Values for a specific filter
`comex_details()`	Available detail/grouping fields
`comex_metrics()`	Available metrics

Auxiliary Tables

Function	Description
`comex_countries()` / `comex_country_detail()`	Countries
`comex_blocs()`	Economic blocs
`comex_states()` / `comex_state_detail()`	Brazilian states
`comex_cities()` / `comex_city_detail()`	Brazilian cities
`comex_transport_modes()` / `comex_transport_mode_detail()`	Transport modes
`comex_customs_units()` / `comex_customs_unit_detail()`	Customs units
`comex_ncm()` / `comex_ncm_detail()`	NCM codes
`comex_nbm()` / `comex_nbm_detail()`	NBM codes (historical)
`comex_hs()`	Harmonized System
`comex_cgce()`	CGCE (BEC) classification
`comex_sitc()`	SITC classification
`comex_isic()`	ISIC classification

SSL Certificate Issues

On some systems the API’s ICP-Brasil certificate chain is not recognized, and requests fail with an SSL error. SSL verification is never disabled automatically; if you trust your network, opt out explicitly:

options(comexr.ssl_verifypeer = FALSE)

References

ComexStat — Brazilian foreign trade statistics
ComexStat API Docs — Official API documentation
MDIC — Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services

License

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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