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
SSL auto-fallback: handles ICP-Brasil certificate issues transparently

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
soy <- comex_export(
  start_period = "2024-01",
  end_period = "2024-12",
  details = c("country", "hs4"),
  filters = list(country = 160)
)

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. The package handles this automatically — on the first failure it retries without SSL verification and issues a warning. To suppress:

options(comex.ssl_verifypeer = FALSE)

References

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