Visualizing the World’s Largest Exporters in 2018

[size=1.1]Trillions of dollars of goods get traded around the world every year.

[size=1.1]In 2018, total global exports exceeded $19 trillion, including specialized goods falling into almost every possible category imaginable.

[size=1.1]Whether you’re talking about German cars, Bangladeshi t-shirts, Saudi oil, or Swiss milk chocolate, just about anything is available on the world market for a price – and the world’s largest exporting countries aim to take advantage.

Ranked: The 15 Largest Exporters in 2018

[size=1.1]Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it resizes countries based on their most recent export numbers, as per data from the World Trade Organization (WTO).

[size=1.1]Let’s take a look at how the field breaks down:

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[size=1.1]Leading the list of the world’s largest exporters is China, with a whopping $2.5 trillion of goods sent abroad in 2018. If you add in Hong Kong’s numbers, China holds 15.7% of the global export total — roughly equal to Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, France, and Singapore combined.

[size=1.1]Coming next on the list is the U.S., which exports about $1.7 trillion of goods each year. After that comes Germany, which is the only other country to export over $1 trillion of goods per year.

Comparing U.S. and Chinese Exports

[size=1.1]What does China export, and how does that compare to a more developed economy such as the United States?

[size=1.1]Using data from MIT’s Observatory of Economic Complexity, we can see the broad breakdown of exports in both countries:

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[size=1.1]On first glance, it’s clear that China’s exports are reliant on one heavy-hitting category (Machines) to drive a whopping 48.5% of total export value. Within that broad category of machines, there are many narrower categories, including:

• Broadcasting equipment (9.6% of total exports)
• Computers (6.1%)
• Office machine parts (3.8%)
• Integrated circuits (3.3%)
• Telephones (2.6%)
• Electrical transformers (1.3%)
• Semiconductor devices (1.2%)
• Video displays (1.1%)
  

[size=1.1]For the United States, machines are still important at 22.1% of exports, but three other broad categories also surpass the 10% mark: transportation, chemical products, and mineral products. This means the U.S. is generally more diversified in its major exports.

[size=1.1]For more, see the largest export of each state on this map.