Trade structure by partner
Main global trade patterns
The world’s largest bilateral flows of merchandise trade run between China and the United States of America, and between their respective neighbouring economies. In 2020, goods worth US$457 billion were imported by the United States from China. Goods worth US$136 billion also travelled in the opposite direction. China’s trade – exports and imports – with Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SARSpecial Administrative Region), Japan, Taiwan, Province of China, and the Republic of Korea totalled US$1.15 trillion. The United States’ trade with Mexico and Canada was worth about the same amount (US$1.07 trillion).
Intra-regional trade was most pronounced in Europe. In 2020, 68 per cent of all European exports were to trading partners on the same continent. In Asia, this rate was 58 per cent. By contrast, in Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Northern America, most trade was extra-regional.
Trade within and between ‘hemispheres’
With whom do developing economies mainly trade?
In 2020, developing economies shipped most of their exports to the United States of America (US$1.4 trillion), followed by China (US$1.1 trillion) and other Asian economies. They also sourced most of their imports from those economies.
Exports from American developing economies were more oriented towards the Americas, especially to the United States of America (US$415 billion). For African developing economies, main export markets were in Asia and Europe, with China (US$52.9 billion) and India (US$23.0 billion) as main destinations.
Concepts and definitions
Intra-trade is the trade between economies belonging to the same group. Extra-trade is the trade of economies of the same group with all economies outside the group. It represents the difference between a group’s total trade and intra-trade.
In theory, the exports from an economy A to an economy B, should equal the imports of economy B from economy A recorded FOBfree on board. In practice, however, the values of both flows are often different. The reasons for these trade asymmetries include: different times of recording, different treatment of transit trade, underreporting, measurement errors and mis-pricing or mis-invoicing.
The exports to (imports from) all economies of the world do not always exactly add up to total exports (imports). The difference is caused by ship stores, bunkers and other exports of minor importance.