Exports of goods are the engine that drives the economies of many countries. So much so that they have the ability to shape markets, determine global trends and even significantly influence geopolitical issues. We’ve seen an example of this with the United States and Europe imposing tariffs on Chinese electric cars, or China making it harder to export rare earths.

And this importance on a global level is something that can be perfectly seen in this chart created by Visual Capitalist:

TOP 10. Although the chart is very revealing, it is worth delving a little deeper into the main exporting countries to not only see the weight of each in worldwide exports, but also to put the value of those exports into perspective:

Full domain name. However, it is no surprise that the country ranks first in the list of top exporting countries. China continues to dominate this sector, with a share far from that of the United States, its main follower and rival on almost all fronts. Despite all the tariffs imposed in recent years (we are talking about electric cars now, but China has had difficulty exporting its technology to other markets for years) the Chinese market has adapted.

Of the $23.8 trillion (they understand it as “trillion” in 2023), China joined with 3.38 trillion. It accounts for 14.2% of the total and is close to the historical maximum in export volume. Of course, the price of these exports has fallen by 10 percent, and we will have to see what happens in 2024 and 2025, when these tariffs will be more aggressive.

Many different industries. The United States and Germany follow China from afar, and what is interesting is to see how different these countries’ exports are. For example, China… exports everything, but mostly rare earth metals, transmission equipment, integrated circuits, semiconductors and computers, among which there is a galaxy of other products and goods. Its main buyers are the USA, as well as Hong Kong and Japan. And he doesn’t have good political relations with any of these three people.

The United States, on the other hand, exports refined oil, crude oil and gas. These are the company’s three business pillars, with automobiles and integrated circuits sold primarily to Canada, Mexico and China. Germany’s expertise is in automobiles and their parts, as well as machinery and chemical products; The majority of buyers are other countries in the European Union.

Trump earthquake. It is very interesting that the main customer of the United States is China, and the main buyer of Chinese exports is the United States. This is a situation that may change with the intervention of Donald Trump, who will try to impose a protectionist policy on the North American market, and may hit both China and the European Union.

Of course, China has the weapons to answer this. We have already mentioned that it is able to produce and crack rare earth elements due to its monopoly on production, but a few months ago we saw that it restricts the export of antimony, a metal used in the production of weapons and for which the Asian giant practically controls the production. .

Break from inflation. However, despite these protectionist practices of many countries, the World Trade Organization report on which Visual Capitalist bases the chart displays an optimistic tone. Trade is forecast to fall by 1.2 percent in 2023, but to grow by 2.6 percent and 3.3 percent in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Inflation is also expected to gradually decline, leading to a recovery in consumption and demand for merchandise, which will in turn boost trade in manufactured goods. We will still have to wait a few months to confirm these predictions.

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