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Mapped: The World’s Biggest Importers in 2018

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Mapped: The World's Biggest Importers

Mapped: The World’s Biggest Importers in 2018

If a country’s economy was entirely self-sufficient and independent, it wouldn’t ever need to import goods from elsewhere.

While the prospect of insulating yourself from the turbulence of global markets may sound alluring at first glance, it would come with considerable caveats, risks, and downsides.

Not only would it mean missing out on the world’s best foreign products, but it would likely translate to incredibly expensive goods domestically. Meanwhile, highly specialized products would be unavailable, and unforeseen events (natural disasters, labor strikes, droughts, etc.) would have the potential to disrupt supply chains in ways that lead to economic chaos.

For these reasons — along with many others — most economies opt to import in billions of dollars of goods each year from their international trading partners.

Which Countries Import the Most Goods?

Today’s map comes from HowMuch.net, and it resizes countries based on the value of their annual imports in 2018. The visualization is based on data from the World Trade Organization.

Let’s take a look at the 15 countries that are the world’s biggest importers:

Rank
Country
Imports (2018, $M)
Share of Global Total
#1🇺🇸 United States$2,614,32713.2%
#2🇨🇳 China$2,135,90510.8%
#3🇩🇪 Germany$1,285,6446.5%
#4🇯🇵 Japan$748,7353.8%
#5🇬🇧 United Kingdom$673,549
3.4%
#6🇫🇷 France$672,593
3.4%
#7🇳🇱 Netherlands$646,029
3.3%
#8🇭🇰 Hong Kong, China$627,517
3.2%
#9🇰🇷 Korea, Republic of$535,202
2.7%
#10🇮🇳 India$510,665
2.6%
#11🇮🇹 Italy$500,795
2.5%
#12🇲🇽 Mexico$476,569
2.4%
#13🇨🇦 Canada$469,000
2.4%
#14🇧🇪 Belgium$450,116
2.3%
#15🇪🇸 Spain$388,044
2.0%

In combination, economies around the world import a total of $19.9 trillion in goods each year.

The world’s largest single importer is the United States, with a 13.4% share of global imports equal to $2.6 trillion of goods. Following the U.S. are two other significant economies, each which import over $1 trillion in goods every year: China ($2.1 trillion), and Germany ($1.3 trillion).

Finally, it’s worth noting that if the numbers for the European Union (28) were combined into a single entity, it’d be the world’s biggest importer by far with nearly $6.5 trillion of imports.

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Markets

Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

We visualize the recent performance of the Magnificent Seven stocks, uncovering a clear divergence between the group’s top and bottom names.

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Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we visualize the year-to-date (YTD) performance of the “Magnificent Seven”, a leading group of U.S. tech stocks that gained prominence in 2023 as the replacement of FAANG stocks.

All figures are as of March 12, 2024, and are listed in the table below.

RankCompanyYTD Change (%)
1Nvidia90.8
2Meta44.3
3Amazon16.9
4Microsoft12
5Google0.2
6Apple-6.7
7Tesla-28.5

From these numbers, we can see a clear divergence in performance across the group.

Nvidia and Meta Lead

Nvidia is the main hero of this show, setting new all-time highs seemingly every week. The chipmaker is currently the world’s third most valuable company, with a valuation of around $2.2 trillion. This puts it very close to Apple, which is currently valued at $2.7 trillion.

The second best performer of the Magnificent Seven has been Meta, which recently re-entered the trillion dollar club after falling out of favor in 2022. The company saw a massive one-day gain of $197 billion on Feb 2, 2024.

Apple and Tesla in the Red

Tesla has lost over a quarter of its value YTD as EV hype continues to fizzle out. Other pure play EV stocks like Rivian and Lucid are also down significantly in 2024.

Meanwhile, Apple shares have struggled due to weakening demand for its products in China, as well as the company’s lack of progress in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Investors may have also been disappointed to hear that Apple’s electric car project, which started a decade ago, has been scrapped.

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