Markets

Mapped: The World’s Largest Exporters in 2018

Published

4 years ago

October 3, 2019

Jeff Desjardins

The World's Largest Exporters in 2018

Visualizing the World’s Largest Exporters in 2018

Trillions of dollars of goods get traded around the world every year.

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

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

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).

Let’s take a look at how the field breaks down:

Rank	Country	Exports (2018, $M)	Share of Global Total
#1	🇨🇳 China	$2,487,045	12.8%
#2	🇺🇸 United States	$1,664,085	8.6%
#3	🇩🇪 Germany	$1,560,816	8.0%
#4	🇯🇵 Japan	$738,403	3.8%
#5	🇳🇱 Netherlands	$722,668	3.7%
#6	🇰🇷 Korea, Rep.	$604,860	3.1%
#7	🇫🇷 France	$581,816	3.0%
#8	🇭🇰 Hong Kong, China	$569,241	2.9%
#9	🇮🇹 Italy	$546,643	2.8%
#10	🇬🇧 United Kingdom	$485,711	2.5%
#11	🇧🇪 Belgium	$466,724	2.4%
#12	🇲🇽 Mexico	$450,572	2.3%
#13	🇨🇦 Canada	$449,845	2.3%
#14	🇷🇺 Russia	$444,008	2.3%
#15	🇸🇬 Singapore	$412,629	2.1%

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.

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

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

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

🇨🇳 China (Exports)	Share	🇺🇸 U.S. (Exports)	Share
Machines	48.5%	Machines	22.1%
Textiles	9.9%	Transportation	14.9%
Metals	7.1%	Chemical Products	13.7%
Chemical Products	4.9%	Mineral Products	11.4%
Plastics and Rubbers	4.0%	Instruments	6.8%
Instruments	3.2%	Plastics and Rubbers	5.5%
Transportation	3.2%	Vegetable Products	5.1%
Footwear and Headwear	2.6%	Metals	4.8%
Stone and Glass	1.7%	Foodstuffs	3.3%
Mineral Products	1.3%	Precious Metals	3.1%
Animal Hides	1.2%	Animal Products	2.2%
Other/Misc	12.4%	Paper Goods	2.1%
		Textiles	1.7%
		Other/Misc	3.3%

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%)

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.

For more, see the largest export of each state on this map.

Related Topics:countries trade international trade exporters

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Mining

Ranked: The World’s Top Diamond Mining Countries, by Carats and Value

Who are the leaders in rough diamond production and how much is their diamond output worth?

Creator Program

Published

13 hours ago

September 29, 2023

Pallavi Rao

A cropped chart showing the leaders in rough diamond mining and how much their diamond output is worth.

Ranked: World Diamond Mining By Country, Carat, and Value

Only 22 countries in the world engage in rough diamond production—also known as uncut, raw or natural diamonds—mining for them from deposits within their territories.

This chart, by Sam Parker illustrates the leaders in rough diamond production by weight and value. It uses data from Kimberly Process (an international certification organization) along with estimates by Dr. Ashok Damarupurshad, a precious metals and diamond specialist in South Africa.

Rough Diamond Production, By Weight

Russia takes the top spot as the world’s largest rough diamond producer, mining close to 42 million carats in 2022, well ahead of its peers.

ℹ️ Carat is the unit of measurement for the physical weight of diamonds. One carat equals 0.200 grams, which means it takes over 2,265 carats to equal 1 pound.

Russia’s large lead over second-place Botswana (24.8 million carats) and third-ranked Canada (16.2 million carats) indicates that the country’s diamond production is circumventing sanctions due to the difficulties in tracing a diamond’s origin.

Here’s a quick breakdown of rough diamond production in the world.

Rank	Country	Rough Diamond Production (Carats)
1	🇷🇺 Russia	41,923,910
2	🇧🇼 Botswana	24,752,967
3	🇨🇦 Canada	16,249,218
4	🇨🇩 DRC	9,908,998
5	🇿🇦 South Africa	9,660,233
6	🇦🇴 Angola	8,763,309
7	🇿🇼 Zimbabwe	4,461,450
8	🇳🇦 Namibia	2,054,227
9	🇱🇸 Lesotho	727,737
10	🇸🇱 Sierra Leone	688,970
11	🇹🇿 Tanzania	375,533
12	🇧🇷 Brazil	158,420
13	🇬🇳 Guinea	128,771
14	🇨🇫 Central African Republic	118,044
15	🇬🇾 Guyana	83,382
16	🇬🇭 Ghana	82,500
17	🇱🇷 Liberia	52,165
18	🇨🇮 Cote D'Ivoire	3,904
19	🇨🇬 Republic of Congo	3,534
20	🇨🇲 Cameroon	2,431
21	🇻🇪 Venezuela	1,665
22	🇲🇱 Mali	92
	Total	120,201,460

Note: South Africa’s figures are estimated.

As with most other resources, (oil, gold, uranium), rough diamond production is distributed unequally. The top 10 rough diamond producing countries by weight account for 99.2% of all rough diamonds mined in 2022.

Diamond Mining, by Country

However, higher carat mined doesn’t necessarily mean better value for the diamond. Other factors like the cut, color, and clarity also influence a diamond’s value.

Here’s a quick breakdown of diamond production by value (USD) in 2022.

Rank	Country	Rough Diamond Value (USD)
1	🇧🇼 Botswana	$4,975M
2	🇷🇺 Russia	$3,553M
3	🇦🇴 Angola	$1,965M
4	🇨🇦 Canada	$1,877M
5	🇿🇦 South Africa	$1,538M
6	🇳🇦 Namibia	$1,234M
7	🇿🇼 Zimbabwe	$424M
8	🇱🇸 Lesotho	$314M
9	🇸🇱 Sierra Leone	$143M
10	🇹🇿 Tanzania	$110M
11	🇨🇩 DRC	$65M
12	🇧🇷 Brazil	$30M
13	🇱🇷 Liberia	$18M
14	🇨🇫 Central African Republic	$15M
15	🇬🇾 Guyana	$14M
16	🇬🇳 Guinea	$6M
17	🇬🇭 Ghana	$3M
18	🇨🇲 Cameroon	$0.25M
19	🇨🇬 Republic of Congo	$0.20M
20	🇨🇮 Cote D'Ivoire	$0.16M
21	🇻🇪 Venezuela	$0.10M
22	🇲🇱 Mali	$0.06M
	Total	$16,290M

Note: South Africa’s figures are estimated. Furthermore, numbers have been rounded and may not sum to the total.

Thus, even though Botswana only produced 59% of Russia’s diamond weight in 2022, it had a trade value of nearly $5 billion, approximately 1.5 times higher than Russia’s for the same year.

Another example is Angola, which is ranked 6th in diamond production, but 3rd in diamond value.

Both countries (as well as South Africa, Canada, and Namibia) produce gem-quality rough diamonds versus countries like Russia and the DRC whose diamonds are produced mainly for industrial use.

Which Regions Produce the Most Diamonds in 2022?

Unsurprisingly, Africa is the largest rough diamond producing region, accounting for 51% of output by weight, and 66% by value.

Rank	Region	Share of Rough Diamond Production (%)	Share of Rough Diamond Value (%)
1	Africa	51.4%	66.4%
2	Europe	34.9%	32.9%
3	North America	13.5%	52.8%
4	South America	0.2%	2.4%

However diamond mining in Africa is a relatively recent phenomenon, fewer than 200 years old. Diamonds had been discovered—and prized—as far back as 2,000 years ago in India, later on spreading west to Egyptian pharaohs and the Roman Empire.

By the start of the 20th century, diamond production on a large scale took off: first in South Africa, and decades later in other African countries. In fact between 1889–1959, Africa produced 98% of the world’s diamonds.

And in the latter half of the 20th century, the term blood diamond evolved from diamonds mined in African conflict zones used to finance insurgency or crime.