Visualizing International Merchandise Trade

The purpose of this website is to look at world trade data of imports and exports. We compared between both and extracted how it effects income class around the world.

Data

The world trade data is obtained from the WTO (World Trade Organization), which is the only global international organization that oversees international trade. Link to website.

The income class data was obtained from The World Bank, which is a collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. Link to website.

Below is a snippet of the raw data we got from the WTO website.

Reporting Economy	Product/Sector	Partner Economy	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
World	SI3_AGG - TO - Total merchandise	World	16,035,818	17,740,817	19,549,257	19,014,182	17,648,303	22,343,840	24,904,489
World	SI3_AGG - AG - Agricultural products	World	1,584,357	1,729,920	1,805,801	1,782,880	1,803,726	2,162,376
World	SI3_AGG - AGFO - Food	World	1,356,079	1,472,607	1,533,691	1,531,509	1,570,025	1,848,012
World	SI3_AGG - MI - Fuels and mining products	World	2,033,877	2,612,022	3,269,207	3,097,493	2,334,297	3,654,527
World	SI3_AGG - MIFU - Fuels	World	1,492,452	1,948,475	2,529,449	2,366,575	1,576,992	2,547,614
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...

Categories of Trade (From Highest to Lowest Values)

Product/Sectors
Agricultural products
Food
Fuels and mining products
Fuels
Manufactures
Iron and Steel
Chemicals
Pharmaceuticals
Machinery and transport equipment
Office and telecom equipment
Electronic data processing and office equipment
Telecommunications equipment
Integrated circuits and electronic components
Transport equipment
Automotive products
Textiles
Clothing

These categories are in the order from highest to lowest numbers of trade. Agricultural and food products are at the top, followed by raw materials, then resources related to medication, and then equipment and lastly clothing. It’s related to our basic necessities. For example, food is one of the most important thing we need to sustain life, and it’s much more necessary than clothing.

Visualizations

Top 5 exporters in 2021

This bar graph shows the countries that had the top five export values in million US dollars. China had the highest export value with 3.59 trillion dollars, and it is much higher than the ones following. It is almost 5 times as much as Japan’s export value, which came fifth. China exports more than 1 trillion US dollars more than it imports.

Top 5 importers in 2021

This bar graph shows the countries that had the top five import values in million US dollars. The United States had the highest value with 3.38 trillion dollars. There is a big gap between the US and Japan, which is in the fifth place. The gap between US and China is big but relatively small compared to the gap between the import values of US and Japan. US imports a little less than 1.5 trillion US dollars more than it exports. Same top 5 counties for importing and exporting.

Exports: Agricultural Products

We picked agricultural product exports to display in a choropleth because it is the top product for exports. The plot shows the counties by values of their agricultural product exports, and the higher the export value, the closer to yellow the country is colored. The US, Canada, China, Germany and Brazil are the ones that have noticeably yellow/orange colors throughout the years from 2016 to 2021, while countries in Africa are mostly dark purple, meaning that they do not export much agricultural product. This data makes sense because in the counties with more agricultural product exports, they have good farmland that are suitable for crops, while in the countries with less, they have less farmable land. South East Asia is big on exporting agricultural products which can signify a less developed society which is reflected in the class graph which shows the countries in those areas as middle to low middle class.

Imports: Fuel and Mining Products

The choropleth map above shows country import values within the fuel and mining products sector in Millions of US dollars. Asia seems to be big importers of fuel and mining products with China and India being some of the biggest importers. Germany is a big importer of these products, almost spending as much as the US. This can be because Germany is known for being big manufacturers and they need fuel to run their factories and mining products to harvest their raw resources. China is by far the largest importer of these products spending almost 3 times as much as the second biggest importer (US). High imports of mining products and fuel can signify a second world country economy as they focus on production and manufacturing which can be seen with India as being one of the biggest fuel and mining importers yet still only being lower middle class.

Current World Income Groups

The choropleth map above shows the current world income groups ranging from high to low income. We can see most if not all of North America is in the high income group with only Mexico being upper middle income. All of South America is in the middle income bracket. All of Africa seems to be in the middle to low income bracket. A majority of Europe seems to be in the high income bracket with no country falling into the lower income bracket. A majority of Asia is in the middle income bracket.

World Annual Total Export Values 2016-2022

Above is a graph that shows the total world merchandise imports in Millions of US dollars from the years 2016 to 2022. There seems to be an increase from years 2016 to 2018 then a slow decline from 2018 to 2019, a steeper decline going into 2020 which could be seen as the effect of covid on the world economy and then a huge increase the following years.

World Annual Total Import Values 2016-2022

Above is a graph that shows the total world merchandise imports in Millions of US dollars from the years 2016 to 2022. The shape of the graph seems to follow the same pattern as the total world annual export values.

About the team