What is to remark on these figures? The same countries are large importers and exporters;
India is the sixteenth largest exporter with $329,000,000,000 in exports while
Canada sits just outside the top ten (or inside if one counts Hong Kong as a colony of China) with a tidy $428.300.000,000
Netherlands is actually among the top ten importers as I accidentally swapped them with Canada; $488,800,000,000. But Canada still appears if, again, you discount Hong Kong.
They are also the wealthiest countries, buy and large, although only
Hong Kong appears among the GDP per capita nations so perhaps one should be careful before excluding such a powerhouse from the equation. I bet the UK were spitting chips at handover.
In terms of pure GDP, there are a few names missing off the list: Russia, Brazil and Indonesia. Do they service their own market economy or what's their story? Well
Russia imports a none-too-shabby $323,900,000,000 in goods and exports even more - $337,800,000,000
Six other countries keep them from the list of top importers and only three from the mightiest exporters
Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and Australia separate it from
Brazil in terms of imports and those countries and more when it comes to exports.
Indonesia is a good exemplar for demonstrating that raw GDP is not the same as a powerful trading balance, though it is still far greater than many. Of particular interest is the way in which its import and export figures match - $178,600,000,000 and $179,400,000,000 respectively.
Qatar, the richest country as determined by GDP per capita, and most efficient workforce, exports $121.200.000.000 in stuff and imports $30,700,000,000
so while the US's and Chinas of this world lead us to suspect that having healthy appetites and a good output are what keeps them at the top of the food chain, Qatar is that quiet kid in the corner who makes the continual point that selling more than you purchase is the road to prosperity
I'm going to make an early bet that
Switzerland alone of all the countries with stunning inflation rates - in the minus, in fact - is a sizable importer and exporter (and with ninth highest GDP per capita). I think Zimbabwe and El Salvador, for example, are far less likely to perform in the trading stakes.
I can collect because Zimbabwe exports $3,144,000,000 and imports $3,607,000,000; El Salvador imports $9,912,000,000 and exports $5,122,000,000. While Zimbabe imports half a billion more than it exports and El Salvador tips right over by importing nearly twice what it ships out, Switzerland sits at a comfortable $327,500,000,000 in exports, placing it at a respectable seventeenth, well above theirs which hover down in the low hundredths. Switzerland imports $388.800,000,000 worth of products, exceeding its exports by sixty billion but doing so from a higher point than the other countries. Sixteenth highest importer makes them, like Zimbabwe and Indonesia, very similar in the size of their imports and exports. There is a balance at work not present in El Salvador and Zimbabwe's tallies, leading us to reaffirm the need to view inflation rates by comparison to their base and how recent and extensive the change.
II
A trading bloc, not a single country,
European Union has $2,312,000,000,000 in imports and $2,259,000,000,000 in exports. This is enormous, naturally enough, but still not as much as the
United States imports or
China exports.
