A snapshot of global trade

The following snapshot provides a general sense of size of different industries at the level of international trade. (Missing is Pharma I think). Although this talks about concenteration, I like the chart for its relative comparison values across industries. Like all agri against all electronics or all energy. What seems amazing or sort of mindblowing is that some of these sectors are completely new. The world wouldn't have known anything about these say 200 years ago.

Chart from McKinsey report here.

To read the chart well, one needs to understand HHI. Here:

"HHI implies: Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

The index measures the size of companies relative to the size of the industry they are in and the amount of competitiveness. The HHI is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in a market and then summing the resulting numbers. It can range from close to zero to 10,000, with lower values indicating a less concentrated market. A market with an HHI of less than 1,500 is considered a competitive marketplace, an HHI of 1,500 to 2,500 is moderately concentrated, and an HHI of 2,500 or greater is highly concentrated."

Further,

"No region is close to being self-sufficient. Every region relies on trade with others for more than 25 percent of at least one important type of good.
About 40 percent of global trade is “concentrated.” Importing economies rely on three or fewer nations for this share of global trade.
Three-quarters of this concentration comes from economy-specific choices. In these cases (30 percent of global trade), individual countries source a product from only a few nations, even when global supply options are diversified.
Over the past five years, the largest economies have not systematically diversified the origins of imports. All have vulnerabilities, some more than others.
Informed reimagination of global trade requires a granular approach, both in mapping concentrated trade relationships and in deciding on action—whether to double down, decouple, or diversify."

 

On further exploring the UN Comtrade data explorer, found this interesting infographic which sums up the flow across key items across global regions. To get the relative size of industry in the mind sorted:

Lots can be explored here at Comtrade.