The real ‘export-champions’

This week, China reported its largest monthly drop in exported goods since May 2009. China’s ‘February-2016-trade performance’ was far worse than economists had expected, with exports falling 25.4% reflecting the current downturn in global demand for chinese products.

Although this figure looks pretty bad, one has to consider the week-long Chinese new year holidays – with factories closed for seven days – fell in February this year and even with that slump, China remains the undisputed number one exporter globally in nominal terms, ahead of the US, Germany, Japan, France and South Korea.

But nominal terms – meaning the total value of exported goods – are in a way a misleading figure to compare export numbers of different nations. After all, for China with a population of 1,4 billion it’s no big deal to export more than a country like the Netherlands with an almost 100 times smaller population.

That’s why we take a closer look at the exported value in relation to the population of a country. This figure is called ‘exported goods per capita’.

Here are the 20 countries with highest value of exported goods per capita in USD – or the ‘real export-champions’ of this world:

1. Singapore 78’970
2. Hong Kong 70’890
3. Qatar 50’020
4. Switzerland 39’430
5. United Arab Emirates 37’630
6. Norway 28’810
7. Netherlands 33’650
8. Belgium 28’870
9. Kuwait 26’270
10. Ireland 26’180
11. Denmark 19’060
12. Austria 18’900
13. Sweden 18’690
14. Germany 18’310
15. Slovakia 15’960
16. Iceland 15’630
17. Slovenia 14’720
18. Czech Republic 13’970
19. Canada 13’280
20. Trinidad & Tobago 12’700

And the big boys? Well they don’t even come close to make the top-20. The number for ‘exported goods per capita’ for the US is 5’060, Russia stands at 3’395 and China only reaches 1’700. In case you wonder – Romania’s exports per capita are 3’180 USD.

The ‘export-map’ of the world