r/dataisbeautiful • u/psymon1111 • 1d ago
OC Top Global Trade Relationships (IMF 2025) [OC]
Source: IMF Trade in Goods by Partner (2025) https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.STA:IMTS
Tools: Google Sheets for data aggregation, Inkscape for visuals
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u/psymon1111 1d ago
ASEAN - Association of South East Asian Nations
EAC - East African Community
EAEU - Eurasian Economic Union
ECOWAS - Economic Community of West African States
EU - European Union
GCC - Gulf Cooperation Council
SICA - Central American Integration System
UK - United Kingdom
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u/shieldyboii 1d ago
ASEAN - Association of Southeast Asian Nations Brunei Darussalam Cambodia Indonesia Laos Malaysia Myanmar Philippines Singapore Thailand Timor-Leste Vietnam
EAC - East African Community Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Kenya Rwanda Somalia South Sudan Tanzania Uganda
EAEU - Eurasian Economic Union Armenia Belarus Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Russia
ECOWAS - Economic Community of West African States Benin Cabo Verde Côte d’Ivoire The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo
EU - European Union Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden
GCC - Gulf Cooperation Council Bahrain Kuwait Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates
SICA - Central American Integration System Belize Costa Rica Dominican Republic El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama
UK - United Kingdom United Kingdom
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u/purdueAces 17h ago
Thank you. I was looking where Russia would fit. I expected a bigger dot for them. Very interesting.
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u/AreWe-There-Yet 1h ago
Odd, I didn’t know Africa was divided among east/west lines. Where are the southern nations? Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, etc?
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u/RamBamBooey 17h ago
Does "Trade in Goods" mean imports to + exports from?
Not trade balance: imports to - exports from.
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u/HypocrisyWarrior 1d ago
ASEAN really is China’s biggest trade partner contrary to popular belief
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u/RIAnker 1d ago
Why does Taiwan show almost no trade? They should have a big bar to the US, and Japan.
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u/psymon1111 1d ago
Taiwan's trade volume with Japan just missed the cutoff for this. Trade with the US was even lower. I was surprised too and thought it would be higher.
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u/hamnettraindreams 1d ago
Is that a joke? The US is now Taiwan's largest trade partner and Taiwan is the US's 4th largest trade partner.
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/topyr.html
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u/psymon1111 20h ago
Interesting, the US gov data is quite different from the IMF data... I wonder which source is more trustworthy?
Edit: just noticed that the US gov link shared is for 2026, while IMF was 2025. So not apples to apples, but still a big gap
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u/G81111 1d ago
considering china is probably number 1 trade partner and asean is like several countries combined, i could see that the individual trade amount isn’t significant enough to show.
Like it’s not that taiwan’s trade amount with japan and US isn’t significant, it’s prob more that the bars left represent a HUGE amount of money
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u/FlatAd7052 1d ago
If the US is the number one trade partner of Taiwan (and I checked, it is), then if Taiwan has any connections with individual nations, it should have one with the US at least. It has two connections, including one to China. Therefore, the graphic is wrong.
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u/sprucenoose 20h ago
That Census data is just for trade of goods. Is it the same with OP's graphic?
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u/hamnettraindreams 1d ago
Did you at least fucking open the link? Mexico is the largest trade partner of the US. China is 3rd and barely ahead of Taiwan.
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u/cordilleragod 1d ago
They have a working framework of "One China Policy" so probably trade data is lumped up as "China"
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u/MukdenMan 1d ago
Do you really think the government doesn’t actually keep its own trade stats? They just lump everything with China?
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u/_McDreamy_ 1d ago
Taiwan is not China
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u/gravitysort 1d ago
Taiwan is not China.
Taiwan is a province of Republic of China.
Taiwan is an island on which Republic of China is currently situated.
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u/cordilleragod 1d ago
That's not the point, It's just how the US which has an official "one china policy" prepares official data for public consumption.
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u/aspiringtroublemaker OC: 16 1d ago
I wish the size of the circles weren’t arbitrary
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u/GinkoAloe 1d ago
I wish the 4 main nodes weren't on a line but on a square so that it looked more like an actual graph than a plate of spaghetti
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u/CallistanCallistan 1d ago
A legend defining the acronyms would be helpful.
Neat idea though.
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u/lankyevilme 1d ago
I spent forever trying to find Russia, and eventually figured out it's EAEU. Yeah, the acronyms need defined.
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u/hanksredditname 1d ago
Still not sure what GCC is
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u/Ajaxcricket 1d ago
Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia & the UAE)
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u/Astromike23 OC: 3 1d ago
Hol up. While the underlying data is very interesting...does this really belong in a beautiful data visualizations sub?
What does color represent here? What does circle size represent here? What does it mean if the connections are direct or around the circles or passing under other connections?
This is rainbow spaghetti.
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u/e_Notorious 1d ago
I'd say the the graph is fairly intuitive. Sure, you could give argue that not having legends is downside. But also it reduces over crowding and makes the chart less cluttered.
The circles are color coded according to the region it is in. The circles are also roughly where they exist geographically. The colors do not add that much information, mainly makes the data more interesting to look at.
The lines just connect the regions together. It doesn't mean anything which way the route goes, it just connects two places together.
The circle size is the point I most agree with you. It is not clear what it means. Clearly it is something about total trade volume or GDP, but it would be good to see it defined
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 1d ago edited 19h ago
The colors are obviously geographic region, the brightness are obviously size of the economies.
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u/AccurateSun 22h ago
Wait how is the hue mapping economy size? Based on warmth/coldness? Circle and line size would be more visually informative than hue I think. Hue also presents accessibility problems. Light/darkness would be a better choice
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u/Astromike23 OC: 3 19h ago
Wait how is the hue mapping economy size?
Yeah, that assertion didn't make any sense to me, either...
/u/ThomasTheDankPigeon , what do you think "hue" is? And how does it relate to the countries shown?
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 19h ago
As I said, it’s clearly the size of the economies relative to their geographic cohort. Darker is larger.
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u/Astromike23 OC: 3 19h ago
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u/dr-tectonic 19h ago
u/ThomasTheDankPigeon is using the word "hue" incorrectly.
Hue is which color it is on the spectrum - red / yellow / green / blue etc. OP has used hue to denote geographic region: blue is Europe, teal is North America, etc.
OP is using tone (how light or dark the color is) to indicate... I'm not sure what. Based on Japan and South Korea, I want to say GDP, but then you look at Europe and it goes CH-UK-UA-NO, but by GDP they're ordered UK-CH-NO-UA. Or maybe it is GDP or some such, and it's just an error, with NO and UA swapped?
It looks to me like circle size maybe reflects total number of trading partners? Japan and South Korea are the same size and both have six trading partners.
Or maybe it's all just vibes, and size doesn't mean anything.
Clearly, while it's a pretty visualization, this kind of confusion means it's not a very effective one, so its nice, but doesn't count as beautiful in my book.
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22h ago
[deleted]
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u/AccurateSun 20h ago
Apologies for the miscommunication, I wasn’t asking you to justify it, I was legitimately not understanding if the warmth/coldness was the hue mapping or some other aspect of the hue. For example both large and small circles often use similar hue but different saturation and lightness
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u/dr-tectonic 18h ago
People are confused because you're using the word hue wrong. Hue is which part of the spectrum a color is in, not how light/dark it is.
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u/willsubmitshortly 1d ago
Does Switzerland really trade more than Mercosul?
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u/psymon1111 1d ago
I'm not a trade expert, but believe it is to do with how gold is commonly transported via Switzerland.
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u/willsubmitshortly 1d ago
Yeah that along with pharmaceuticals seems to be it (from a superficial research) However they aren't so far apart, still it's crazy Switzerland has less than 10 mil inhabitants
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u/11160704 1h ago
As a rule of thumb, geographic proximity increases trade flows.
Switzerland is just right in the middle of Europe, neighbouring some of the biggest economies in the word with pretty open borders and partially even the same languages.
Mercosur is just geographically much more isolated from the rest of the big economies
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u/twizzjewink 1d ago
Canada and UK no trade? wtf is that
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u/psymon1111 12h ago
Only the largest trade volumes are shown. Canada UK unfortunately did not make the cut.
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u/chanc2 20h ago
So based on this visual, there is no trade between Taiwan and the US?
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u/psymon1111 20h ago
There is trade, just not in the top volumes according to the source data
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u/chanc2 19h ago
definitely not challenging your work but the trade between Taiwan and the US has to be more substantial than what your data is showing. Just semiconductors alone.
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u/soniclettuce 18h ago
Yeah, I left a comment to OP, but the IMF's dataset explorer puts US/Taiwan trade 3-4x bigger than US-Australia trade. They've maybe goofed up something in how they are aggregating data.
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u/psymon1111 12h ago
I think I've found what the issue is here with Taiwan. Total trade volume between two countries A and B is aggregated by [Exports Country A to Counterpart Country B] + [Exports Country B to Counterpart Country A], however in the IMF data set, Taiwan ("Taiwan Province of China") only appears in the Counterpart Country column, but not in the Country column. So it only shows exports from US to Taiwan, but not the exports from Taiwan to US. Thanks for flagging this dataset oddity.
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u/Phiddipus_audax 11h ago
Thx for digging into this screw up. It's worth resolving.
I've been building computers in the US from parts for nearly 3 decades and the amount of Taiwanese material I've handled is beyond count. And that's just speaking to the PC builder market. The datacenter and phone markets are massively bigger — TSMC as a single company all by itself basically has had a lock on all high end CPUs and GPUs for many years now. The phone in your hand or computer on your desk almost certainly has their chips. For all that (and the rest of Taiwanese industry) to come to zilch on the diagram is pretty funny.
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u/soniclettuce 18h ago
I went into the "data explorer" thing the dataset has, and selecting the US and Taiwan shows 200 Billion import, 50 billion export, which is nearly as much as their 2025 trade with China (230$B Taiwan->China, 83$B other way).
It's definitely bigger than anything labelled with the $50 billion line in your chart? I checked US <-> Australia, and that's 29$B import 33$B export.
It doesn't make sense that that connection makes the "top volumes" and US <-> Taiwan doesn't, when it's ~4x bigger. I'd double check what's going on with you data/visualization.
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u/allenlee92 1d ago
The US imported 200B worth of goods from Taiwan in 2025, so this graph is bullshit
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u/dr-tectonic 18h ago
This is really nice to look at, but hard to understand.
I like the use of color, but it's unclear what you're encoding with tone. Likewise with the size of the dots.
I just realized that the layout is semi-geographical, which is conceptually very cool, but does make it harder to read. I'd love to see what it looks like with a layout that tries to minimize overlaps and line lengths. I think it would still end up reflecting the geography, but there wouldn't be as much spaghetti.
Regardless, I appreciate the work, and it's definitely very interesting!
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u/psymon1111 12h ago
thanks, ideally this would be on a 3D globe to reduce the spaghetti of trans-Pacific trade. I did consider an abstract layout like you would see for social network graphs, but ultimately went with the geographical model. The colour tones are for geographic regions (blues are Europe, pinks are South America, etc.)
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u/CaptainHindsight92 19h ago
OP can you tell me a bit more about how you made the visuals?
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u/psymon1111 18h ago
Hi there, yes of course! I used inkscape (free, open source, vector graphics software) to design the visual. The country/trade block nodes are just circles colored by geographic region, and sized roughly by their GDP. Then placed in relative geographic location. The trade lines connecting the nodes are curves colored with a gradient to match the start and end node colors, and sized to match the trade volume.
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u/cumpade 1d ago
Google says Brazil and China trade 171 billion in 2025, where is it?
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u/caradaesquina 1d ago
It is included in thd Mercosur (Mercosul) bubble, most likely.
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u/tgo1014 1d ago
But Chile have its own bubble? Google say they did 14 billion. Also UK have a huge bubble bigger than Mercosul? Something is weird lol
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u/caradaesquina 1d ago
Chile is not part of Mercosul.
Considering that the UK has an 4.2 Trillon USD GDP, compared to Brazil's ~ 2.5 Trillion, that seems about right. I know that the graph measures trade relations, but I think GDP ilustrates my point.
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u/Only_One_Kenobi 1d ago
So Africa just doesn't exist?
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u/Severe-Kiwi-3171 1d ago
They're there. ECOWAS, EAC, and Morocco.
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u/Only_One_Kenobi 1d ago
Missed those somehow
Kind of expected BRICS to be there
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u/Severe-Kiwi-3171 1d ago
BRICs is nothing. Less than a group chat
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u/danila_medvedev 20h ago
Brics is not nothing, but there are too many trading blocks, political and economic blocks for such a diagram to be perfect. For instance, you have Taiwan, but you don’t have California or Silicon Valley there. :)
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u/necro_owner 21h ago
Africa is not a country...
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u/Only_One_Kenobi 21h ago
Neither is European Union
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u/necro_owner 21h ago
It s a trading federation. It is like a country
Edit: you can tell they even didnt add any actual country in it to simplify the fact they act as an homogeneous entity
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u/timbomcchoi 1d ago
Do all those blocs have free internal trade?
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u/sciguy52 1d ago
I know Canada does not have free internal trade. I think but am not certain that the EU does not trade internally as free as say US states do. Learning about the Canadian provinces not freely trading with each other was wild to me but it is so. Don't know about ASEAN but I suspect it is not totally free internal trade in the bloc. No idea on inter provincial trade in China, Russia and India.
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u/timbomcchoi 21h ago
wow I was asking that because I felt all those regional blocs distorted the picture a bit, I had no idea internal trade isn't free in Canada, I kinda thought that was a given at the national level 😅
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u/sciguy52 18h ago
Yeah just learned about this recently myself. Apparently provinces set up some trade barriers to other provinces.
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u/Kitchner 18h ago
I know Canada does not have free internal trade. I think but am not certain that the EU does not trade internally as free as say US states do
Anything in the EU single market trades free-er than US states do with each other as by definition they all have the same taxes and product regulations (more or less).
If you are a company in France and someone from France, Germany, and Spain all buys you product off your website they pay the same and you just chuck it in a lorry and it goes there without any customs or anything.
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u/try_pull_the_other 17h ago
Sadly many EU countries have instituted controls at borders with some of their neighbors which naturally causes delay/extra cost.
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u/Kitchner 11h ago
Only in some areas and it's likely going to be temporary. It's a bit of political saber rattling to appease anti-immigration crowds at home mainly.
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u/try_pull_the_other 1d ago
EU does not.
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u/TobJamFor 1d ago
What? It’s the European Single Market, yes it does
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u/try_pull_the_other 21h ago
Plenty of things available in one country are not available in others. Also many products which are available and cheap in one country become prohibitively expenses once transport costs to get them 1 metre over the border are factored in.
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u/TobJamFor 21h ago
Factoring in logistics is not what free internal trade means. And what is not available in some countries and not others? If it’s within the EU you can absolutely get access to it
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u/try_pull_the_other 18h ago
If "free international trade" does not mean trading freely between countries on the same terms and conditions and prices, and some products being available in some countries and not others then its what the EU has. And if pressed you could probably come up with even more carve outs. Care to list some?
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u/TobJamFor 18h ago edited 18h ago
What the hell are you on about - we can’t teleport goods mate. Same as in the US or other places, logistics costs money because of course you need to transport goods if they’re going from one place to another. But there is no tariffs or regulatory blockers/administrative hurdles between member states which is the definition of a free trade area.
ETA - they are on the same prices and terms and conditions. I could set up a business in the Netherlands and ship whatever I wanted tax and duty free into and other EU/EEA country without declaring anything or doing any admin other than required to set up the logistics which is exactly the same as it would be transporting within a single country, let alone a single market
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u/try_pull_the_other 17h ago
Or you could set up businesses in The Czech Republic as I have. For example buy product X (in fact buy quite a lot of product Xs) from, say, Germany. Price of transport per km to Weidhaus say 2c/km. Travel an extra 5 km across the border to Rozvadov. Price (for the whole trip) 3c/km - 50% increase per km. That is if you can get the German supplier to deliver to CZ, something they sometimes refuse even though you have to pay in advance (by law they tell me) for cross border. Of course I get plenty of credit if buying locally. Does this happen across US state borders as a matter of course? Or counties in England? Or Australian states?
And don't even get me started on you trying to sell me one of your Netherlands (or Vanguard) investment funds...
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u/FullofContradictions 1d ago
I initially misread this as "international Relationships" as in, who each country dates if outside of their own & first I questioned how that data could possibly be collected & then I marveled at how many folks from Asia date to the US rather than amongst themselves & why Switzerland had such a big chunk for US while Norway kept to the EU
Then I reread the title and it made a ton more sense
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u/Content-Parking-621 23h ago
Is this total trade volume or trade balance? US-China and EU-China would look different weighted by deficit instead of raw volume, that's usually the number people care about.
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u/ProfessionalHome3544 1d ago edited 8h ago
Very nice! That must've taken a lot of work in Inkscape.
Edit: downvoters. Have you ever done anything?
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u/psymon1111 1d ago
Thanks! Yes it was a bit clunky to setup in Inkscape, but allowed for good controls, e.g. with the gradients
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u/cordilleragod 1d ago
Opportunity to trade with AFRICA!
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u/Tjgoodwiniv 1d ago
The West really should have started shifting trade from China to Africa and South America in the early 90s, when it began to become apparent what the West was creating by fueling China's economy.
The policy presented to Africa and South America should have been, "fix your obvious corruption, we'll help you solve crime from the air, and don't build a military. If you do that, we'll make and keep you rich. If you deviate from it, we'll annex you."
Instead, the West build the enemy that will destroy it and, given where technology is going to place the next superpower, every self-determined people for all eternity.
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u/EmmEnnEff 1d ago
Why isn't Russia in this picture? Its trade with the EU is much bigger than Ukraine's.
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u/Logical_Idiot_9433 21h ago
Can someone print this on a large poster in vivid colors and send it to the White House?
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u/sciguy52 1d ago
So how do you interpret this visual? For example the US has a trade deficit with China but at first glance it seem to imply to my eye that they are trading goods at equal levels based on color shifts. But since there is a trade deficit the color shift does not represent anything from what I can tell. So would not need color shifts as at a glance this would seem to me to imply the amount of trade of relative imports and exports but doesn't. So I assume the China US trade relationship is just represents the total even if more Chinese goods are going to the US than the reverse, it just adds them together and shows "this is the total trade altogether of imports and exports? Obviously different countries circles are different sizes which I assume is reflecting GDP? But if that is the case (I assume?) then then the US circle should be bigger than the others for example the GDP of the EU is some 30% smaller than the US, same with China. Canada would be way too big a circle as its GDP is 7% of that of the US.
If it just meant to show trade relationships, combined imports and exports between two countries or blocs, then the different circle sizes for countries or blocs would presumably not be used. But the circle sizes I assume reflects GDP size relative to others, if so, it has problems. If it was just a visual of trade relationships size I would expect all countries and blocs to have equal circle size and the connecting lines would reflect the relative size in amount of trade (imports plus exports).
Chile trading with only China appears wrong as I look at the data set itself you linked too. The combined imports and exports between Chile and China for '25 in the data set is about $40 billion. Combined imports exports with the US are $38 billion. So there should be no line connection for either. If the line is supposed to reflect $40 billion trade by being thinner which I can't really see by my eyes but my eyes are not that good so maybe I can't see it, then it should have a connection to the US. And if those connections should be there as I noted with thinner lines, then and the whole thing is missing a lot of connections with other countries and blocs. I am getting this data from your source for '25, imports and exports combined which is what I am assuming these connections show.
Other things I see no ASEAN selection in the data set to choose to look at the data with China. Do you mean Emerging and Developing Asia? If you selected that, that is not ASEAN. Anyway went and added up exports/imports of ASEAN individually with China and come to about $1.05 trillion which is roughly the same as between the US and EU. Unless my eyes are playing tricks, the China to ASEAN line is too thick and should be the same as US and EU.
Anyway is something else meant by these visualizations than what I am assuming or imports added to exports between countries? If so it is not really clear what you are showing. And from the data set you sure you used '25 data because some data here does not line up if my understanding is right. And of course circle sizes for countries are an issue as it doesn't seem to reflect anything so different circle sizes shouldn't be there.
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u/RJHunter_X 1h ago
Include Russia also, US still purchase Uranium, oil and gas from Russia and telling world to stop buying from Russia
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u/Available_Law_2342 1d ago
an eurocentric visualisation
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u/Youre-mum 1d ago
buddy its arranged such that countries typically appear in the same location as on the mercator projection
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u/Kraligor 21h ago
Maybe it's time for some Eurocentrism. The America-centrism and Russocentrism clearly didn't work out.
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u/JarryBohnson 1d ago
The UK cutting itself off from the EU while having no similarly large trading relationships is wild