Trade (% of GDP)

Exports plus imports (% of GDP)·Neither end is better — this is a shape, not a score·Published by World Bank Group

We hold 56 editions of this indicator, from 1970 to 2025 — 8,340 rows in total, and 138 countries in the newest.

56 reference years (1970–2025), covering 96 to 185 countries, pulled from the World Bank’s indicator API (NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS). Exports plus imports of goods and services set against the size of the economy — the standard measure of how OPEN a country is. ⚠ VALUES ABOVE 100% ARE NORMAL and not an error: a re-export hub such as Singapore or Luxembourg moves several times its own output across its borders, because the same goods are counted going in and going out. ⚠ A structural share, not a score. Small economies sit at the top because they MUST trade, not because they trade well, so the ordering is a reading convention rather than a league table, and it is out of the Country Index. ⚠ NEITHER END IS BETTER, so this indicator carries no good/bad colouring anywhere on the site and does not feed its topics’ rankings — it is charted on them, not scored by them. ⚠ Venezuela’s 21 country-years recorded as exactly 0 (1991–2011, between 57.7% and 50.8%) are treated as missing and not imported — no country trades nothing. ⚠ These are not 56 published reports — see `restatedByReport`. ⚠ No rank is published. A POSITION is derived here (2026-09-10) by ordering the score LARGEST FIRST, and it is a SIZE ORDER rather than a league table: this measure has no better end, so position 1 names the country with the biggest figure and says nothing about how that country is doing. The change arrows stay grey for the same reason, and the indicator is still left out of the Country Index.