Modernizing Global Capabilities for 2026

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On this topic page, you can find data, visualizations, and research study on historical and existing patterns of international trade, along with conversations of their origins and results. SectionsAll our work on Trade & Globalization Among the most essential developments of the last century has been the combination of nationwide economies into a worldwide economic system.

One method to see this development in the information is to track how exports and imports have changed with time. The chart here does this by revealing the volume of world trade considering that 1800, adjusting the figures for inflation and indexing them to their 1800 worths. You can switch this chart to a logarithmic scale. This will help you see that, over the long term, growth has approximately followed a rapid path.

The long-run information we provide here originates from the work of historians and other researchers who make use of historical sources such as archival customs records, early statistical yearbooks, and other main files. These historic quotes give us a broad view of how international trade progressed, but they are harder to update, which is why not all charts (and not all series within some charts) extend to today.

Key Industry Trends for 2026

What these long-run estimates enable us to see is that globalization did not grow along a constant, continuous path. What is revealed is the "trade openness index".

Each series represents a various source. The greater the index, the higher the impact of trade transactions on worldwide financial activity.2 As the chart reveals, up until 1800, there was an extended period defined by persistently low worldwide trade globally the index never exceeded 10% before 1800. Background: trade before the very first wave of globalizationBefore globalization removed, trade was driven primarily by colonialism.

Leonor Freire Costa, Nuno Palma, and Jaime Reis, who put together and released historical estimates, argue that trade, also in this period, had a considerable favorable influence on the economy.3 This then altered throughout the 19th century, when technological advances triggered a duration of significant growth in world trade the so-called "very first wave of globalization". This first wave pertained to an end with the start of World War I, when the decrease of liberalism and the rise of nationalism resulted in a depression in international trade.

Navigating Shifting International Trade Insights

After The Second World War, trade started growing once again. This brand-new and continuous wave of globalization has seen worldwide trade grow faster than ever in the past. Today, the amount of exports and imports throughout countries amounts to more than 50% of the worth of overall global output. The following visualization shows a comprehensive overview of Western European exports by destination.

In the period 18301900, intra-European exports went from 1% of GDP to 10% of GDP, and this implied that the relative weight of intra-European exports nearly doubled over the duration. This process of European integration then collapsed greatly in the interwar duration.

In addition, Western Europe then began to significantly trade with Asia, the Americas, and, to a smaller sized degree, Africa and Oceania. The next chart, utilizing data from Broadberry and O'Rourke (2010 ), reveals another point of view on the combination of the international economy and plots the evolution of three indications determining combination across different markets particularly products, labor, and capital markets.4 The signs in this chart are indexed, so they show changes relative to the levels of integration observed in 1900.

26 The around the world expansion of trade after The second world war was mainly possible because of reductions in deal expenses originating from technological advances, such as the advancement of industrial civil aviation, the enhancement of efficiency in the merchant marines, and the democratization of the telephone as the main mode of interaction.

Strategic Roadmaps for Building Global Teams

The first wave of globalization was characterized by inter-industry trade. This means that countries exported items that were extremely various from what they imported. England exchanged devices for Australian wool and Indian tea. As deal costs went down, this altered. In the 2nd wave of globalization, we see a rise in intra-industry trade (i.e., the exchange of broadly comparable products and services becoming more common).

The following visualization, from the UN World Development Report (2009 ), plots the fraction of total world trade that is accounted for by intra-industry trade, by type of products. As we can see, intra-industry trade has actually been going up for primary, intermediate, and last products.

You can edit the nations and areas picked; each country tells a various story.7 The exact same historical sources also permit us to explore where countries sent their exports in time. This breakdown by location supplies a complementary view of globalization: not only did countries integrate at various moments, but the partners they traded with likewise altered in various ways.

These figures are originated from modern trade records, customs information, and worldwide databases. With this data, we can track present patterns in trade volumes, trade composition, and trading partners. (You can learn more about data sources and measurement problems at the end of this page.) Trade openness (exports plus imports as a share of gross domestic item) reveals how large a country's cross-border flows are relative to the size of its domestic economy.

International trade is much smaller relative to the domestic economy in the United States than in nearly all European countries, for example. This is partly described by the large volume of trade that occurs within the European Union. If you push the play button on the map, you can see how trade openness has actually altered over time throughout all nations.