What Is Each Country's Biggest Export?

Certain countries are known for producing certain products and for producing a lot of them. Portugal, for instance, is known for producing a lot of Cork.

Every year, 175 tons of Cork are made in Portugal and they are the world's biggest producer of this product, representing 52% of the world's production.

Far ahead of Spain, which has 32% and much ahead of Italy or Morocco, who are the third and fourth places at 6 and 4% respectively.

But while Portugal is known for producing cork, and while it is the world's greatest producer of it, cork is not its main exported product.

No, that would be cars. They receive parts from other locations of the world and assembly cars to then be exported and sold abroad.

Before 2020, oil was their biggest export. Refined oil to be precise, since Portugal doesn't have any of its own, but it imports crude oil from other places in the world and through its refineries, refines it.

This is important so that we understand that this list isn't about the most famous exports of each country.

Although if you want, I can make a video about that too. It also isn't about what they most produce. A country can produce more of product A, but consume it internally, which causes product B to be the biggest export, even though the total production value is lower.

In this video I am going to talk about specifically what is each country's biggest export? What is the product that they produce and which they export more than anything else?

This is somewhat of a reductive look at things because each country has various products that they export in great quantity and reducing it to an oil exporting country just because it exports maybe $1 worth more of it than many other things is wrong.

Oil is Norway's most exported product, but they also export machines and metal. Paraguay's biggest export is soybeans, but they also sell cotton, meat and timber to other countries.

Obviously. Also keep in mind that these are likely to change every year as countries industries either grow or become smaller.

So this information could be in some cases outdated, but it is from 2020, just like Portugal which where their top export used to be refined oil, but was changed to cars in the last year.

If you notice any wrong information, just let me know in the comments. Let's start with an overview of the entire world.

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Now let's get on with the video. Like I mentioned, let's start with an overview of the entire world. I got this map from howmuch.net so all credits to them for putting it together.

Through these sources they attribute a color to each country. Each color is then attributed to a product category which we can see here.

There are 14 different product categories and instantly we can see some that stand out. Oil is very present throughout the world as countries main exports, especially in North America, some southern American countries too, North Africa, the Middle East, India and Russia, as well as eastern and Northern Europe.

Important to remember though that this category differs within itself from refined or unrefined oil and sometimes it's petroleum in the sense of gas and not oil.

Unrefined exports mean that the country has oil and extracts it, then exporting it in its crude form.

Refined exports mean that the country refines it and in a lot of cases does not have their own sources but imports the crude oil to then export the refined one.

Another very large group of countries export vehicles here shown in blue. The vast majority in Europe as well as Turkey, Morocco, Mexico and Japan have this sector as their main export.

Then come ores and minerals here in this bluish color as well. Indonesia and Australia, Mongolia and a lot of African countries, Chile and Peru, Iceland and Switzerland are among those who export them.

Then food in the green, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Greenland, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Afghanistan and Ukraine as well as New Zealand among a few others.

Cuba exports cigars, Ireland, Denmark and Italy have medical supplies as their main export and some countries in Central America and Asia have clothing, while China, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea export machinery more than anything else, which usually means electronic circuits for computers for instance, Worldwide the top 10 biggest product exports are in total value, crude petroleum, cars, refined petroleum, integrated circuits, computers, vehicle parts, package medicaments, gold, petroleum, gas and broadcasting equipment.

And you should notice that all of them have somewhat low values. So be aware that even though a specific country has a specific product as its main exports, it just means that it exports this product more than any other individual one.

It still may represent just 4, 4 or 5%. And if we go by country, regardless of which product they export the Most, the top 10 were China, the USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, France, South Korea, Italy, Hong Kong and Mexico.

While the 10 least exporting countries were Montserrat, Niue, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Neiling Islands, Norfolk Island, West Sahara, Wallace, Futuna, Pitcairn, American Samoa and Guam.

So. So now that we got a generalized look at how the world map is and how countries are separated depending on which product category they mostly export, let's take a look at this bicontinent.

Starting in Europe, we can see that a vast majority of countries have cars as their biggest export. Special attention to France, which falls in the vehicle category, but exports airplanes and not cars because of Airbus having its production there.

The second largest group seems to be petroleum and oil. Then medical goods in Italy, Ireland and Denmark.

And then we have some smaller groups or individual sectors. Switzerland and Iceland's biggest exports are ores, gold and aluminum respectively.

Bosnia has electrical energy, Estonia, Andorra, San Marino, Serbia and Moldova machinery, although Serbia and Moldova are wires.

Latvia has wood, Ukraine sunflower seeds and Albania footwear. And North Macedonia has reaction initiators.

I don't know what these are, but according to the legend it is a type of chemical. America is big, so let's separate it in two.

First, in the north we have this separation which we already saw in the global map. From what I could research though, Canada's oil is crude, while the US's is refined.

Special attention to the island of St Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory whose main export export is crustaceans.

Greenland's is fish, which to my knowledge is frozen. And Mexico's core exportation, which is the fourth largest worldwide.

Now let's move south to Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean. Here we have a lot of diversity, especially in the Caribbean, where we can see all types of products throughout the many islands.

From cruise ships in the Bahamas, aluminum in Jamaica, cigars in Cuba, nutmeg in Granada, medical instruments in Dominica or sand in Montserrat, cig.

Central America divides itself mostly between food and clothing. Three countries are mainly Exporters of t shirts.

Guatemala has bananas and Belize sugarcane. In South America, at least four countries export mostly Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Venezuela and Ecuador export crude oil, while Bolivia exports gas. Chile and Peru export mostly copper, while Guiana and Suriname are also in the ore category, but with a more valuable one, gold.

Brazil and Paraguay have soybeans, while Argentina mostly exports oil, but a food oil. Uruguay sets itself apart from the three tendencies here and instead mostly exports wood pulp.

Next, Africa, where a similar situation as Latin America exists, meaning a lot of diversity. There are clearly two main groups, oil and ores.

Oil will vary from refined to unrefined, although the map doesn't give us that information. But from what I could additionally search, most of it is crucial crude, with the exception of Algeria which is gas, while the ores vary a lot depending on the country.

From iron in Mauritania, gold in Ghana or copper, zinc in Eritrea, titanium in Sierra Leone as well as coal in Mozambique.

There are also many countries which mostly export food, be it plant based or animal based. Fish in Cabo Verde, nuts in Gambia and Guinea, Pissau cocoa beans in Cote d' Ivoire and Sault May crisp coffee in Ethiopia, tea in Kenya or vanilla in Madagascar, Djibout and Somalia.

Sheep and goats and some islands export fish. And then we have six individual sectors in six countries.

Cars in Morocco, the only African nation following this European trend and the only whose biggest export is a finished product.

Wires in Tunisia, cotton in Benin, medical supplies in St. Helena, Wood in the Central African Republic and tobacco in Malawi.

We can see most of Africa focuses on the natural resource sectors and not as much on the assembly and production.

Moving to Asia Like I've said in previous videos, the gigantic size justifies the vast variety we see.

Oil still takes up a large number of countries, as does the mining of stones, gold, coal or diamonds.

Food is rarely the most exported good, with the exception of olive oil in Syria, grapes in Afghanistan, tea in Sri Lanka or or fish from the Maldives.

Jordan is the only Asian country which according to this mostly exports chemicals, in their case fertilizers.

Pakistan specializes in exporting bed linens, Nepal yarn, Bangladesh suits and Cambodia also clothes.

Laos has electricity. Japan and Turkey are the only two that mostly export cars. And in this continent we see a larger focus on machinery than we did in the others, many of them export, exporting electronic circuits, China transmission apparatus as well as Vietnam and Thailand exports machinery.

We also see a new sector which I think didn't dominate any other country's exports until now. Luxury goods being the largest export in Macau in DPR Korea it also says watches, but another index I checked said coal, so remember to always question information like this.

And finally Oceania for the first time I think we have a majority of food export exporting countries, although not in export value.

Australia has coal as its main export, while some other islands export calcium, gold, scrap and alloys.

New Zealand's biggest export is milk. Many islands export fish, while Fiji exports water. Some others export cruise ships and yachts, and a couple of them petroleum.

Interestingly, Wallace and Futuna focuses on exporting vehicle parts and the Cocoa Islands computers unusual sectors of activity for small island nations.

So those are the biggest exports of countries worldwide in 2020, allowing us to understand not what each country is most well known for producing, not even what it mostly produces, but simply which product does it export more than anything else?

Meaning of all the things they make to send outside their borders, this is what is sent in the largest quantity.

Again, something that changes, possibly year by year and whose advantage the towards other products might not be as significant as the map makes it seem.

In an article about this topic, it is said that it's estimated that over the next five years, 16 to 26% of exported goods production could shift locations, which means that a map like this might soon be outdated.

With Africa's development, it's likely that they will start focusing more on manufacturing instead of extracting natural resources.

Or they might be able to keep those resources and develop them themselves, exporting refined and produced goods instead of the raw materials.

Once again, if you notice any mistakes or flaws in the map or data, just let me know in the comments so we can all have a more accurate idea of what each country's biggest exports are.

Thanks so much for watching this video. Subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.