Who sells each commodity to whom?

The single largest tracked bilateral flow is Canada to United States in crude oil, $100.5B in 2024, 7.6% of world trade in that commodity. This report reads the same CEPII BACI data as the rest of the site's trade tables, but keeps each pair of countries rather than only each country's total, for the 96 commodities whose primary trade line BACI covers.

A "corridor" is one exporter-importer pair for a commodity's primary HS line (the same line the net trade and concentration reports use), in the latest year BACI reports, usually 2024. BACI reconciles what each pair of countries reported trading with each other, so a corridor's value can differ slightly from either country's own customs figure (see sources). A large corridor between a big producer and a big buyer is expected; a large corridor between two countries that neither produce nor obviously consume much of a commodity often marks a transit or refining hub, the same pattern the export dependency report flags for Switzerland and gold.

The biggest tracked flows, any commodity

Largest bilateral trade flows across all tracked commodities
Commodity	From	To	Value	Share of that commodity's world trade
Crude oil	Canada	United States	$100.5B	7.6%
Iron ore	Australia	China	$72.6B	45%
Crude oil	Russia	China	$62.6B	4.7%
Crude oil	Russia	India	$52.7B	4%
Crude oil	Saudi Arabia	China	$47.9B	3.6%
Crude oil	Malaysia	China	$38.3B	2.9%
Gold	Canada	United Kingdom	$34.5B	5.9%
Soybeans	Brazil	China	$31.5B	39%
Gold	Switzerland	China	$25.0B	4.3%
Copper	Chile	China	$20.9B	20%
Iron ore	Brazil	China	$19.9B	12%
Gold	Switzerland	India	$19.5B	3.3%
Coal	Australia	Japan	$17.4B	9.7%
Natural gas	Norway	Germany	$16.7B	3.5%
Natural gas	Australia	Japan	$16.6B	3.5%
Gold	United Arab Emirates	India	$16.1B	2.7%
Gold	United Arab Emirates	Hong Kong	$15.8B	2.7%
Copper	Peru	China	$15.4B	15%
Natural gas	Australia	China	$15.4B	3.2%
Natural gas	United States	China	$13.5B	2.8%

One commodity at a time

Copper, 2024

$105.9B traded worldwide, across 851 exporter-importer pairs.

Largest bilateral flows for the selected commodity
From	To	Value	Share
Chile	China	$20.9B	20%
Peru	China	$15.4B	15%
Chile	Japan	$5.4B	5.1%
Mongolia	China	$3.3B	3.1%
Mexico	China	$3.3B	3.1%
Kazakhstan	China	$2.9B	2.7%
DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo)	China	$2.5B	2.4%
Indonesia	China	$2.5B	2.3%
Indonesia	Japan	$2.2B	2.1%
Peru	Japan	$1.8B	1.7%
Australia	Japan	$1.6B	1.5%
United States	Mexico	$1.5B	1.4%
Russia	China	$1.5B	1.4%
Chile	South Korea	$1.4B	1.3%
Canada	China	$1.4B	1.3%

Where each top exporter sends it

Chile ($31.0B total): China 68%, Japan 18%, South Korea 4.4%, India 4.4%, Germany 1.7%
Peru ($20.5B total): China 75%, Japan 8.8%, Spain 3.2%, South Korea 2.9%, India 1.8%
Indonesia ($8.4B total): China 29%, Japan 26%, India 13%, South Korea 13%, Spain 6.4%
Australia ($4.6B total): Japan 35%, China 22%, Philippines 15%, India 11%, South Korea 6.2%
Brazil ($4.2B total): China 20%, Germany 18%, Poland 12%, Spain 11%, Bulgaria 10%

Where each top importer buys from

China ($66.2B total): Chile 32%, Peru 23%, Mongolia 5%, Mexico 5%, Kazakhstan 4.3%
Japan ($13.5B total): Chile 40%, Indonesia 16%, Peru 13%, Australia 12%, Canada 6.1%
South Korea ($4.7B total): Chile 29%, Indonesia 23%, Canada 14%, Peru 13%, Australia 6%
India ($4.0B total): Chile 34%, Indonesia 28%, Australia 13%, Peru 9.1%, Canada 4.3%
Spain ($2.6B total): Peru 26%, Indonesia 21%, Chile 20%, Brazil 18%, Portugal 7.2%

CEPII BACI, each commodity's primary HS line, latest year. Kept only for the primary line, so a commodity with meaningful secondary trade codes (see its own page) will show a narrower picture here than its full trade. All 96 commodities as JSON.

More patterns

Concentration: How much of each commodity comes from one country?
Producer or exporter?: Is the biggest producer also the biggest seller abroad?
Prices in real terms: Which prices are records once inflation is removed?
Growth and decline: Whose output is rising or falling fastest?
Linked prices and seasons: Which prices move together, and which have a season?
Reserves and mining: Where are the deposits, and who digs them up?
Supply concentration: Which commodities depend on the fewest suppliers?
Land or yield?: Did output grow because farmers planted more or farmed better?
Supply shocks and prices: When world output falls, do prices rise?
Category price indices: How have energy, metals and food prices moved since 1960?
Drawdowns and volatility: How far do prices fall, and do they recover?
Stocks and prices: Are prices lower when the world holds more stock?
Which prices follow oil?: How closely does each commodity track crude oil?
How reliable is the data?: How much of world output rests on estimates?
Net exporters and importers: Who is a net seller and who a net buyer?
Country leaders: Which countries lead across the most commodities?
Export dependency: Which countries rely on one commodity?
Concentration over time: Has production spread out or narrowed?
Import dependency: Which countries buy most of a commodity from one supplier?
Supplier shifts: Who gained and lost importers' business?
Trade price against benchmark: Does traded product sell above or below the benchmark price?
Prices in other currencies: How much of a price move is the dollar?
Do prices lead each other?: Does one commodity price move before another?
Volatility over time: Are prices more volatile now than they used to be?
Seasonality: Which prices have a calendar-month pattern?
Price ratios: What does one commodity buy of another, and is that high or low?
El Niño and prices: Do El Niño and La Niña years move commodity prices?
Who consumes it: Which countries consume each commodity, and how much per person?
Self-sufficiency: Which large markets depend on imports, and which produce far more than they use?

Every figure is computed from the same tables as the commodity pages. The full set is in patterns.json, and single facts from it appear each day on the facts page.