THE IMPORT MAP
Prism · Trade & Economics
World Bank · IMF · CBC · 2024
THE
IMPORT
MAP
Hong Kong imports goods and services equivalent to 178% of its GDP — more than any country on earth. Sudan imports 1%. The United States, the world's largest economy, imports just 14% of GDP — one of the lowest ratios globally. Import reliance is a map of economic structure, geographic constraint, and political choice simultaneously.
Metric: Goods and services imports as a share of GDP · 2024 (or latest available)
Top 5: Hong Kong 178% · Luxembourg 160% · San Marino 155% · Singapore 144% · Djibouti 115%
Bottom 5: Sudan 1% · Venezuela 9% · Turkmenistan 11% · Ethiopia 12% · Argentina 13%
Source: World Bank · IMF · CBC Annual Report 2024
Top 5: Hong Kong 178% · Luxembourg 160% · San Marino 155% · Singapore 144% · Djibouti 115%
Bottom 5: Sudan 1% · Venezuela 9% · Turkmenistan 11% · Ethiopia 12% · Argentina 13%
Source: World Bank · IMF · CBC Annual Report 2024
Prism Desk·Source: World Bank · IMF · CBC·2024
Imports as % of GDP · Selected Countries · 2024
Hover rows for detail
Source: World Bank · IMF
Source: World Bank · IMF
Top 5 — Highest Import Reliance
Bottom 5 — Lowest Import Reliance
Hong Kong 178%: The Re-Export City
Many goods imported into Hong Kong are re-exported to mainland China and other Asian markets, boosting import values despite low domestic consumption. Hong Kong functions more as a trading hub than a consuming economy.
U.S. 14%: Scale as Autarky
The U.S. has one of the lowest import-to-GDP ratios globally, reflecting the scale of its economy. A large country with diverse resources, manufacturing, and services doesn't need proportionately as much from abroad.
Trading Hubs >100%4 countriesHK 178% · Luxembourg 160%
San Marino 155% · Singapore 144%
Djibouti 115% · import = the economy
San Marino 155% · Singapore 144%
Djibouti 115% · import = the economy
EU Average46%Ireland 102% (highest EU)
Most EU 30–67% range
Single market drives integration
Most EU 30–67% range
Single market drives integration
Large Economies14–24%U.S. 14% · China 17%
Japan 24% · Russia 18%
Scale reduces import intensity
Japan 24% · Russia 18%
Scale reduces import intensity
Why "imports > GDP" is possible: When imports exceed 100% of GDP, it means that the value of goods and services imported exceeds the entire annual domestic production of the economy. This is possible for entrepôt economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg) that import to re-export — adding distribution and financial value without the imported goods being consumed domestically. It also reflects that GDP and import flows use different accounting bases: GDP measures value added; import figures measure gross transaction value including intermediate goods.
Source: World Bank · IMF · CBC Annual Report 2024 · Data as of 2024 or latest available
178%Hong Kong
Highest Import/GDP
Highest Import/GDP
1%Sudan
Lowest Import/GDP
Lowest Import/GDP
14%United States
Economy of Scale
Economy of Scale
46%EU Average
Import/GDP
Import/GDP
What Import Reliance Measures — and Doesn't
Import reliance — goods and services imports as a share of GDP — is one of the most information-dense single statistics in international economics, but it is also one of the most easily misread. At first glance, high import reliance might suggest vulnerability: a country that imports 178% of its GDP seems at the mercy of foreign suppliers in a way that a country importing 14% of its GDP does not. But the reality is more complex. The countries with the highest import-to-GDP ratios are not necessarily the most economically fragile — several of them are among the most prosperous and financially sophisticated economies in the world. And the countries with the lowest import ratios include some of the most economically dysfunctional states on earth, alongside genuinely large and self-sufficient continental economies.
The import-to-GDP ratio is better understood as a map of economic structure, geographic constraint, and political choice simultaneously. Large continental economies with diverse domestic resources (the United States, China, Russia, Brazil) have low import ratios because their size creates internal markets substantial enough to sustain most industries without import competition. Small city-states and trading hubs (Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, San Marino) have high import ratios because their land area, resource base, and population cannot support domestic production of most goods, making imports not a sign of dependency but of specialisation. Countries with import ratios between 1-13% are almost invariably the product of political and economic collapse — forced autarky rather than chosen self-sufficiency.
Hong Kong at 178%: not a sign of vulnerability — a sign of the entrepôt model. The U.S. at 14%: not a sign of autarky — a sign of continental scale. Sudan at 1%: not a sign of self-sufficiency — a sign of economic collapse. The same metric means completely different things in different contexts.
Hong Kong at 178%: The Entrepôt Architecture
Hong Kong's extraordinary 178% import-to-GDP ratio is the product of its specific function as the world's most significant re-export hub. The majority of goods that enter Hong Kong's port do not remain in Hong Kong — they are re-exported to mainland China, Southeast Asia, and other regional markets after minimal value-adding transformation (inspection, repackaging, financing, documentation). Hong Kong adds distribution, financial, and logistics services to these goods flows without the goods becoming part of Hong Kong's final domestic consumption. The import figure captures the gross value of all goods crossing the border; the GDP figure captures only the value added within Hong Kong's economy. For an entrepôt, these are structurally different numbers and it is entirely expected that gross imports will exceed value-added GDP.
The practical reality is that Hong Kong's import statistics are substantially inflated by this re-export function relative to what the number implies for a domestic consumer economy. A Chinese manufacturer shipping $100 of goods through Hong Kong to Japan generates approximately $100 in Hong Kong import statistics and approximately $5-10 in Hong Kong GDP (the logistics, financial, and distribution margin). The 178% ratio reflects that these intermediation flows are very large relative to the value Hong Kong adds. Since the 2020 National Security Law and the subsequent economic shifts that have redirected some of Hong Kong's entrepôt flows directly through mainland China ports, this ratio has been declining — but Hong Kong remains the world's most import-intensive major economy by a wide margin.
Luxembourg at 160% and Singapore at 144%: The Financial Hub Model
Luxembourg's 160% import-to-GDP ratio reflects a different version of the same structural phenomenon as Hong Kong, with the financial sector playing the role that logistics plays in Hong Kong. Luxembourg imports significant quantities of goods — particularly for the European headquarters of multinational corporations located there — and functions as the registered domicile for enormous quantities of financial assets managed on behalf of European and global investors. Luxembourg's GDP, as noted in the Prism European salary brief, includes the earnings of the approximately 45% of its workforce that commutes from France, Belgium, and Germany. But many of the goods consumed by these commuters and by Luxembourg-based corporations are imported and appear in Luxembourg's import statistics, inflating the ratio relative to what a straightforward domestic consumption measure would show.
Singapore's 144% follows the same entrepôt logic as Hong Kong but with a more diversified value-added profile. Singapore's port is one of the world's two or three busiest container ports, and its re-export function for Southeast Asian trade is analogous to Hong Kong's historical role for China trade. But Singapore has deliberately built a higher-value-added manufacturing sector — semiconductors, petrochemicals, aerospace maintenance and repair, pharmaceuticals — that adds more domestic value per unit of imported input than Hong Kong's largely logistics-based model. Singapore's high import ratio reflects both the re-export function and the import of raw materials and intermediate goods for its manufacturing sector.
The United States at 14%: Continental Scale as Natural Autarky
The United States' 14% import-to-GDP ratio — one of the lowest of any major economy — is frequently cited as evidence of American economic self-sufficiency, but this framing somewhat misrepresents the structural reality. The U.S. does import approximately $3.1 trillion in goods and services annually — the largest absolute import bill of any country in the world, by a substantial margin. The low ratio reflects that American GDP ($27-28 trillion) is simply very large: $3.1 trillion in imports is 14% of that, but in absolute terms it dwarfs the import totals of every other country.
The more accurate explanation is that continental economies with diverse resource endowments — the United States, China, Russia, Brazil — have lower import intensity than smaller economies because their size creates the minimum efficient scale for most industries within their borders. An American automobile manufacturer can achieve economies of scale serving the U.S. domestic market alone; a Danish automobile manufacturer could not. American agriculture produces sufficient food for both domestic consumption and significant export; Luxembourg cannot. American energy production, while not entirely self-sufficient, supplies the majority of domestic needs; Singapore must import essentially all of its energy. The U.S. 14% is not protectionism — it is the natural consequence of being a continent-sized economy with almost every natural resource available domestically and a domestic market large enough to sustain full industrial diversity.
China at 17%: The Deliberate Domestic Pivot
China's 17% import-to-GDP ratio — low for a country of its economic sophistication, but consistent with its continental scale — represents both the structural features shared with other large economies and a deliberate policy choice. China's domestic market has grown large enough to sustain most industrial activities at competitive scale, and Chinese industrial policy has systematically prioritised import substitution in key sectors: semiconductors, electric vehicles, aircraft, and advanced materials represent the current generation of import substitution targets following successful earlier substitution in solar panels, consumer electronics, and basic manufacturing.
China's import ratio is also shaped by the geopolitical trajectory of its trade policy. The Belt and Road Initiative, the deliberate development of domestic consumer markets as a complement to export-led growth, and the explicit policy goal of "dual circulation" (reducing dependence on international trade flows while maintaining export competitiveness) are all strategies that, if successful, will maintain or reduce China's import-to-GDP ratio even as Chinese GDP grows. At 17%, China is already below the import intensity of European countries with comparable manufacturing sectors — reflecting that the Chinese economy is, on an import-intensity basis, more similar to a continental economy (United States, Russia) than to the Asian manufacturing export economies (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) it is sometimes grouped with.
Sudan at 1%, Venezuela at 9%, Argentina at 13%: The Autarky of Failure
The bottom five countries in the import reliance ranking — Sudan (1%), Venezuela (9%), Turkmenistan (11%), Ethiopia (12%), Argentina (13%) — are united by a common factor that has nothing to do with geographic scale or comparative advantage: their low import ratios are the product of economic dysfunction, sanctions, capital controls, or political collapse rather than genuine productive self-sufficiency. Sudan's 1% — the lowest in the world — reflects the combined effects of years of civil conflict, international sanctions, and humanitarian crisis that have essentially eliminated the formal trade infrastructure through which imports flow. Sudan is not 1% import reliant because it produces everything it needs domestically; it is 1% because its economy and trade system have largely collapsed.
Venezuela's 9% tells a similar story: a country with the world's largest proved oil reserves and a highly urbanised, historically middle-class population has been reduced to near-subsistence import levels by a combination of political repression, hyperinflation, corruption, and the destruction of the oil production infrastructure that provided the foreign exchange to purchase imports. At peak oil production in the late 1990s, Venezuela had a significantly higher import-to-GDP ratio reflecting a functioning trade economy. The current 9% is the residue of institutional collapse.
Argentina's 13% requires a more nuanced interpretation: Argentina is a large country with significant agricultural resources and a history of periodic economic crises that have repeatedly required import restrictions to manage balance of payments pressures. The current low import ratio reflects specific capital controls and trade restrictions imposed during the latest economic crisis rather than a structural feature of the Argentine economy. The distinction between "structural low" (United States, China) and "crisis low" (Sudan, Venezuela, Argentina) is the most analytically important dimension of the import reliance data, and the ranking alone does not make it visible.
End of Brief · Prism