Here we would like to introduce a very useful database, namely the United Nations Global Trade Database. It is very useful for analyzing the global market of products. Because the database can provide us with the following data queries:
The quantity, amount and trading countries of imports and exports of various products in various countries in the world from 1962 to 2010 (the data for 2011 will be updated in the second quarter of 2012).
The export volume and destination countries of various products in various countries in the world in the first three years.
Browsing the website of the market report supplier mainly uses the product name and industry classification in the product knowledge. Here we need to use the customs code of the product. Let’s continue to take lead-acid batteries as an example.
We know that the HS Code of lead-acid batteries is 850710 and 850720. Here we use 850710 to query the import quantity and source of the world’s major importing countries in 2010, Reporter is ALL countries in the world, Partner is ALL, Year is 2010, and Trade Mode is Import; in order to query the major trading countries and improve the query speed, we set only to extract countries with a trade amount of more than 500,000 US dollars (considering that the query results can only display less than 1,000 items, it is recommended to set 100,000 US dollars for other HS codes).
We can sort these data by trade amount.
(Note: When choosing to sort by Trade Value, return to the initial page to start the operation.)
Then copy it to Excel and analyze it to get the following information:
The world’s 20 largest importing countries; (Here you can clearly see the USA, France, Germany, Canada, UK, Russian, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Czech, etc.)
The world’s largest regional markets; (Here it is also obvious, including Europe, North America, Japan, etc.)
The import capacity of each country;
The import source countries of each country;
You can also compare the import capacity of importing countries in different years to get the trade changes of the product.
Next, we set the trade mode to export, and keep other conditions unchanged. Then, we analyze these data and get the following information:
The world’s top 10 exporting countries, such as S. Korea, Germany, USA, Spain, Mexico, Czech Rep., Italy, China, etc.;
The export scale of each exporting country;
The export direction of each exporting country.
Finally, let’s check the main export target countries of mainland China. Just change the Reporter of the export query above to China.
It shows that China’s main export target countries are: USA, Nigeria, Australia, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, UAE, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Italy and Russia, etc.