United States - Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies outside region (% of total merchandise imports)

Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies outside region (% of total merchandise imports) in United States was 49.76 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 51.01 in 2017, while its lowest value was 15.24 in 1971.

Definition: Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies outside region are the sum of merchandise imports by the reporting economy from other low- and middle-income economies in other World Bank regions according to the World Bank classification of economies. Data are expressed as a percentage of total merchandise imports by the economy. Data are computed only if at least half of the economies in the partner country group had non-missing data.

Source: World Bank staff estimates based data from International Monetary Fund's Direction of Trade database.

See also:

Year Value
1960 27.35
1961 26.19
1962 24.70
1963 24.37
1964 24.54
1965 21.94
1966 21.01
1967 19.41
1968 17.87
1969 16.50
1970 16.26
1971 15.24
1972 15.37
1973 17.22
1974 23.23
1975 25.01
1976 26.22
1977 28.01
1978 26.25
1979 28.73
1980 29.68
1981 26.29
1982 24.17
1983 23.71
1984 21.18
1985 19.50
1986 17.20
1987 18.34
1988 18.77
1989 20.87
1990 22.18
1991 22.61
1992 24.58
1993 26.01
1994 27.28
1995 28.61
1996 30.11
1997 31.69
1998 32.77
1999 33.23
2000 34.43
2001 35.25
2002 37.00
2003 38.52
2004 40.15
2005 41.97
2006 43.99
2007 44.71
2008 45.55
2009 48.13
2010 49.53
2011 48.68
2012 48.23
2013 48.26
2014 48.02
2015 49.60
2016 50.21
2017 51.01
2018 50.75
2019 49.24
2020 49.76

Development Relevance: Although global integration has increased, low- and middle-income economies still face trade barriers when accessing other markets.

Limitations and Exceptions: Data on exports and imports are from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Direction of Trade database and should be broadly consistent with data from other sources, such as the United Nations Statistics Division's Commodity Trade (Comtrade) database. All high-income economies and major low- and middle-income economies report trade data to the IMF on a timely basis, covering about 85 percent of trade for recent years. Trade data for less timely reporters and for countries that do not report are estimated using reports of trading partner countries. Therefore, data on trade between developing and high-income economies should be generally complete. But trade flows between many low- and middle-income economies - particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa - are not well recorded, and the value of trade among low- and middle-income economies may be understated.

Aggregation method: Weighted average

Periodicity: Annual

Classification

Topic: Private Sector & Trade Indicators

Sub-Topic: Imports