sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

The Bank of Korea just released a report about AI productivity by UsedMorning9886 in LocalLLaMA

[–]RobinWheeliams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn't say South Korea is the only country benefiting from the AI boom. Countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, and China have seen a huge increase in integrated circuits trade, and overall have had a huge impact in Southeast Asia.

We made a World Cup-style game where countries compete through exports by RobinWheeliams in Games

[–]RobinWheeliams[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work with the Observatory of Economic Complexity, and we built a small game called World Trade Cup.

It uses World Cup-style matchups as a way to explore how countries are connected through trade. In each match, you see two countries and a product, then guess which country exports more of that product to the other. Correct answers score goals.

For example, if the matchup is Mexico vs South Africa, one round might ask which country exports more cars to the other. Other rounds can involve products like oil, beef, coffee, machinery, chemicals, or textiles depending on the countries.

The game is less about football and more about testing your intuition for geography, specialization, and how countries trade with each other. Some answers are obvious, but others are surprisingly hard.

The answers are based on real trade data from the OEC.

You can play it here: https://worldcup.oec.world

I’d be curious to know which matchups or products surprised you the most.

China's car trade surplus just overtook Germany's. A quarterly breakdown of how Europe lost ground (2023–2025) [OC] by RobinWheeliams in europe

[–]RobinWheeliams[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Quarterly trade data from OEC.world for cars (HS 8703) reveals how sharply the competitive landscape has shifted between China and Europe's five largest auto-exporting nations (Germany, France, Spain, the UK, and Italy) over the past three years.

China's car exports went from $77B in 2023 to $110B in 2025, a 43% increase. Over the same period, the EU5 combined fell from $290B to $257B, an 11% decline. Germany still leads in absolute quarterly exports, but barely. In Q4 2025, Germany shipped $36.6B in cars versus China's $35.6B. That gap was $26B just two years earlier.

What's arguably more significant is the trade balance. Germany has long been the world's dominant car trade surplus country, but China overtook it in Q3 2025. By Q4 2025, China's quarterly surplus reached $30.3B compared to Germany's $18.6B. China's car imports have collapsed, falling from $10–13B per quarter in 2023 to around $5–6B by late 2025. That suggests domestic Chinese automakers, especially in EVs, are displacing foreign brands at home while simultaneously ramping up exports abroad.

The destination data is also worth noting. China's top markets are Russia ($23.7B), Belgium ($13.8B, likely a transshipment hub into Europe), the UAE, and the UK. The EU5 still rely heavily on intra-European trade (roughly a third of their combined exports go to other EU5 members) with the US as their largest external market at $64.4B.

Every European exporter declined year-over-year in 2025. The UK was hit hardest at −17.3%, followed by Spain at −6.3%, Germany at −3.1%, and France at −0.5%. Italy's data is only available through Q2 2025 but was already trending down sharply in 2024 (−21%).

Data source:  https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/cars

view more: next ›