How does Trinidad and Tobago’s trade profile look? Level of exports and imports over thirty years, structural composition, partner concentration, and the position on the economic-complexity frontier.
Trinidad and Tobago: merchandise exports and imports, 1996-2024 (incl. 2025 preliminary)
Exports grew from $1.6B in 1996 to $12.4B in 2024, a CAGR of 7.5%. The merchandise balance sits at $4.5B, which is 36% of exports , a simple scale normalisation over the available BACI series. Note that exports are f.o.b. and imports c.i.f., so a meaningful portion of the gap reflects freight and insurance baked into the import valuation rather than a real shortfall in receipts (CIF/FOB spreads typically run 5-10% per UNCTAD/IMF BOP methodology, but country-specific values vary). The more conventional open-economy metric is the current- account balance as % of GDP, reported on the /macro/TTO page. The short 2024-2025 segment is preliminary, from Trinidad and Tobago’s own UN Comtrade filing rather than BACI: exports of $7.9B (-0.6% vs 2024) and imports of $5.8B (-24.1%), with both years of the segment on that same as-reported basis. Levels differ from the BACI lines because BACI harmonises mirror flows and re-exports; the 2025 BACI release will supersede these points.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), f.o.b. exports and c.i.f. imports, summed across all reporters. 2025 points: UN Comtrade annual, as reported (retrieved 2026-08-18), preliminary.Query
SELECT year, total_exports*1000 AS exports_usd, total_imports*1000 AS imports_usd, trade_balance*1000 AS balance_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet'
WHERE country_code = 780 ORDER BY year;
The structural change in what a country exports, from agriculture to manufactures to services, or between HS sections, is one of the most studied transitions in development economics (Imbs & Wacziarg 2003; Hausmann, Hwang & Rodrik 2007). The chart below shows the five largest HS sections of Trinidad and Tobago’s exports in 2024, plotted back thirty years.
Figure 2
Top-5 HS sections of exports, 1996-2024
Figure 2b
Export basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $12.3B of $12.4B total
Figure 2c
Import basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $6.9B of $7.9B total
Who it sells to
Figure 3a
World map of export destinations, 2024
Figure 3b
Top 12 export destinations, 2024
What moved exports between years
The line charts above show levels over time; they do not answer the analyst’s next question: when exports changed between 2023 and 2024, which partners and which products accounted for how much of it? The two bridge charts below answer that directly. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first, and every line outside the top 8 is collapsed into one residual bar so the columns still sum exactly to the total move.
Partners
Figure 3c. Export change by partner, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $12.4B to $12.4B (+$81.6M).
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Tables used: bilateral_year + countries.parquet. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first; the residual bar is appended last. After the top 8 named contributors, every remaining line is collapsed into one exact arithmetic residual bar so the bridge reconciles to the total change. Entry bars are partners that rose from zero; exit bars fell to zero, so no growth rate is printed for them.Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral_year export flows for 2023 and 2024, values scaled from thousands USD to USD.
Products
Figure 3d. Export change by product, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $12.4B to $12.4B (+$81.6M).
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Tables used: country_year_product + products.parquet. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first; the residual bar is appended last. After the top 8 named contributors, every remaining line is collapsed into one exact arithmetic residual bar so the bridge reconciles to the total change. Entry bars are HS6 lines that were zero in 2023; exit bars fell to zero in 2024.Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), country_year_product export flows for 2023 and 2024, values scaled from thousands USD to USD.
Economic complexity
The Economic Complexity Index (ECI), building on Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009, PNAS) and formalized as the eigenvalue (second-eigenvector) index in the Atlas of Economic Complexity, ranks countries by the productive knowledge embedded in their export basket. Countries that export many products, and whose products are also exported by few others, score high. ECI is predictive of subsequent income growth and structural transformation; see Hausmann et al. (2014, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, MIT Press) for the full methodology and the comparative country atlas. For a non-linear alternative that ranks fast-diversifying economies differently (China, for instance, sits far higher on fitness than on ECI), compare the Economic Fitness metric of Tacchella et al. (2012).
Figure 4a
Trinidad and Tobago: ECI trajectory, 1996-2024
Current ECI: 0.19, ranked #103 of 226 economies in 2024. ECI is zero-centered; positive values mean above-median complexity.
Method: ECI = second eigenvector of the reflections matrix on the BACI RCA≥1 matrix, z-standardized (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014). Framework: Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009) “The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity,” PNAS 106(26): 10570-10575, whose method of reflections is equivalent to the eigenvector form (Mealy, Farmer & Teytelboym 2019, Science Advances).Figure 4b
Export concentration (HHI) and product count, 1996-2024
2024 HHI = 0.131, equivalent to about 7.6 equally-sized product lines.Trinidad and Tobago exports 3,122 distinct HS6 products. Rising HHI or falling effective-N indicates loss of diversification.
Revealed comparative advantage (Balassa 1965) says a country is specialised in a product when its share of that product’s world exports exceeds the country’s share of all world exports. A stronger version asks: which HS6 lines does the country lead the world in? The table below lists the ten largest export lines (by value) where Trinidad and Tobago ranks in the world top-5 in 2024, restricted to products with at least US$10M of global trade so tiny niches don’t crowd out economically meaningful positions. This is the “niche leadership” view: products the country is not just diversified in, but competitive at the frontier.
Figure 5
Trinidad and Tobago: top 10 HS6 lines with world top-5 rank, 2024
Peer countries by structural profile
Which economies share the closest structural profile to Trinidad and Tobago? Each country is placed in a three-dimensional space of economic complexity (ECI), log GDP per capita, and log total exports, each standardised to zero mean and unit variance in 2024. The five nearest neighbours by Euclidean distance in that space are Trinidad and Tobago’s closest structural peers, similar on productive-capability, income level, and scale of external trade. This is a trade-specific adaptation of the synthetic-control “donor pool” logic (Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller 2010).
Figure 6
Trinidad and Tobago: five closest structural peers, 2024
Closest structural peer: Uruguay (ECI 0.38, GDP-pc $23,907, exports $12.4B). Bar length encodes peer proximity in the standardised (ECI, log GDP-pc, log exports) space, shorter bars are closer structural matches. This is the peer set to benchmark trade-policy outcomes against, rather than regional or income-group aggregates. The metric matches on capability frontier and scale, not on sector mix, so countries with similar export composition but different ECI (e.g. higher-complexity apparel exporters) will not appear here.
Margins of export growth
Hummels & Klenow (2005, “The variety and quality of a nation’s exports,” American Economic Review95(3): 704-723) introduced the split of a country’s exports into an extensive margin (the set of goods it ships) and an intensive margin (how much of each). In their own measure the extensive margin is nota raw line count: following Feenstra (1994), each category is weighted by its importance in world trade. The figure below applies a simplified, count-based version of that distinction to one country’s export growth over time, so the levels are a proxy, not the Feenstra-weighted index. The two margins still respond to different levers: trade-cost reductions and discovery push the extensive margin (Melitz 2003), while productivity and demand push the intensive.
Figure 7
Margins of export growth, 2014-2024
Over 10 years, total exports grew at -4.5%/yr. Decomposition: HS6 line count moved from 3,079 to 3,122 (extensive margin 0.1%/yr); average value per line moved from $6.4M to $4.0M (intensive margin -4.6%/yr). The intensive margin dominates, which under the extensive/intensive logic indicates growth via deepening sales of existing lines (productivity, scale, or quality).
Method: simplified count-based margin decomposition. The extensive/intensive distinction is from Hummels & Klenow (2005) AER 95(3): 704-723, whose own extensive margin is Feenstra (1994) world-trade-weighted, not a line count. Here, extensive margin = CAGR of distinct HS6 export lines; intensive margin = CAGR of (total exports / line count); total CAGR ≈ extensive + intensive (log-linear approximation).
Export basket on the complexity frontier
Figure 8
Trinidad and Tobago: export value vs. product complexity (PCI), 2024
Related
Value-chain position, domestic vs foreign value added in Trinidad and Tobago’s exports, VAX ratio, and upstream/downstream index (OECD TiVA)
Economic Fitness, the non-linear Tacchella-Pietronero complexity ranking, and how it diverges from ECI
Research index, analytical pieces grounded in BACI flows and gravity covariates
Sector monitor, quarterly deep dives on 12 HS-defined sectors
In 2024, the top three HS sections account for 90% of merchandise exports that map to a HS96 section, a rough measure of sectoral concentration at the coarsest classification level. Shares here are over BACI exports that carry a valid HS96 section mapping, so the five-section series does not sum to 100% of total exports: some HS6 codes (newer HS revisions, non-standard codes) fall outside the 21-section mapping. Note that the top-5 sections are selected by 2024 share, so a section that was dominant in 1996 but has since fallen out of the top 5 will not appear on the chart.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01) crossed with HS96 section codes. Shares are over the HS6-mapped universe; HS6 codes without an HS92 section fall outside the 21-section totals.
Cell area is proportional to 2024 export value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Trinidad and Tobago’s exports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue (e.g. minerals, machinery, textiles). The largest chapter, HS 27 , Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation; bituminous substances; mineral waxes, represents 47.3% of the top-30chapter total shown. Compared to Figure 2’s five-section trajectory, this view exposes which specific chapters within the dominant sections drive the overall composition.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), f.o.b. exports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.export_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN 'data/parquet/products.parquet' p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code = 780 AND cyp.export_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;
Cell area is proportional to 2024 import value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Trinidad and Tobago’s imports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue. The largest import chapter, HS 27 , Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation; bituminous substances; mineral waxes, represents 16.3% of the top-30 chapter total shown. Read alongside Figure 2b to compare what Trinidad and Tobago sells abroad against what it buys in.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), c.i.f. imports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.import_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN 'data/parquet/products.parquet' p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code = 780 AND cyp.import_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;
Each country is shaded by the bilateral value of Trinidad and Tobago’s exports to it in 2024, binned into quintiles. Trinidad and Tobago itself is tinted in amber as the origin; white indicates destinations with no recorded bilateral flow. The map makes regional dependency structures visible, neighbours, former colonial ties, bloc partners, in ways a top-list ordering hides.
Partner concentration measures market exposure. The single largest destination absorbs 28% of Trinidad and Tobago’s exports; the top 3 together take 37%. Concentrated partner bases make bilateral shocks (trade wars, recessions) first-order.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral exports 2024. Shares are over total exports.
Trinidad and Tobago holds a top-5 world-export position in 9of its largest export lines (HS6 products with ≥ US$10M world trade, 2024). The leading niche is HS 290511 , Alcohols: saturated monohydric, methanol (methyl alcohol) , where it ranks #1 globally with 14.9% of world exports. Dominant niches are the revealed-comparative-advantage anchors a trade-shock or industrial- policy analysis should start from.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), HS6 exporter rankings, 2024. Restricted to products with ≥ US$10M world trade. Method: Balassa (1965) RCA taken to its rank-based extreme, top-5 world rank is a stringent specialisation test.Query
WITH prod_year AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, SUM(export_value) AS v
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet'
WHERE export_value > 0 GROUP BY product_code, country_code
), ranked AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, v,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY product_code ORDER BY v DESC) AS world_rank
FROM prod_year
WHERE product_code IN (SELECT product_code FROM prod_year GROUP BY product_code HAVING SUM(v)*1000 >= 1e7)
)
SELECT product_code, v*1000 AS value_usd, world_rank
FROM ranked WHERE country_code = 780 AND world_rank <= 5
ORDER BY v DESC LIMIT 10;
Method: z-score each dimension (ECI, log GDP-pc, log total exports) across the universe of countries with all three observations in the latest year; rank by Euclidean distance. Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller (2010) “Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies,” JASA 105(490): 493-505.
Query
SELECT h.year, h.num_products, t.total_exports*1000 AS exports_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_hhi.parquet' h
JOIN 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet' t USING(country_code, year)
WHERE h.country_code = 780 AND h.year IN (2014, 2024);
Each dot is one HS6 product in Trinidad and Tobago’s basket with more than US$1M in exports in 2024 (long-tail marginal exports below that floor are filtered out so the scatter is legible; the filter drops many HS6 codes for small economies and few for large ones). Horizontal = export value (log), vertical = Product Complexity Index (PCI). Dots upper-right are high-value, high-complexity products (machinery, precision instruments). Lower-left products carry less productive knowledge per dollar. A basket shifted toward the upper-right correlates with higher ECI and higher income.
Method: PCI = product loadings from the second-eigenvector complexity decomposition of the country-product RCA matrix (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014; framework from Hidalgo & Hausmann 2009, PNAS; eigenvector form equivalent to the method of reflections, Mealy et al. 2019). Basket restricted to HS6 exports > US$1M in the latest year.
where Trinidad and Tobago is exposed
Telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks (851712): imports 96% from United States. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Data processing machines: portable, digital and automatic, weighing not more than 10kg, consisting of at least a central processing unit, a keyboard and a display (847130): imports 93% from United States. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified (151190): imports 84% from Malaysia. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Tricycles, scooters, pedal cars and similar wheeled toys: dolls' carriages: dolls: other toys: reduced-size (scale) models and similar recreational models, working or not: puzzles of all kinds (950300): imports 72% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Meat: of sheep (including lamb), cuts with bone in (excluding carcasses and half-carcasses), frozen (020442): imports 53% from New Zealand. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
where Trinidad and Tobago could grow
Vegetables: globe artichokes, fresh or chilled (070910): proximity 0.08 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.24, world market $4,990. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Cereal flour: of rye (110210): proximity 0.08 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.24, world market $2,976. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Vegetable preparations: truffles, prepared or preserved otherwise than by vinegar or acetic acid (200320): proximity 0.08 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.24, world market $2,394. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Halogenated derivatives of acyclic hydrocarbons containing two or more different halogens: trichlorotrifluoroethanes (CFC-113) (290343): proximity 0.08 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.24, world market $2,863. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Mixed gases: containing perhalogenated derivatives of acyclic hydrocarbons containing two or more different halogens, containing acyclic hydrocarbons perhalogenated only with fluorine and chlorine (382471): proximity 0.08 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.24, world market $2,793. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Trinidad and Tobago trade-riskGlobal risk rank #134 of 200 (board)
supplier concentration79.6%
price stress 12m16.0%
price coverage10.4%
Dependency diagnosis
Telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks(851712): you import 95.9% from USA. UNKNOWN World concentration unavailable for this product code.
Data processing machines: portable, digital and automatic, weighing not more than 10kg, consisting of at least a central processing unit, a keyboard and a display(847130): you import 92.5% from USA. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.51. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: CHN 69.9%, VNM 12.8%, NLD 3.1%, DEU 1.9%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified(151190): you import 84.4% from Malaysia. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.41. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: IDN 55.2%, NLD 2.5%, ITA 0.9%, EST 0.9%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Tricycles, scooters, pedal cars and similar wheeled toys: dolls' carriages: dolls: other toys: reduced-size (scale) models and similar recreational models, working or not: puzzles of all kinds(950300): you import 72.5% from China. UNKNOWN World concentration unavailable for this product code.
Meat: of sheep (including lamb), cuts with bone in (excluding carcasses and half-carcasses), frozen(020442): you import 52.8% from New Zealand. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.40. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: AUS 45.2%, NLD 1.8%, URY 1.2%, IRL 0.9%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Lamps and light fittings: electric, n.e.s. in heading no. 9405(940540): you import 66.4% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.40. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: DEU 5.2%, ITA 2.8%, MEX 2.8%, USA 2.5%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Spirits obtained by distilling grape wine or grape marc(220820): you import 95.2% from Unknown. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.40. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: FRA 61.9%, SGP 9.9%, ARM 4.8%, GEO 3.8%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Floor, wall or ceiling coverings: of polymers of vinyl chloride, whether or not self-adhesive, in rolls or in the form of tiles(391810): you import 77.1% from China. MODERATE Moderate, world HHI 0.23; some concentration. Alternatives: VNM 16.1%, KOR 7.6%, BEL 5.4%, FRA 3.7%.
Compound exposures
These flows carry multiple simultaneous stressors on the same product; the averaged risk score understates them.
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified from Malaysia: single-source (84.4%) + price +15% over 12m.
Meat: of sheep (including lamb), cuts with bone in (excluding carcasses and half-carcasses), frozen from New Zealand: single-source (52.8%) + price +21% over 12m.
GeoDep 2022, world shares latest BACI year, Pink Sheet 2026M04. No real-time signal is implied.