S&P Global

S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Global Trade Atlas is a specialized data platform that provides detailed, granular information on international merchandise trade flows. It draws from official customs statistics and government sources across more than 200 countries and territories, covering over 6,000 commodities classified under the Harmonized System (HS). The platform allows users to track exports, imports, re-exports, and trade balances at the product, sector, and bilateral level. One of its primary functions is to offer historical and current trade data in a standardized format, enabling comparisons across different markets and time periods. Users can filter by country, product code, trade direction, and date range to isolate specific trade corridors. For example, an analyst can examine the monthly volume of soybean exports from Brazil to China, or the year-over-year change in automobile imports into Germany. The data is updated regularly, often monthly, to reflect the latest official releases. The platform also includes visualization tools such as interactive maps, trend charts, and data tables that can be exported to Excel or PDF. These tools help users identify trade patterns, seasonality, and shifts in supply chains. For instance, a supply chain manager might use Global Trade Atlas to monitor alternative sourcing destinations for electronic components, while a trade economist could analyze the impact of tariff changes on bilateral trade flows. Beyond raw data, the platform provides analytical features like market share calculations, growth rates, and trade concentration indices. It can compute the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for a given product’s exporter concentration, or rank countries by import penetration in a specific sector.