TradeWeave is a free, open-access global trade analytics platform covering 238 countries, 5,022 products, and 30 years of bilateral trade data from BACI/CEPII. It provides interactive visualizations, country profiles, tariff simulations, economic complexity rankings, and trade forecasting tools.

What data sources does TradeWeave use?

TradeWeave combines data from BACI/CEPII (bilateral trade flows), WITS/TRAINS (tariff rates), World Bank WDI (macroeconomic indicators), ESCAP-World Bank (bilateral trade costs), FRED and BLS (freight indices, exchange rates), and FAOSTAT (agricultural trade).

How can I analyze a country's trade profile?

Visit the Country Profiles page and select any of 238 countries to see their export composition, top trade partners, revealed comparative advantage (RCA), Economic Complexity Index (ECI), trade diversification, and 30-year trends.

What is the Economic Complexity Index (ECI)?

The Economic Complexity Index (ECI), developed by Hidalgo and Hausmann, measures the productive knowledge embedded in a country's export basket. Countries that export a diverse set of sophisticated products score higher. TradeWeave ranks all 238 countries by ECI from 1995 to 2024.

Can I simulate the impact of tariff changes?

Yes. TradeWeave's Tariff Simulator lets you model how tariff changes affect import volumes using real product-level demand elasticities and MFN tariff rates for over 1,200 HS4 products.

How far back does the trade data go?

The primary BACI dataset covers 1995-2024 with HS6 product detail. TradeWeave also includes historical trade data spanning over 200 years (1800-present) from academic compilations.

MERCATOR · METHODOLOGY

Predicting where trade reroutes when a supplier is removed

A structural model of supplier substitution estimated on 30 years of bilateral product-level trade (CEPII BACI, 270M flows), validated out-of-sample on the 2022 Russia shock as a quasi-experiment.

The question

TradeWeave’s shock tools answer what is exposed when a supplier is cut off. Mercator answers the harder question: where would the trade actually go?We identify 389,308 historical supplier-displacement episodes (an incumbent supplier’s import share of a product collapses while total demand holds), estimate which alternative captures the displaced share, and test the model strictly out-of-sample on the supplier the world was forced to replace in 2022: Russia.

Out-of-sample result: Russia 2022

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What drives substitution

Conditional logit (McFadden) coefficients, standardized. Magnitude is the story; with hundreds of thousands of episodes every term is statistically distinguishable.

Capacity, incumbency, and distance dominate — displaced trade goes to big, close, already-connected suppliers.
De-risking flowed to weaker-governed states. The negative governance coefficient shows Russia-displaced trade rerouted toward lower–rule-of-law partners (China, India, Türkiye, Kazakhstan), not Western ones.
Comparative advantage and trade agreements add almost nothing at the extensive margin.

The Substitutability Index

Applying the model to every current single-source dependency (36,450 across 198 importers) yields a new primitive: the effective number of viable alternative suppliersif the incumbent is removed. Low values mean structurally locked-in. The index is economically sharp: jute yarn, bleached wood pulp, and ferro-niobium score near 1–2 (geographically concentrated, near-irreplaceable), while generic manufactures score 30+. Dependency concentration is overwhelmingly a small/landlocked developing-economy phenomenon, not a rich-economy one.

Limitations

BACI is annual, so this is structural resilience, not real-time early warning.
One validation event (Russia 2022); generality is not claimed.
The edge over incumbency is modest; the value is the identified decomposition and the index, not a single accuracy figure.

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Guided journeyTrace a supply-chain chokepoint riskstep 5 of 5All journeys

Related analyses

Supply Chain

concentration and vulnerability

Shock Cascade

supplier disruption impact

Competition

alternative supplier overlap

Sanctions Diversion

re-routing around suppliers

Risk Board

global trade-risk ranking

The question

What drives substitution

Conditional logit (McFadden) coefficients, standardized. Magnitude is the story; with hundreds of thousands of episodes every term is statistically distinguishable.

Capacity, incumbency, and distance dominate — displaced trade goes to big, close, already-connected suppliers.

De-risking flowed to weaker-governed states. The negative governance coefficient shows Russia-displaced trade rerouted toward lower–rule-of-law partners (China, India, Türkiye, Kazakhstan), not Western ones.

Comparative advantage and trade agreements add almost nothing at the extensive margin.

The Substitutability Index