Maritime Trade and Transport - HWWI

The three core regions also play a very important role in interregional trade, as a glance at
Fig. 3 will show. Transpacific trade between North America and Asia-Pacific was dominant
here in 2004, with a share of approximately 8.8% of total world trade. The share of interregional
trade between Europe and Asia-Pacific (8.2%) was somewhat lower. Transatlantic trade
between Europe and North America accounted for 6.5%. The exchange of goods with the
“central” regions also dominates the foreign trade of the “peripheral” regions. In 2004, Europe
was the primary trade partner of the Commonwealth of Independent States (2.4%) and Africa
(2.2%). Trade relations on the part of the Middle East concentrated on the Asia-Pacific (3.0%)
and European (1.9%) regions. For South and Central America, North America (1.8%) and
Europe (1.2%) were the most important trade partners.
Viewed by sector, the high share of trade in industrial goods should be pointed out. It
amounted to almost three quarters of total world goods trading in 2004, though the weight
has clearly shifted toward information technology and telecommunications. The share of chemical
and pharmaceutical products has also increased, whereas other sectors, such as trade in
iron and steel, automobiles, and textile and clothing products, have grown more slowly than
trade in industrial goods as a whole. Trade in agricultural goods, which had still dominated
world trade in the 1950s, slid to an all-time low in 2004 and constituted not even 10% of total
goods trading. Trade in mining products, fuels, and other products, which had declined
considerably during the first half of the 1980s as a result of the oil price crisis of 1979-80, re -
corded very high growth rates in recent years and in 2004 attained a share of almost 15%. 3
2.2 Internal and external foreign trade of the European Union
Parallel to the expansion in world merchandise, foreign trade on the part of member states of
the European Union also increased substantially. To a considerable extent, this trade is conducted
by the six member states that are among the ten leading world trade nations (Ger -
many, France, Netherlands, Italy, UK and Belgium). Combined, these countries accounted
for almost 30% of world trade in 2004. The cumulative share of all 25 EU member states
was somewhat higher. It rose to 44.3% by 1990, then dipped to 40.4% by 2004 (see Fig. 4).
Since the radical changes in the Central and Eastern European countries, export trade on
the part of the 25 EU member states seems to be developing somewhat less expansively than
world trade.
To draw conclusions regarding the structure of the trade patterns, it is essential to differentiate
between the external and internal foreign trade of the European Union. External
foreign trade is defined as the exchange of goods between the European Union and the rest
3 See Koopmann, Franzmeyer (2003) and WTO (2005b).
14 Berenberg Bank · HWWI: Strategy 2030 · No. 4