●Monitor
TRADE layer · trade flows
/monitorWhat it answers
The world's major bilateral trade flows, drawn as arcs between countries: who exports to whom, for how much. Hover a country and its top ten partners come forward.
When to open it
- When an event (sanctions, conflict, a strait closing, an earthquake) hits an exporting country: who that country sells to, and who takes the second-round hit.
- To test a hunch about trade dependence: how much Norwegian gas is Germany really standing on? How much does Brazil sell to China?
- To ground a trade war narrative in something concrete: the width of the arcs between the countries at odds, the bilateral surplus or deficit.
Anatomy
Switch on TRADE in the layer grid at top right. The layer permanently shows the 50 largest corridors in the world as arcs between countries — yellow-orange (exports) and blue (imports).
Hover a country and its ten main partners are added as heavier arcs — that detail clears the moment the cursor leaves.
Click an arc and an info card opens in the top-right corner with the bilateral detail.
How to read it
The arcs on the map
| Element | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Color | Yellow-orange = exports from the country under the cursor (or from the reporter), blue = imports. |
| Thickness | Proportional to the value of the flow. A thin arc is a minor corridor, a thick one a major corridor (China ↔ United States, EU ↔ EU…). |
| Direction | A curved path between the two capitals / centroids. |
| Persistent arcs (the global 50) | Stay on screen the whole time the layer is on. |
| Hover arcs (a country's top 10) | Appear as you pass over a country; clear as you leave it. |
The info card (click an arc)
| Block | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Header | Country A → Country B — the direction follows the arc you clicked. |
| Bilateral volume | Total trade between the two countries, in $T, $B or $M. Shows Partial reporting when one of the two directions went undeclared: the total is then unknowable, not partial. |
| {A} exports | Country A's exports to country B. Yellow-orange dot. |
| {B} exports | Country B's exports to country A. Blue dot. |
Not reported | No customs authority declared that direction for the year shown. An undeclared direction is not a zero flow — it is never rendered as $0. |
| Net surplus | The trade balance of the net exporter. Shown only when both directions are declared and the imbalance isn't zero. |
| Year | The data's reference year — the most recent one declared for this pair of countries. Both directions shown always refer to the same year. |
Controls
| Gesture | Effect |
|---|---|
| TRADE toggle in the grid at top right | Turns the layer on or off. |
| Hover a country | Adds its top ten partners as heavier arcs. |
| Click an arc | Opens the bilateral info card. |
| Click empty space or Esc | Closes the card. |
The data is annual — no real-time refresh.
Cross-check with other Hawkline features
- A chokepoint closing (Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Malacca, Suez): cross-check with AIS and the Waterways overlay in the reference layers to work out who depends on the passage.
- Sanctions announced on the Feed: hover the sanctioned country to see which partners are materially exposed.
- For the financial read: Macro, External domain, carries the trade balance and its momentum country by country.
Keep in mind
- Annual data. The layer won't catch a supply-chain break in real time — it describes the normal structure of world trade. On a fresh event, read the arcs as backdrop, not as signal.
- Global top 50 plus a top 10 on hover. Minor flows — some of them critical: rare earths, specific semiconductors — don't all surface. The layer gives a macro read, not an exhaustive one.
- Uneven customs coverage. Not every country declares every year. When a direction is missing, the layer marks it
Not reportedand drops the bilateral volume rather than inventing a zero. Mirror declarations — A's exports to B as seen by A and as seen by B — routinely diverge; that's customs asymmetry, not error, and the higher of the two is kept.