Sweden - Foreign trade

The volume of Sweden's foreign trade has increased very rapidly since World War II, mainly as a result of the gradual liberalization of trade restrictions within the framework of OECD, EFTA, and the EU. Telecommunications equipment, automobile manufacturing, and logging, dominate export commodities from Sweden. The top eight exports are as follows:

	% OF COUNTRY TOTAL
Telecommunications
equipment		15.5
Paper		8.7
Medicinal and pharmaceutical products		5.0
Iron and steel		4.9
Motor vehicle parts and accessories		4.3
Refined petroleum products		2.6
Cars		2.4
Engines 1.5

In 2000 Sweden's imports were distributed among the following categories:

Consumer goods	15.0%
Food	5.7%
Fuels	8.9%
Industrial supplies	22.9%
Machinery	29.0%
Transportation	12.2%
Other	6.3%

Principal trading partners in 2000 (in millions of US dollars) were as follows:

COUNTRY	EXPORTS	IMPORTS	BALANCE
Germany	7,896	11,931	-4,035
United Kingdom	6,751	6,586	165
Norway	6,206	5,870	336
Denmark	4,602	5,102	-500
United States	6,638	4,855	1,783
Netherlands	3,570	4,848	-1,278
France	4,315	4,068	247
Finland	4,818	3,525	1,293
Italy	2,844	2,338	506
Belgium	2,825	2,261	564