Export Quality & Upgrading

1337 · 689 years ago

Edward III banned the export of raw English wool

The policy pushed weavers and merchants to build a domestic cloth-making industry, and English exports shifted over the following two centuries from raw wool to finished and dyed cloth, one of the earliest recorded cases of deliberate export upgrading.

1651 · 375 years ago

England passed the Navigation Acts to control colonial trade

Requiring goods to move on English ships and through English ports pushed processing, shipping and re-export earnings toward the home economy rather than foreign carriers, an early instance of a state capturing value-added activity through trade law.

1868 · 158 years ago

Japan began the Meiji industrial modernisation drive

The new government imported foreign technology and expertise wholesale, built state-owned model factories and shipyards, and deliberately shifted the country's exports from raw silk and tea toward manufactured textiles, ships and machinery within a generation.

1935 · 91 years ago

Kaname Akamatsu outlined the flying geese pattern of industrial development

The model described how manufacturing capacity and export sophistication migrate in sequence from a lead economy to followers, a pattern later used to explain Japan, then Korea and Taiwan, then China and Vietnam climbing the same ladder.

1949 · 77 years ago

Raul Prebisch set out the terms-of-trade thesis for commodity exporters

His work for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America argued that countries exporting raw materials faced structurally worsening terms of trade against manufactured goods, giving intellectual grounding to decades of import-substitution and export-upgrading policy.

1973 · 53 years ago

South Korea launched its Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive

State-directed credit and investment shifted the economy from light manufacturing such as textiles and wigs toward steel, shipbuilding, machinery and petrochemicals, laying the industrial base for the country's later move into electronics and automobiles.

1980 · 46 years ago

Taiwan opened the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park

Tax breaks and proximity to research institutes drew electronics and semiconductor firms into a single cluster, giving Taiwan a template for moving from low-cost manufacturing into higher-value, technology-intensive production and exports.

1993 · 33 years ago

The World Bank published The East Asian Miracle report

The study distilled how Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong had deliberately climbed from light manufacturing to capital and technology-intensive exports, shaping development orthodoxy on state-guided industrial upgrading for a generation of policymakers.

2007 · 19 years ago

Ricardo Hausmann and Cesar Hidalgo introduced the product space model of economic complexity

Their research mapped which products countries could feasibly move into based on existing capabilities, giving policymakers and economists a rigorous way to measure and predict export basket upgrading rather than relying on case studies alone.

2009 · 17 years ago

Hidalgo and Hausmann published the original formulation of the Economic Complexity Index in PNAS

The first formulation of the Economic Complexity Index appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It measured the productive capabilities of economies by treating the knowledge available in a location as the average knowledge of the activities present there, with a product-side counterpart in the Product Complexity Index. This gave analysts a quantitative basis for judging whether a country's export basket was upgrading toward more complex goods.

2015 · 11 years ago

China launched the Made in China 2025 strategy

The programme set targets for shifting the country's manufacturing and export base from low-cost assembly toward advanced sectors including robotics, aerospace, semiconductors and electric vehicles, formalising an explicit state strategy for climbing the value chain.

January 2026 · 7 months ago

Bangladesh pressed export diversification beyond ready-made garments

A government seminar backed by the World Bank-funded Export Competitiveness for Jobs project set out support for leather, footwear, light engineering and plastics, part of a drive toward a $100 billion export target by 2030 and away from over-reliance on the garment sector.

Early 2026 · 6 months ago

Morocco's aerospace sector graduated from subcontracting to high-value manufacturing

Exports rose 12.6% to nearly $871 million in the first quarter as 155 companies clustered around the Midparc zone near Casablanca shifted into complex components, engineering services and electronics, generating $3 billion in annual revenue and employing 27,000 people.

2026 · this year

Vietnam and China were projected to lead global growth on export complexity

Harvard's Growth Lab found both economies more complex than their income level would predict, driven by sophisticated and diversified manufacturing, and forecast them to post the fastest per capita growth of any nations over the coming decade.

2026 · this year

Indonesia ratified new trade pacts to diversify export markets

Agreements with the European Union, Peru and Canada came alongside a push into Central Asia and Africa, part of an effort to broaden destinations beyond traditional partners as the country's total exports rose to $282.91 billion in 2025 from $266.52 billion in 2024.

2026 to date · this year

Chile tied new lithium contracts to local processing requirements

Lithium exports reached $2.137 billion between January and April 2026, roughly triple the year-earlier value, as new state lithium contracts mandated domestic refining and technology transfer, with cathode material production targeted to eventually earn far more than raw lithium carbonate exports alone.

2026 · this year

Morocco pushed its automotive industry from assembly toward higher-value work

Policy signals in May 2026 pointed toward process design, local engineering and electrification capabilities, with capacity plans targeting 1.5 million vehicles a year and 80% local integration, backed by a new LFP cathode plant built with South Korean and Chinese partners.

• Automotive exports reached $4.57 billion

2026 · this year

Vietnam moved up the semiconductor value chain into advanced packaging

FPT opened an advanced testing and packaging plant in Bac Ninh province and Amkor committed more than $1.6 billion to a nearby facility expected to produce 3.6 billion packaged units a year, extending the country's reach across all six stages of the chip value chain.

• Hana Micron invested about $930 million in Vietnamese chip packaging

2025 · last year

Smartphones became India's top export product by value

Shipments worth around Rs 2.62 lakh crore were led by Apple's iPhone suppliers, including Foxconn, Tata Electronics and Pegatron, as domestic value addition in electronics manufacturing climbed to around 20%, up sharply since the production-linked incentive scheme began in 2020.

• India approved a new Rs 62,500 crore mobile manufacturing scheme

2025 · last year

Saudi Arabia pushed non-oil exports to $82 billion

The non-oil economy reached 55% of GDP, up from 45% in 2016, as Vision 2030 entered its final phase with 93% of key performance indicators fully or partially met, even though non-oil exports still trailed the programme's own target as a share of non-oil output.

2025 · last year

Indonesia multiplied processed nickel export value 26-fold since 2014

A ban on raw ore exports pushed the export mix from 18% processed materials before 2014 to 99.9% by 2025, with processed nickel exports rising from $1.5 billion to $38.5 billion and giving Indonesia roughly 47% of the global market.

• The Philippines agreed to expand nickel ore shipments to Indonesia