There are 170 large chemical companies in the United States. They have operations all over the world, with more than 2800 factories outside the United States and 1700 subsidiaries or subsidiaries overseas. Chemical production in the United States is $750 billion a year. American industry has a huge trade surplus, employing more than 1 million people in the United States alone. The chemical industry is also the second largest consumer of energy in manufacturing, spending more than $5 billion a year on reducing pollution.
In Europe, the chemical, plastic and rubber sectors are the largest industrial sectors. Together, they have created about 3.2 million jobs for more than 60000 companies. Since 2000, the total trade surplus of the European Union’s chemical industry has accounted for only two thirds.
In 2012, the added value of chemical industry accounted for 12% of the added value of EU manufacturing industry. Europe is still the largest trading area of chemical products in the world, accounting for 43% of the world’s exports and 37% of its imports. However, the latest data show that Asia’s exports account for 34% of the world’s exports and 37% of the world’s imports, which are catching up. Even so, in addition to Japan and China, Europe still has a trade surplus with the rest of the world. In 2011, China and Japan had a surplus in chemical products trade. At present, Europe’s trade surplus with the rest of the world has reached 41.7 billion euro.
In the 20 years from 1991 to 2011, the sales volume of European chemical industry increased by 295 billion euro to 539 billion euro, showing a continuous growth. Nevertheless, the share of European industry in the world chemical market has fallen from 36% to 20%. This is due to substantial growth in production and sales in emerging markets such as India and China. Data show that 95% of the impact comes from China alone. According to the European Council for chemical industry in 2012, five European countries accounted for 71% of EU chemical sales. These countries are Germany, France, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands.
These chemical companies have developed rapidly in the past 50 years. The fastest growing area involves the manufacture of synthetic organic polymers for plastics, fibers and elastomers. Historically and at present, the chemical industry has been concentrated in three regions of the world: Western Europe, North America and Japan (Trinity). The European community remains the largest producer, followed by the United States and Japan.
Due to the changes of raw material supply and price, labor cost, energy cost, economic growth rate difference and environmental pressure, the traditional dominant position of triple countries in chemical production is challenged. Growth in China, India, South Korea, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Nigeria and Brazil has played an important role in the structural changes of the global chemical industry.
Just as chemical companies become major producers of the chemical industry, we can also look at the ranking of industrialized countries from a global perspective, taking into account the billions of dollars worth of products exported by a country or region. Although the chemical industry is global, most of the world’s $3.7 trillion of chemical output is produced by a few industrialized countries. The United States alone produced US $689 billion, accounting for 18.6% of global chemical production in 2008.
