The GINC Trade Dependency Graph

What it is

The GINC Trade Dependency Graph links every product in world trade to the products it is directly made from. Its nodes are the 5,020 six-digit subheadings of the Harmonized System (HS 1992) in the trade data, from live horses to aircraft. An edge from one product to another means the first is a direct input to producing the second: it is used in the stage that makes that product itself. Inputs of inputs are not edges; they are reached by following the graph. Version 1, of 24 October 2026, holds 399,510 edges.

It is what lets GINC Trade measure dependence, chokepoints and leverage: a nation that dominates the trade in a product many others are made from holds leverage over everyone who makes them.

What an edge measures

Each edge carries two shares, each with a confidence:

• the input share: the input’s part of the product’s dependence on its direct inputs. A product’s input shares add up to 100%;
• the output share: the product’s part of the input’s direct uses. An input’s output shares add up to 100%.

These are shares of dependence, not of cost: they say how much a product leans on each of its inputs, not what each input costs. Each edge also has the probability that it is a real direct input, and a role. Of the 137,683 edges with a role: 40,433 principal materials, 21,955 components, 68,448 capital equipment, 5,890 process materials, 665 energy, 292 packaging.

Read across the whole graph, 211 products are primary, with no inputs but the equipment that makes them, and 58 have no inputs at all; 695 are final, an input to nothing else; and 546 are capital goods: machines, tools and instruments used to make other products.

How it was built

Every one of the 25.2 million ordered pairs of products was screened, in two framings, by a language model that returns typed decisions with probabilities. Pairs left in doubt, or where the evidence disagreed, were given a second, closer look, and a separate pass set the 979 capital goods against every product. Rules on the combined evidence give each edge its probability and its essentiality; the shares and their confidences follow from them, the confidences by Monte Carlo simulation. Every candidate left out is kept, with the reason.

The full methodology, with every source the graph draws on, is set out separately.

How this site uses it

• Every product has its own page, with its trade and, from the graph, what it is made from and what it is used to make: the inputs and uses with the largest shares, each linked to its own page. Start from any category.
• Every product page lists every one of the product’s direct inputs and uses, each with its shares, confidences, role, probability and essentiality.
• The Dependency page draws the graph as a network with every one of its links: 392,612 between products, the 6,898 pairs of products that feed each other drawn as one line each, a link as strong as the larger of its two shares. Each product’s strongest links set the picture’s shape and are drawn first; the rest are a click away.
• The same page draws the 1,241 four-digit headings, each heading’s links worked out from its products’: the input share from heading A to heading B is the sum of the input shares from A’s products to B’s, divided by the number of products in B; the output share is the sum of the output shares, divided by the number in A. A heading’s input shares then add up to 100%, as a product’s do. There are 46,925 links between headings, drawn as 45,085 lines.

Intellectual property

The GINC Trade Dependency Graph is the intellectual property of the Global Institute for National Capability (GINC): its method, its edges, their shares, probabilities and confidences, and the compilation as a whole. © 2026 Global Institute for National Capability. It may be read and cited on this site. It may not be copied, scraped, redistributed or used to build other datasets, models or products without GINC’s written permission.

How to cite it

Global Institute for National Capability (GINC), The GINC Trade Dependency Graph, version 1, 24 October 2026, trade.ginc.org/dependency-graph.