Asia consumes more of the world’s final goods than America

The new geography of consumption

In 2022, the group of nations comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, and South Korea accounted for 27.9 percent of total global final demand, surpassing the United States at 26.1 percent. The ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office evaluates that framing East and Southeast Asia primarily as a supplier of manufactured goods to global markets is incomplete.

The shift is visible in the destinations of the region’s own exports. Two decades ago, nearly a third of the exports produced by ASEAN+3 economies to meet final demand were shipped to the United States. By 2022, the American share of these exports had fallen to 20 percent, while the share of final goods consumed within the Asian bloc itself rose to almost 30 percent.

The scale of domestic absorption

China’s domestic market size drives much of this transition. In 2024, Chinese buyers accounted for nearly a third of all automobile sales globally, a figure almost twice the size of the American market. The pattern holds in consumer electronics. China contains more than 20 percent of global smartphone users, a consumer base approximately four times larger than that of the United States.

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Source institutions：ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office

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