The Biggest U.S. Importers and Exporters

Which companies are the biggest importers and exporters in the U.S.? The majority of people will know the names of the businesses that ship the most goods into the country (measured by volume transported on container ships), but most of the biggest exporters hardly ring a bell.

While large retailers like Walmart, Target or Home Depot dominate the imports list, the biggest U.S. exporters deal with products that don’t inspire the imagination, like paper, chemicals and animal feed, or that Americans would rather forget about, like their trash. Out of the top eight U.S. exporters, two deal with paper and packaging and one each with chemicals, animal feed and cotton. Another product exported in large volumes is recyclables (by the biggest exporters number 9 and 10), according to industry publication JOC.

Largest importer Walmart has a substantial lead on runner-up Target and is also way ahead of the biggest U.S. exporter, Koch Industries. While Walmart has 2.1 million employees, the top 9 U.S. exporter, America Chung Nam, only has 133. The paper and plastics recycling company is headquartered in City of Industry, Calif., according to Zoominfo. Their containers full of old cardboard and plastic recyclables are headed overseas to less developed countries. In 2018, the company was still the biggest exporter in the U.S. but a ban on plastic recyclables imports into China and other countries in the region likely contributed to a decline in the company's and its competitors' export volumes.

The coronavirus pandemic did little to change the export and import volumes of America's biggest players. The only company that fell out of the top eight in 2020 was Exxon Mobile. The fifth biggest exporter in 2019, it did not even appear in the top 100 in 2020 as oil prices crashed as a result of Covid-19. In 2021, it was back in rank 19 of America's biggest exporters and climbed into rank 14 last year.