Introduction

The 2025 Hinrich-IMD Sustainable Trade Index (STI) finds that economies’ ability to sustain trade performance is increasingly shaped by constraints and strategic trade-offs across economic, societal, and environmental factors. Three critical tensions are reshaping the global trade environment today:

The balance between efficiency and strategic autonomy
The trade-off between short-term profitability and long-term social cohesion
The challenge of reconciling climate ambition with development sovereignty

The index shows that strong trade performance alone is insufficient: inclusive, long-term trade sustainability depends on how well economies manage these competing priorities within their development pathways.¹

What the 2025 STI measures

The 2025 STI assesses 30 economies using 72 indicators, grouped into three pillars defined by the index itself:

Economic pillar
Societal pillar
Environmental pillar

Each pillar is equally weighted. The index is designed to highlight how trade performance interacts with social and environmental outcomes, rather than measuring trade volume alone.¹

Key insights from the 2025 edition

1. Overall rankings reflect performance across all three pillars

The United Kingdom ranks first overall in the 2025 STI, followed by New Zealand and Australia. The index shows that top overall performers are those that perform consistently well across the economic, societal, and environmental pillars, rather than excelling in only one pillar.¹

2. Performance varies significantly across the three pillars

The STI shows that economies’ rankings differ across the three pillars, with no economy ranking first in all three:

Economic pillar: Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea lead this pillar, reflecting strong trade openness, diversification, and enabling trade infrastructure.¹
Societal pillar: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand rank highest, reflecting stronger outcomes in education, employment, and social inclusion.¹
Environmental pillar: The United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Japan lead, highlighting lower per capita emissions and stronger environmental outcomes relative to peers.¹

3. Environmental sustainability remains a key constraint

Across the index, scores in the environmental pillar are generally lower than those in the other two pillars. The STI identifies environmental performance as a key constraint for many economies.¹

4. Gaps between economies remain wide

The 2025 STI shows a large spread between top- and bottom-ranked economies, indicating uneven capacity to sustain trade across economic, societal, and environmental dimensions. Lower-ranked economies tend to face multiple constraints across pillars simultaneously.¹

Conclusion

The 2025 Hinrich-IMD STI shows that sustainable trade performance depends on how economies manage outcomes across economic, societal, and environmental sustainability. The index highlights variation in performance across pillars and persistent gaps between economies, reinforcing that trade sustainability is shaped by structural conditions and constraints rather than trade participation alone.¹