Washington State and the World: How Trade Shapes the State’s Economy

1Washington’s Trade Profile at a Glance

International trade is an indispensable pillar of Washington’s economy. Washington is a powerhouse exporter of many key goods and services. Imports of raw materials and inputs help keep Washington manufacturers competitive, while finished goods imports help keep costs down for Washington families. Whether coming or going, trade through Washington’s ports generates economic activity and creates well-paying jobs.

In total, international trade supports over 1 million Washington jobs — nearly one in four jobs in Washington. ¹ Yet escalating tariffs, supply-chain disruptions, and policy uncertainty threaten this foundation of growth and competitiveness.

WCIT advocates for trade and investment policies that strengthen competitiveness, expand opportunity, and support jobs across Washington’s globally engaged industries, particularly aerospace, technology, agriculture, forestry, energy, life sciences, retail, manufacturing, and services. It is imperative for Washington that federal policymakers advance forward-looking, pro-growth trade strategies that restore predictability and strengthen American competitiveness.

Washington is one of the top U.S. exporters and importers due to its dynamic industries, shared border with Canada, and deepwater ports that help the state serve as a gateway for trade with Asia. In 2025, Washington exported $57 billion in goods to the world, ranking 10th among all states, and imported $55 billion worth of goods, ranking 16th among all states. In 2024, Washington also exported $37 billion in services to the world, ranking 7th among all states. ²

2What Washington Exports

Aerospace products drive Washington’s goods exports. In 2025, Washington exported approximately $29 billion in civilian aircraft and parts, nearly $6 billion more than the next highest state. Overall, civilian aircraft exports were valued the same as all other Washington goods exports combined, as shown in the table below. The other top Washington exports in 2025 came from diverse sectors, including energy (e.g., non-crude oil), manufacturing (e.g., medical equipment), and agriculture — both raw (e.g., apples and pears) and processed (e.g., frozen, prepared vegetables).

Washington’s total goods exports grew by 20% from 2024 to 2025, but the topline growth rate belies the negative trends in many other categories. Most notably, the $11 billion increase in aerospace exports accounted for more than 100% of Washington’s goods export growth, with exports of all other products declining by $1.9 billion, or 6%. Still, some important Washington exports saw extremely strong growth in 2025. For example, soybean oilcake exports grew from $214 million to $533 million, or by 149%. The table below shows several other non-aerospace products that saw particularly large export increases.

There are also several products where Washington accounts for a disproportionately high share of total U.S. exports, particularly in the agricultural sector. For example, Washington accounted for 87% of U.S. hop cones exports in 2025, 75% of apples and pears, 75% of oilseed flours and meals, 72% of prepared frozen vegetables, and 46% of fresh cherries and other stone fruits. For those products alone, Washington accounted for $3.4 billion of the $4.8 billion in total U.S. exports in 2025.

Services Exports

Washington’s position as a leading services exporter comes as no surprise given its prevalence of global technology leaders. Computer software exports dominate Washington’s services exports, though not to the same extent as aerospace products for goods. In 2024, computer software royalties (i.e., payments for “off the shelf” software products or subscriptions) accounted for nearly one-third of Washington’s total services exports. Washington exported another $2 billion of computer software design services (i.e., custom software development). Other top services exports include research and development services, travel, and business management and consulting services.

Washington is among the biggest state exporters in several services categories. It was the top state exporter of trade-related services at $735 million in 2024. It was the second-ranked state exporter for several computer related services, including computer software royalties at $11.6 billion, cloud computing and data storage at $1.2 billion, and other misc. computer services at $723 million, as well as research and development services at $4.8 billion.

Unlike goods, where overall growth was wholly attributable to aerospace products, Washington’s services exports saw widespread growth from 2023 to 2024. Among the top export sectors, all saw growth of at least 10% except for research and development services, which declined by 1%. Looking at a longer timeline, custom computer software design services grew the most by value ($1.7 billion), while cloud computing and data storage grew more than 60-fold, as shown in the table below.

3What Washington Imports — and What It Now Costs

Washington imports are much less concentrated than either its goods or services exports and include a diverse mix of vehicles, energy, raw materials, and consumer goods. In 2025, passenger vehicles were the top goods imports with a value of nearly $8 billion. The next two largest imports were energy products, including $5 billion worth of crude oil and $3.1 billion worth of natural gas. Other major imports include video game consoles, radioactive materials, computers, aerospace parts, flash drives and similar computer storage devices, coffee, and wood products.

Washington’s total goods imports fell by 11% from 2024 to 2025. The imposition of broad, high tariffs played a big role. Over the course of 2025, average tariffs on imports to Washington rose from 3.2% in January and peaked at 14.2% in September. Total tariffs paid on imports into Washington reached $5.7 billion in 2025, nearly triple the $2.0 billion paid in 2024 despite the import value decline. In 2025, imports into Washington faced an estimated $4.9 billion in extra tariffs imposed under executive authorities, including $2.4 billion in IEEPA tariffs, $1.2 billion in Section 232 tariffs on autos and parts, $660 million in legacy China Section 301 tariffs, and $650 million in Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Tariffs were not the sole determinant of growth or decline. The table below shows tariff changes for the top products, and the trends do not always align. While the very costly Section 232 auto tariffs likely explain much of the drop in cars, crude oil was largely exempted from new tariffs but still declined. Video game console imports surged, leading to 2025 tariff payments that were 150 times higher than the prior year. Yet more often than not, the products with the strongest import growth were (energy, computers, flash drives) or became (e.g., coffee) exempt from new tariffs, while those with the biggest import declines (e.g., toys, heavy equipment, furniture) faced the highest tariffs.

4Washington’s Top Trading Partners

In 2025, Washington’s top goods export destinations were China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Germany. The $27 billion in exports to these five countries accounted for almost half of Washington’s total exports to the world. Apart from Canada and Mexico, Washington’s goods exports to all the other top trading partners increased sharply from 2024 to 2025, with exports to Germany nearly tripling.

As noted earlier, Washington’s goods exports excluding aerospace declined from 2024 to 2025, and the country market rankings and trends also change significantly if excluding aerospace. Washington’s non-aerospace exports to China declined by 36% and to Germany by 2%, while growth to South Korea fell to a more modest 14%. Goods export declines to Canada and Mexico worsened to -21% and -13%, respectively.

In 2024, Washington’s top export destinations for service exports were Ireland, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Singapore. Total exports to these five countries totaled $15 billion, making up 40% of Washington’s total services exports to the world.

In 2025, Washington’s top goods import sources were Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Collectively, these five countries accounted for 70% of Washington’s total imports. Imports from most of the countries declined due to new tariffs, with a particularly steep 45% drop in imports from China. Vietnam was the major outlier, with imports growing by 51%. Notably, imports into Washington from free trade agreement partners faced $1 billion in tariffs in 2025, a 44-fold increase over 2024 despite a 10% decline in imports.

5Ports and Trade-Supported Jobs

In addition to goods and services sold, or purchased from, overseas, Washington’s ports play an instrumental role in facilitating trade between the United States and the rest of the world. In 2025, $174 billion in goods moved through Washington’s ports, ranking 10th nationally for port trade values. The Port of Tacoma handles the most trade by value, followed by Sea-Tac international airport. The top five ports handle over 80% of trade.

National trade policies may affect Washington ports very differently. Based on the value of goods moving through the ports, Tacoma and Seattle are much more dependent on imports, creating higher risks from new U.S. tariffs that may reduce imports. Conversely, exports are more important than imports for Sea-Tac and the Port of Everett, making retaliation a bigger threat to their operations. Trade through the Port of Blaine is the most balanced among the top Washington ports.

Trade-Supported Jobs

International trade — exports and imports of goods and services and the economic growth it enables — supported over 1 million jobs in Washington in 2023. No industry better illustrates this than Washington aerospace, which could not have grown to its size and scale if selling only to U.S. customers with materials and parts sourced exclusively from the United States. The aerospace industry’s global success generates high wages and productivity that spur growth in the rest of the economy, including through taxes for schools and public investments, purchases from a robust supplier network, and spending on housing, entertainment, and professional services often forgotten when considering “trade-dependent” jobs.

Even excluding such economy-wide benefits, alternative estimates show exports support hundreds of thousands of jobs. Washington’s goods exports supported an estimated 133,000 direct jobs (i.e., making or growing the exported product) and 71,000 indirect jobs in 2025 (i.e., at upstream suppliers, either in Washington or elsewhere in the United States), while services exports supported 72,000 direct jobs and 92,000 indirect jobs in 2024 (latest year available).

For goods, civilian aircraft and parts once again lead the way with an estimated 67,000 direct jobs and 31,000 indirect jobs supported by Washington exports. While the export value of apples and pears is much lower than non-crude oil, they are much more labor intensive and therefore support nearly twice as many direct jobs. For the same reason, forage products (e.g., alfalfa and hay) rank fifth in terms of Washington direct jobs supported by exports even though it ranks 10th in export value.

For services, travel exports (i.e., foreigners spending money while in the United States) supported the most direct jobs in Washington. Like agriculture, travel and tourism related industries tend to be very labor intensive. Contrast that with exports like computer software royalties, where a tenfold increase in downloads or installations does not require ten times more workers, which explains why it does not rank among the top five in direct jobs supported despite being Washington’s largest services export. Management and consulting services, custom computer software design services, and research and development services also support thousands of direct jobs in Washington.

* Direct jobs can be assumed to be in Washington where the export is produced.
** Indirect, and therefore total, jobs include upstream jobs in other U.S. states, but exclude foreign jobs associated with imported materials or parts.

Exporters from Washington are as diverse as the products they sell. More than 10,700 Washington companies exported goods in 2024 (the most recent year available). ³ While large companies accounted for most exports by value, nearly 9,500 small- and medium-sized businesses accounted for 88% of all Washington’s goods exporters.

While import-related jobs estimates are not available, one top Washington import clearly demonstrates how they support jobs throughout the economy: coffee. Coffee is not grown in commercial quantities in the United States, but thousands of Washington jobs depend on it, whether in corporate functions, warehousing, distribution, roasting, retailing, or serving. Other imports, such as aerospace components, are critical to the success of Washington’s big export industries.

Similar to exports, most of Washington’s importers were small and medium-sized businesses. In 2024, more than 12,000 of the nearly 13,500 identified importers (90%) were small and medium-sized businesses.

6Foreign Direct Investment in Washington

Beyond trade, foreign investment has also helped to grow Washington’s economy and jobs. Washington has received $51 billion in foreign direct investment from 45 countries between 2012 and 2026. ⁴ According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 154,000 workers in Washington were employed by foreign-owned firms in 2024 (latest data available), a slight decrease from 2023. ⁵ Companies headquartered in Canada employed over 27,000 Washington workers, more than any other individual country. Foreign-owned firms employ about 38,000 workers in the manufacturing sector, or about one in four Washington jobs supported by foreign investment.

7Risks and Current Challenges

At present, tariff uncertainty remains the primary challenge to Washington’s trade-driven economy. Although the IEEPA tariffs were struck down in February 2026, they were immediately replaced by Section 122 tariffs, which in turn have been replaced by “forced labor” Section 301 tariffs in July, which could be further supplemented by “structural excess capacity” Section 301 tariffs on major trading partners later this summer or fall. Many Section 232 tariffs also remain in place, while billions of dollars in Washington imports that currently remain unaffected by new tariffs are subject to pending Section 232 investigations. Finally, the administration continues to launch new tariff reviews and actions, most recently a Section 301 investigation into the EU’s antitrust fines and digital market regulations and new tariffs of up to 50% on certain imports from Canada, including USMCA-eligible products. Imposed by proclamation on July 20 and taking effect on August 19, these Canada-specific tariffs use Section 338 authorities, originally enacted as part of the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill of 1930 and never before used to impose tariffs.

Fortunately for Washington exporters, most countries have not imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to date. Yet there is no guarantee that will continue, especially if the United States continues to issue more tariff threats and demands, as seems likely. Even without specific tariffs on their exports, Washington companies may find it harder to compete in overseas markets due to higher U.S. prices for steel, aluminum, copper, and other key inputs and components that do not affect foreign competitors.