Report: Strategic Dependencies in Swedish Imports: A methodological framework and analysis

Questions of economic security and strategic dependencies have become increasingly central to trade policy. In this report, the National Board of Trade proposes a quantitative method for identifying strategic dependencies and applies it to Sweden’s imports from third countries.

Summary of the report:

Mutual dependencies between trading partners are a fundamental feature of international trade. At the same time, rising geopolitical tensions, increasingly complex value chains and recurring supply chain disruptions have highlighted how certain dependencies may create vulnerabilities. This has increased the need for a better understanding of trade dependencies that could have significant societal or economic consequences in the event of disruption.

This report proposes a quantitative method for identifying strategic dependencies and applies it to Sweden’s imports from third countries. The method is based on a stepwise, criteria-based screening process in four stages: (1) identifying import dependencies, (2) restricting the analysis to strategic goods, (3) identifying vulnerable dependencies with limited global diversification opportunities, and (4) identifying particularly vulnerable dependencies based on exposure to so-called supply risk countries.

The results show that Sweden has import dependencies in 818 commodity codes, of which 323 are classified as strategic dependencies. Of these, 97 are identified as vulnerable and 47 as particularly vulnerable. The structure of Swedish dependencies changes with the different criteria applied across the four steps of the method, especially in terms of trading partners. A large share of imports from Norway consists of non-strategic goods or goods with broad diversification possibilities, while more vulnerable dependencies are concentrated almost exclusively to China and the United States. A significant share of the identified dependencies consists of intermediate goods for industry, particularly in areas such as advanced technologies, chemical products, and critical raw materials. This suggests that strategic dependencies are primarily linked to production and value chains rather than final consumption.

The report puts forward several recommendations for advancing efforts to map strategic dependencies. Key recommendations concern increased methodological coordination within the EU, improvements in statistics, more coherent national approaches to identifying strategically important sectors and goods, and better tools for capturing indirect dependencies in global value chains. It is important to emphasise that the method identifies dependencies based on available statistics using quantitative criteria. Moreover, what is considered strategic ultimately rests on a normative assessment that is decisive for the results. The findings should therefore be complemented with more in-depth qualitative assessments as a basis for decision-makers. Finally, strategic dependencies evolve over time, which means that the analysis needs to be updated continuously.