Israel Sold $59 Billion of Goods Abroad in 2025 and Bought $101 Billion

Israel exported 188.3 billion shekels of goods in 2025, about $59 billion, excluding diamonds, the country's Central Bureau of Statistics reported in January 2026. Europe took 33 per cent of those exports, the Americas 31 per cent, Asia 22 per cent and the rest of the world the remaining 14 per cent.

Imports of goods, again excluding diamonds, came to 320 billion shekels, or roughly $101 billion, of which 46 per cent came from Europe, 33 per cent from Asia, 12 per cent from the Americas and 9 per cent from elsewhere. That left a merchandise trade deficit of 131.7 billion shekels, about $41 billion, for the year.

Why diamonds are always taken out

Israeli trade statistics are conventionally reported with diamonds stripped out, because Israel is a cutting and trading centre: rough stones come in, polished stones go out, and the gross flows are large enough to swamp the underlying picture without adding much domestic value. The Central Bureau of Statistics publishes the monthly foreign trade series on that basis. World Bank trade data through its WITS platform puts Israeli exports at $58.8 billion and imports at $95.5 billion for 2025 on its own definitions: close enough to confirm the order of magnitude, different enough to show that the coverage rules matter.

The half of Israeli exports these numbers cannot see

A goods-only figure understates Israel's export economy badly, because most of what the country sells abroad is not shipped in a container. High-technology firms accounted for 58 per cent of Israel's total exports in 2025, The Jerusalem Post reported in June 2026 from the Israel Innovation Authority's annual report, with sector output reaching 352 billion shekels, and the bulk of that is software and services rather than manufactured goods. A merchandise trade deficit of $41 billion therefore says less about Israel's external position than the same figure would for a comparable manufacturing economy.

Europe remains the anchor

Europe's dominance in both directions is the structural fact in the table. The European Union alone accounted for 31.7 per cent of Israel's total goods trade with the world in 2025, worth €43.3 billion, according to the European Commission, which makes the bloc Israel's largest trading partner in goods by a wide margin. That relationship runs on the EU-Israel Association Agreement, in force since June 2000, which established a free trade area between the two.

Figures that do not reconcile

The trend section of the release as supplied is internally inconsistent and should be read with care. It reports that exports of goods to the European Union rose 38.1 per cent in the October to December 2025 period, and then, in the following paragraph, that exports of goods to European countries fell 14.7 per cent, by 11.4 billion shekels. It also gives declines of 10.3 per cent to the Americas and 5.9 per cent to the rest of the world, and a 1.2 per cent rise to Asia. The material does not state the comparison periods for these movements, does not say whether they are seasonally adjusted or annualised, and gives no dollar conversion for the 11.4 billion shekel figure. Nothing in the material provided resolves the contradiction between the two European numbers.

What is still unclear

The release gives no country-level detail beyond continental groupings and the single reference to China, no breakdown by product category, and no comparison with 2024 totals, so the direction of travel over the full year cannot be read from it. It also does not say whether the shekel-to-dollar conversions use an average rate for the year or a year-end rate, a live question in a year when the currency moved sharply.