01Key Takeaways
- El Salvador exported $6.50 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 8.67% from $7.12 billion in 2022, though still above every year before 2022.
- Knitted apparel led every export category at 26.70% ($1.74 billion), by far the country's largest export line.
- The USA bought 36.00% of exports, worth $2.34 billion, more than the next three destinations combined.
- El Salvador's top three destinations, the USA, Guatemala, and Honduras, made up 70.75% of total export value in 2023.
025-Year Trend
| Year | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | $5.9B | $4.8B | $6.4B | $7.1B | $6.5B |
03Top Export Markets (2023)
| Rank | Partner | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.3B | 36.0% |
| 2 | Guatemala | $1.2B | 18.4% |
| 3 | Honduras | $1.1B | 16.3% |
| 4 | Nicaragua | $509.8M | 7.8% |
| 5 | Costa Rica | $311.2M | 4.8% |
| 6 | Mexico | $220.2M | 3.4% |
| 7 | Panama | $127.6M | 2.0% |
| 8 | Dominican Republic | $108.6M | 1.7% |
| 9 | Canada | $107.8M | 1.7% |
| 10 | Spain | $80.4M | 1.2% |
04Top Export Categories (2023)
| Rank | Category | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Articles of Apparel and Clothing Accessories, Knitted or Crocheted | $1.7B | 26.7% |
| 2 | Plastics and Articles thereof | $505.5M | 7.8% |
| 3 | Paper and Paperboard; Articles of Paper Pulp, of Paper or of Paperboard | $388.8M | 6.0% |
| 4 | Electrical Machinery and Equipment and parts thereof; Sound Recorders and Reproducers, Television Image and Sound Recorders and Reproducers, and Parts and Accessories of such Articles | $352.0M | 5.4% |
| 5 | Mineral Fuels, Mineral Oils and Products of their Distillation; Bituminous Substances; Mineral Waxes | $344.2M | 5.3% |
| 6 | Sugars and Sugar Confectionery | $325.1M | 5.0% |
| 7 | Iron and Steel | $203.3M | 3.1% |
| 8 | Preparations of Cereals, Flour, Starch or Milk; Pastrycooks' Products | $194.7M | 3.0% |
| 9 | Pharmaceutical Products | $182.7M | 2.8% |
| 10 | Beverages, Spirits and Vinegar | $168.9M | 2.6% |
05Trade Partner Map
06Analysis
A Textile Industry Built Around Duty-Free Access to the USA
El Salvador exported $6.50 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 8.67% from $7.12 billion the year before. Knitted apparel led every export category by a wide margin, worth $1.74 billion, or 26.70% of the total. CAFTA-DR grants El Salvador duty-free access to the US market for qualifying textile and apparel products under a "yarn-forward" rule of origin, which requires spinning and every later production step to happen in the USA or a CAFTA-DR country. That structure is a large part of why El Salvador built such a concentrated apparel export industry rather than spreading manufacturing across many small categories. El Salvador also ships underwear and cotton T-shirts to neighboring countries as part of joint production arrangements with Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, where garment pieces sometimes cross a border more than once before a finished product ships out.
That single apparel category is more than three times the size of El Salvador's second-largest export line. Plastics ranked second at 7.78% ($505.53 million), and paper and paperboard followed at 5.98% ($388.82 million). Electrical machinery added 5.42% ($351.98 million), and mineral fuels contributed 5.30% ($344.17 million), a category that reflects re-exported refined products moving through the region rather than any domestic oil production, since El Salvador has none.
Sugar and sugar confectionery took 5.00% ($325.11 million), reflecting El Salvador's long-standing sugarcane industry, one of the country's oldest export crops and still a meaningful source of rural employment. Iron and steel added 3.13% ($203.34 million), and preparations of cereals, flour, starch, and milk closed out with 3.00% ($194.72 million). Pharmaceutical products contributed 2.81% ($182.68 million), and beverages, spirits, and vinegar rounded out the top ten at 2.60% ($168.85 million). Outside of apparel, no single category comes close to matching the scale or geographic concentration of the textile trade with the USA.
The USA and Central American Neighbors Buy Nearly Three-Quarters of Everything
The United States bought 36.00% of El Salvador's exports, worth $2.34 billion, more than the next three destinations combined. Guatemala ranked second at 18.45% ($1.20 billion), and Honduras followed at 16.30% ($1.06 billion). Combined, those three destinations made up 70.75% of total export value in 2023, one of the most concentrated top-three lists covered on this site.
Nicaragua added 7.85% ($509.79 million), and Costa Rica contributed 4.79% ($311.23 million). Together with Guatemala and Honduras, those four Central American neighbors alone account for a large share of El Salvador's exports outside the USA, a pattern shaped by the Central American Common Market, a regional trade framework dating back to 1960 that lets goods move between member states with reduced tariffs. That regional trade tends to run on smaller-scale, everyday goods, food products, plastics, and packaged consumer items, rather than the large-volume apparel shipments that define the US relationship.
Mexico took 3.39% ($220.22 million), and Panama added 1.96% ($127.57 million). The Dominican Republic contributed 1.67% ($108.59 million), Canada added 1.66% ($107.77 million), and Spain closed out the top ten at 1.24% ($80.43 million). Every destination outside the top three claims less than 8% of the total on its own, a sharp drop-off from the concentration at the very top of the list.
A Peak in 2022, Then a Pullback That Still Beat the Pandemic Years
El Salvador's export total climbed through most of the five years covered here. It stood at $5.90 billion in 2019, then fell to $4.81 billion in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted global trade. It rebounded to $6.39 billion in 2021 and climbed further to $7.12 billion in 2022, the peak of this five-year window.
The 2023 total of $6.50 billion, down 8.67% from that peak, still sits above every year before 2022. With apparel this central to El Salvador's export base, and the USA buying such a large share of it, shifts in American clothing demand and CAFTA-DR trade policy carry more weight over the national total than almost any other single factor. A slowdown in US apparel orders, or a change to the trade preferences that make Salvadoran textile exports competitive against Asian manufacturers, would likely show up in this total before it showed up almost anywhere else in the economy.
That sensitivity cuts both ways. When US retail demand for apparel is strong and trade rules stay favorable, El Salvador's export total tends to track that momentum closely, as the 2021 and 2022 gains suggest. When demand softens or a policy shift raises costs or uncertainty for exporters, the impact lands quickly given how much of the total sits in one category tied to one dominant buyer. Central American regional trade offers some cushion against a US-side slowdown, but it's a small fraction of the apparel trade's scale, not a substitute for it.