Belgium’s central location makes it an ideal gateway to reach the EU’s 440 million consumers. It is a highly developed, long-time economic partner of the United States with an extremely well-educated workforce, world-renowned research centers, and the infrastructure to support a broad range of economic activities. Belgium’s diversity makes it an ideal market for many U.S. firms to test their products before expanding distribution throughout Europe. 

Belgium continues to attract significant levels of investment in chemicals, petrochemicals, transport equipment, machinery, plastics, mineral products, base metals, precious metals and stones; environmental technologies; food processing and packaging; health technologies; information and communication; and textiles. According to the Belgium Foreign Trade Agency, in 2022 chemical products – composed primarily of medicaments and immunological products – comprised the largest category of imports from the United States and accounted for 42.5 percent of total U.S. imports into Belgium. Mineral products (petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons, propane, and medium oils) were the next largest category accounting for 13.3 percent of total U.S. imports into Belgium. Plastics were the third-largest category of U.S. imports into Belgium, accounting for 11.2 percent of total U.S. imports into Belgium. The remaining categories of U.S. imports into Belgium that represented at least 1.0 percent of total U.S. imports were: machinery and equipment (9.9 percent); optical, precision and medical instruments (6.7 percent); transport equipment (5.7 percent); base metals (2.5 percent); precious metals and stones (2.3 percent); and paper and paperboard (1.0 percent).

The U.S. Commercial Service in Belgium considers the following sectors to be major existing or developing opportunities for U.S. exporters (in alphabetical order):  Biopharmaceuticals, Defense, Electric Vehicles, Medical Devices, Natural Gas & LNG, and Nuclear. As the host of NATO and EU headquarters, and hundreds of other international organizations, Belgium also offers opportunities for specific projects on a case-by-case basis.