London, UK: March 12, 2026 – The OECD and the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) estimate that the global trade in counterfeit goods was worth about USD 467 billion in 2021, or 2.3% of all world imports. The figure comes from their 2025 study, Mapping Global Trade in Fakes.
The impact falls heavily on the European Union, where counterfeit goods were valued at around USD 117 billion, equal to 4.7% of the bloc's imports. That is considerably higher than the global share and shows how attractive well-known European brands are as targets.
The percentage is slightly lower than the 2.5% reported in earlier studies, but the authors stress that the trade has moved online and into small parcels, which makes it harder for customs to intercept and easier for sellers to scale.
“Small parcels and online storefronts mean that enforcement at the border is no longer enough. The listing, the seller account and the payment trail all have to be tackled too,” says Daniel Hartley, Chief Revenue Officer at MarkScout.
MarkScout helps brand owners follow a counterfeit from the advertisement to the warehouse, using marketplace monitoring, test purchases and seller intelligence to take down networks instead of single listings.