Just as the US uses NAICS / SIC to organize their production statistics (and as Canada and Mexico also use NAICS; they are the other two NAFTA countries), some other countries and regions have their own industry classification systems. In addition, there are international classification codes used by countries belonging to the big NGO's such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United Nations.
Where industry classification codes are used to track production, commodity classification codes are used to track trade between countries. Here are some of the more commonly seen codes:
Below are the two systems that are used in the US for imports (HTS) and exports (Schedule B) respectively. By the way, the full title for Schedule B is 'Schedule B: Statistical Classification of Domestic and Foreign Commodities Exported from the United States'.
Product classification systems, or product taxonomies, are a relatively new phenomenon. They hope to reflect the activities of industries, countries, trade, prices and more. The EEC has a useful and concise definition for product classification:
Product classifications are designed to categorize products that have common characteristics. They provide the basis for collecting and calculating statistics on the production, distributive trade, consumption, international trade and transport of such products.
Although you are less likely to see or need these ...
In recent years, the investment communities have also devised a couple of industry classification systems! They are designed to serve the needs of the investors and traders, and as such, are rather different ... The systems below all claim to allow for better company and industry comparisons across national boundaries.