tell me if you can figure this out

maybe it's the early hour, but i'm having trouble understanding the bar graph towards the top of this infographic. [click to enlarge. again, my blog template has column sizes that are too narrow for the full size, but the automated blogger sizing makes it too small. and i'm too lazy to crunch the image proportions by hand and adjust in html.]

do you get it? how can imports and exports worldwide vs. the U.S. yield such odd numbers? shouldn't the imports and exports be inverted versions of each other?

this infographic, and many others of outstanding quality, comes to you via mint.com's blog. mint.com is a great, free online service that helps people with their personal finances, to budget, reach goals, etc. i don't use the personal finance service (i keep meaning to, but, let's be honest. i live on student loans, so i know exactly how much i have to spend each quarter.), but i do subscribe to their blog. i find that it addresses financial issues that are more sophisticated than the average mass media outlet, but does so in a clear, easy-to-understand way, and often presents them in nice, modern formats like infographics for news nerds like me who like the digital stuff.

that said, i actually do know why the bar graph is yielding such odd numbers. if you look up worldwide coffee import/export numbers on a bloomberg terminal or a website that covers world economic trade numbers (morningstar might also be useful), you're basically going to get tonnage and dollar values for coffee producing around the world. if you graph them, they won't make sense, because of course it would be far too easy for the import/export numbers to be calculated in a straightforward manner.

i'm sure nothing in this post furthers the world in any positive way, but maybe someone out there can help me out.