Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers:

Burmese rice exports, 1935: ~2 million tons
Burmese rice exports, 2005: 0.03 million tons

What They Mean:

In the global economy of the 1920s, the hard work of Burmese peasants gave S.A. Knapp, then the president of the American Rice Millers and Growers association, sleepless nights. Knapp's appeal for higher rice tariffs before the Ways and Means Committee was one of the minor dramas of the Smoot-Hawley act debate in 1929. (He argued, fairly successfully, that the low labor cost of Burma, along with "Siam" and "Indochina," made it impossible for American growers to compete: Warren Harding had doubled the milled-rice tariff from 1 cent to 2 cents per pound in 1922; the Smoot-Hawley bill added another half cent.) Whatever the wisdom of this step, old trade reports bear out Burma's vanished rice power. The country's 2 million tons of annual exports not only led the world, but sometimes topped the United States, Thailand, and Vietnam combined.

Eight decades later, Thailand and Vietnam still join the United States at the top of the world's rice-export tables; but Burmese rice is barely available anywhere. The collapse in the 1960s -- or more accurately, the deliberate destruction -- of Burma's farm and furniture exports is in the long-term background of this month's violently suppressed democracy protests: The country is not naturally poor, but had poverty imposed upon it by its government. A coup d'etat in 1962, led by then Army Chief-of-Staff Gen. Ne Win, brought the ancestor of today's military junta to power. In 1963 and 1964, his lieutenants implemented one of the most systematic de-globalization programs of the 20th century. This included a ban on foreign investment, defined broadly, to include small businesses run by Indian families resident in Burma for generations as well as British banks and shipping companies; cutting financial links with foreign banks; creation of a rice board to supervise Irrawaddy delta farming; government management of all imports and exports; and for good measure a 7-day limit on tourist visas. The rice business cannot have been easy to destroy -- DNA markers place one of the origins of rice farming in or near Burma -- but by 1970 it had collapsed. From then to 1990 Burma joined Albania and North Korea as one of the three countries most deeply isolated from the world economy.

Burma's trade has grown a bit since Ne Win was eased out of power in the early 1990s. But the rice and furniture businesses of the 1920s have never returned. Burma's exports are now confined to natural resources -- in particular gas, along with wood, fish, and uncut rubies and sapphires -- sold via military concessions. The country may be^* the poorest in Asia apart from Afghanistan.

^* The World Bank's per-capita-income tables don't attempt an estimate, but simply include a footnote -- as they do for Somalia and North Korea -- saying that Burma is "estimated to be low income."

Further Reading:

Background:

Emigre-run Irrawaddy internet magazine has reports on current events from inside:
http://www.irrawaddy.org/

Thant Myint-U's River of Lost Footsteps offers long-term perspective. By a U.N. official and son of former Secretary General U Thant, it is the most up-to-date history of Burma:
http://tinyurl.com/3yt69h

Burmese trade today:

In total -- The IMF's annual Direction of Trade Statistics books report $4 billion in Burmese exports as of 2005, and list the top buyers as Thailand, India, China, the EU, and Japan. The CIA's World Factbook suggests that an accurate figure might be double this published total, arguing that the official figure is "grossly underestimated due to the value of timber, gems, narcotics, rice, and other products smuggled to Thailand, China, and Bangladesh." But even an $8 billion figure for an Asian country of 60 million would be tiny. Next-door Thailand has an annual export total of $120 billion, Vietnam is at $40 billion, the Philippines reports $50 billion and Malaysia $160 billion. The CIA offers a snapshot in figures:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/
the-world-factbook/geos/bm.html

With India -- China's trade with Burma receives much attention in press and political debate. India's gets less but is growing fast. The Times of India reports this month that an agreement on imports of gas from the Shwe field off the Arakan coast, at $580 million a year over 20 years, may be the junta's largest single source of money:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Myanmar_Europe_
puts_onus_on_India/articleshow/2417553.cms
and
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/specialcoverage/
2411097.cms

With China -- Chinese statistics (or at least the English-language version published online) add little light. The Ministry of Commerce's site says January-June imports from Burma totaled $114 million; by contrast, it reports $10 billion each in imports from Thailand and Malaysia. MofCOM interestingly refers to the country as "Burma" rather the "Myanmar" name adopted after the 1988 demonstrations:
http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/statistic/
ie/200709/20070905109208.html

Where the money goes -- The immediate trigger for this month's protests, as opposed to the country's long-term troubles, was a decision to double local fuel prices even as new contracts for natural-gas exports are signed with China and India. Transparency International offers an indirect clue to the money's use: Its 2007 Corruption Perceptions index cites Burma and Somalia as the two countries with the world's worst reputation for government corruption. A more visual illustration came last September, with the release and wide viewing of a surreptitiously videotaped wedding party, claimed to have cost $50 million, for the daughter of the current junta leader. Bangkok English-language Nation newspaper reports, with link to the 10-minute video:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/11/02/
headlines/headlines_30017734.php

And the United States -- Sanctions in the 1990s mean the United States has no direct imports from Burma, nor many threats left to make. The Treasury Department this month announced a new sort of sanction, freezing the personal accounts of 14 senior junta officers unwise enough to put their money in the United States. The Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control explains:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/
programs/burma/burma.shtml