Once the grease of global growth, international commerce failed to rebound completely from the 2009 recession and now is slowing anew.
Chinese exports tumbled 5.5 percent in August from a year earlier, while those of the US fell 3.5 percent. South Korea and Singapore witnessed double-digit declines.
Reflecting such weakness, the WTO this week cut its forecast for trade growth this year to 2.8 percent from 3.3 percent. It acknowledged its new prediction might be “over optimistic.”
Such rates fall short of the 5 percent average of the past two decades. Also gone are the 1990s and early 2000s when trade grew twice as fast as economic growth — this year is set to be the fourth consecutive year in which the two expand around the same speed.
More worryingly, High Frequency Economics head economist Carl Weinberg said that total world exports as of June were running below their year-earlier levels at an annualized rate of US$1.6 trillion, the equivalent to 2.1 percent of GDP.
That extended the decline in exports during the first six months of the year to 11 percent from last year, enough to fret about stagnation in the global economy given Weinberg’s estimate that there is a 70 percent correlation between expansion and export shifts.
“The contraction of world trade has yet to show a bottom,” Weinberg said. “This could be more than an economic headwind, it could be a tornado.”
The more-pessimistic outlook for commerce is likely one reason that the IMF is preparing to cut its 3.3 percent forecast for global growth this year when it holds its annual meetings in Lima next week.
Behind the latest deceleration in trade are the slowdown in China and fellow emerging markets, upheavals in commodity-rich nations and a rising US dollar.
Still, structural shifts are playing a part too as countries including the US and China rely on increased production at home and fewer trade deals are struck, suggesting globalization might have peaked.
There is some hope. Credit Suisse Group AG economists said that even though they are export-dependent, the eurozone and Japan have navigated the trade weakness well thanks to their production of high-tech goods and falling exchange rates.
The WTO predicts an acceleration in trade next year to 3.9 percent.
A report by research firm Gavekal Dragonomics also said that there might be a new phase of globalization led by services and innovative companies in advanced nations rather than multinationals and eastern Asian economies.
Still, if trade does fail to pick up Oxford Economics Ltd economist Adam Slater said he predicts we are likely to see continued downward pressure on bond yields and renewed efforts by countries to devalue their way to prosperity.
“The temptation to try to grab a bigger slice of a given trade pie is likely to increase,” Slater said.
Just what that would achieve is in doubt.
The IMF this week suggested a 10 percent cheaper currency can boost exports by an average of 1.5 percent of GDP.
By contrast, the World Bank recently estimated that falling currencies were only half as effective in increasing exports between 2004 and 2012 as they were in the prior eight years.
With emerging markets increasingly trading with each other it might be “the case that rather than the net outcome being a zero, the overall impact of currency depreciation may actually be a negative-sum game,” HSBC Holdings PLC economists Janet Henry and James Pomeroy said in a report this week.
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