The World Trade Organization said yesterday that global trade should rebound this year from an unexpected slump last year, but warned that regional conflicts, geopolitical tensions and economic policy uncertainty risked darkening the picture.
In its annual trade forecast, the WTO disclosed that world trade volumes unexpectedly declined by 1.2 percent last year.
That downgrade was “mainly due to the worse-than-expected performance of Europe,” WTO chief economist Ralph Ossa told AFP, with lingering high energy prices and inflation drove down demand for manufactured goods. The eurozone economy stagnated in the final quarter of last year, with Germany’s economy contracting by 0.3 percent.
Photo: Salvatore Di Nolfi, EPA-EFE
But a recovery in the global trade of goods is already under way, thanks in part to inflation slowing.
The WTO forecast that the global economy will continue to grow modestly over the next two years, by 2.6 percent this year, and 2.7 percent next year. It expects merchandise trade volumes to increase by 2.6 percent this year, and to expand by 3.3 percent next year.
The forecast for this year was lower than the 3.3-percent hike the WTO predicted for the year in October last year.
“We are making progress towards global trade recovery,” WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement, stressing that it was “imperative that we mitigate risks like geopolitical strife and trade fragmentation.”
The organization said trade developments on the services side were far more upbeat last year, growing by nine percent.
The organization does not provide specific forecasts for the development in services, but said it expected further growth this year, in particular linked to swelling tourism and passenger transport around the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris and the European football championships.
In addition, WTO said that the inflationary pressures that weighed on trade last year were expected to abate this year.
This would allow real incomes to grow again, especially in advanced economies, and thereby provide a boost to the consumption of manufactured goods, it said.
“A recovery of demand for tradable goods in 2024 is already evident,” WTO said.
However, the organization cautioned that “geopolitical tensions and policy uncertainty could limit the extent of the trade rebound.”
The report pointed for instance to the Red Sea crisis and Suez Canal disruptions linked to the war raging in Gaza, which it said to now had been relatively limited.
But “some sectors, such as automotive products, fertilizers and retail, have already been affected by delays and freight costs hikes,” it said.
“We are still in a period where trade is relatively resilient,” Ossa said, adding that for now, “we definitely don’t see any de-globalization”.
The WTO has warned that there seems to be a growing “fragmentation” of global trade.
Ossa pointed for instance to bilateral trade between the US and China, which reached a record level in 2022.
Last year, trade between the two global giants meanwhile grew 30 percent less than their trade with other countries, he said. Signs of such fragmentation are also visible in the trade in services.
The US last year increased its imports of services linked to information and communication technologies from Canada, but cut imports of the same services from Asia, and especially from India.
WTO has also warned of worrying signs of growing protectionist behavior by some countries, although it refuses to name them.
“I think we are clearly in an important point in the history of globalization,” Ossa said.
“I think a lot of governments are evaluating or reevaluating perhaps their trade policy choices and of course this is going to have consequences on how international trade is going to develop.”
The WTO chief economist pointed to the dozens of elections being held around the world this year, including some very high-stakes ones like in the US, that could dramatically impact trade policies.
“The very fact that you don’t know how some of these policy choices are made (creates a) trade policy uncertainty (that) by itself already is a drag on international trade,” he warned.
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