International trade: Challenges ahead for merchandise trade after contracting in 2023

As the global economy expanded by 2.7 per cent in 2023, recent data releases point to a contraction, in real terms, of global merchandise trade of about 1 per cent during 2023. Should final numbers confirm this scenario within the next few months, 2023 will be the first annual episode in at least four decades4 during which the direction of world merchandise trade diverges from that of global economic activity. Annual contractions in real terms of global merchandise trade are unusual. In the forty years leading to 2023, global merchandise trade had shrunk only twice: in 2009, at the height […]