The global economic crisis sent world trade volume and world production into retreat and threatened a second Great Depression. There has emerged a consensus that global imbalances – fundamentally reflected in the over-reliance upon the United States (US) consumer market – that built up over...

World trade volume is in retreat for the first time in more than two decades and the contraction is on a scale not seen since the global recession following the second oil shock of 1979–1980. The United States (US) is at the epicenter of the crisis and is a major source of external demand for...