East Asia, for long the epitome of successful engagement in trade, faces serious challenges: technological change that may threaten the very model of labor intensive industrialization and a backlash against globalization that may reduce access to important markets. A detailed analysis of the...

Since the Global Financial Crisis, world trade growth has been subdued and lagging slightly behind growth of gross domestic product. Trade is growing more slowly not only because growth of global gross domestic product is lower, but also because trade itself has become less responsive to gross...

This paper attempts to quantify the impact of economic policy uncertainty on overall trade and trade linked to global value chains. Using new data on policy uncertainty for 18 countries and 24 years, it finds a statistically significant negative impact of policy uncertainty on overall trade...

Global trade growth slowed in 2018 amid a weakening of economic growth in China and the Euro Area and rising trade protectionism. The volume of trade grew by 3.8 percent, down from 5.4 percent in 2017, but has shown signs of reviving in the first quarter of 2019. However, the U.S. tariff...

This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical

Trade rebounded in 2017, with trade volume growing at 4.3 percent in 2017 - the fastest rate in 6 years. The recovery of trade is not limited to a few regions but is widespread, suggesting that we may be at a turning point. The largest contributions to global trade growth have come from East...

This edition of Global Trade Watch addresses three questions concerning recent trade developments: What is happening? Why? Does it matter? 2016 is the fifth consecutive year of sluggish trade growth and the year with the weakest trade performance since the aftermath of the 2008 global financial...