On 27 September the WTO announced that world trade was expected to grow more slowly than expected in 2016, expanding by just 1.7%, well below the April 2016 forecast of 2.8%.
The WTO also revised its 2017 forecast, with trade now expected to grow between 1.8% and 3.1%, down from its previous 3.6%. With expected global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 2.2% in 2016, this year would mark the slowest pace of trade and output growth since the financial crisis of 2009.
The WTO’s downgrade follows a sharper than expected decline in merchandise trade volumes in the first quarter of 2016 and a smaller than anticipated rebound in the second quarter of 2016.
The contraction was driven by slowing GDP and trade growth in developing economies such as the People’s Republic of China and Brazil but also in North America, which had the strongest import growth of any region in 2014 to15 but has decelerated since then.