Slight drop in trade-restrictive measures

The World Trade Organisation’s thirteenth trade monitoring report on G20 trade measures, released this week, shows a slight deceleration in the application of new trade-restrictive measures by G20 economies, with the average number of such measures applied per month lower than at any time since 2013.

The report also underlines that it is not yet clear that this deceleration will continue and it calls on G20 leaders to show continued vigilance and reinforced determination towards eliminating existing trade restrictions.

Since mid-October 2014, 119 new trade-restrictive measures have been put in place — an average of 17 new measures per month.

Also during this period, G-20 economies continued to adopt measures aimed at facilitating trade, according to the report. “The trend on these trade liberalising measures remains stable with G-20 economies introducing some 112 new measures during the period under review — an average of 16 measures per month.”

However, despite these recent trends, it is not yet clear that the deceleration in the number of measures introduced will continue in future reporting periods, according to the WTO. Therefore, continued vigilance and reinforced determination towards eliminating existing trade restrictions remain an important priority, it said.

“The longer term trend remains one of concern, with the overall stock of trade-restrictive measures introduced by G-20 economies since 2008 continuing to rise. Of the 1 360 restrictions recorded by this exercise since 2008, less than a quarter have been eliminated, leaving the total number of restrictive measures still in place at 1 031. Therefore, despite the G-20 pledge to roll back any new protectionist measures, the stock of these measures has risen by over 7% since the last report.”