The recovery in world trade is only benefiting a handful of countries. According to figures released on July 30 by the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia saw its exports jump 21% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year, to unprecedented levels. previously, compared to an average of 4.3% worldwide. The continent is benefiting from the rise in global demand for manufactured goods, which partly offsets the sudden stop in spending on leisure or travel. Demand for electronics was particularly high during the lockdown period.
China has thus seen its market share in world exports go from 16.6% in the last quarter of 2019 to 18% in the first quarter of 2021. They are increasing especially to developed countries, Japan and Europe and the United States. Almost a quarter of European imports now come from China. “The good health of Chinese exports shows that so far, the economic decoupling called for by certain developed countries has not really materialized”, Oxford Economics noted in a note published on August 3.
Technological war
This is the case with the United States, which sees the share of its imports from China increase despite the technological cold war between the two countries, and the addition of many Chinese companies to Washington’s blacklist. on trade. While Europe, Central and South America returned to their pre-pandemic export volumes at the start of the year, this is still far from being the case for countries in the Middle East and Africa.
These last continents saw their exports drop by 8.4% and 4.6% over one year in the first quarter of 2021. The least developed countries suffer the most from the pandemic. Their merchandise exports fell 12% in 2020, compared to an average of 9% globally, and service exports even collapsed by 35% in 2020 due to the drop in tourism.
The share of medical goods in global trade increased from 5.3% in 2019 to 6.6% in 2020
Finally, the WTO notes that trade has withstood the economic slowdown much better during the pandemic than during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The decline in merchandise trade in volume was 1.5 times greater than the contraction in activity in 2020 when it was 6 times greater during the financial crisis. Trade returned to its pre-crisis level more quickly, after just one year, compared to two years after the onset of the financial crisis.
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