World trade growth is going into the red. Contrary to forecasts a year ago, global trade in goods contracted by 1.2% in 2023, according to the latest figures from the World Trade Organization (WTO) published on Wednesday April 10. In April 2023, the Geneva-based institution was much more optimistic. It expected growth of 1.7%, before reducing its forecast to 0.8% in October. In value terms, world trade recorded an even more impressive decline, of 5%, to stand at 24,010 billion dollars (22,268 billion euros).
A downturn that the WTO attributes to inflation which is weighing on demand for manufactured goods, the decline in global gross domestic product (GDP) (2.7% in 2023, compared to 3.1% in 2022) and , to a lesser extent, to the disruptions linked to the crisis in the Red Sea. Attacks carried out by Houthi rebels from Yemen, starting in November 2023, have reduced Suez Canal traffic by 72%, which carries a third of containers transported between Asia and Europe and 12% of world trade. . Between November 2023 and February, the cost of ocean freight between Asia and Europe also tripled.
Trade has mainly declined in Europe, a region which accounts for 37% of world trade. They decreased in the United States and stagnated in Asia, reducing to zero its contribution to the growth of world trade in 2023. The only ones who saw their trade increase were the hydrocarbon-producing countries in the Middle East and South America. or in Africa. The WTO rules out any “sustainable trend towards deglobalization” while falling under the “preliminary signs of fragmentation of trade flows, with a reorientation of exports and imports along geopolitical lines”.
” Resilience “
The institution, which bets on the ” resilience “ of world trade, forecasts a gradual recovery in 2024 (+ 2.6%) and in 2025 (+ 3.3%). “We are on the path to a recovery in global trade, thanks to resilient supply chains and a strong multilateral trade framework,” says Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the WTO. World trade should first benefit from the slowdown in inflation, which fell from 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.2% in February 2024 in the United States, and from 10.6% in October. 2022, to 2.6%, in February 2024, in the European Union.
In the long term, the WTO is optimistic. World trade figures do not take into account trade in services, although they recorded a jump of 9% in 2023, reaching $7.54 trillion.
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