WTO Report: Global Trade Will Further Weak In The First Quarter Of This Year.

Recently, the World Trade Organization released the first phase of the 2020 global commodity trade barometer report, showing that the growth of global merchandise trade in the first quarter of 2020 will remain weak. The global trade trend readings are 95.5, lower than the 96.6 reading in November last year, and far below the baseline value of the trend level (100).

WTO trade statistics show that the global merchandise trade volume decreased by 0.2% in the third quarter of 2019, although the year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter rose slightly, but the latest trade barometer of WTO did not show signs of sustained recovery in the global economy. The current barometer of global commodity trade has not responded to the new crown pneumonia epidemic. It is expected that the new global health threat will further reduce the global trade performance which has been below the trend level, and the global trade outlook will be further weakened.

WTO forecasts that global trade growth will decline again in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the same period last year, although official statistics will not be able to confirm this until June this year. The report said that since November last year, the container shipping index (94.8) and the agricultural raw materials index (90.9) fell further, pushing up the decline in real-time readings of global merchandise trade trends in the first quarter of 2020. In addition, the economic consequences of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the effectiveness of the prevention and control efforts will affect every sub index of the barometer of commodity trade, but the index seems to have stabilized and is expected to increase in the coming months.