A few days ago, the World Trade Organization released the first "Global Merchandise Trade Barometer" report of 2020, showing that the growth of global merchandise trade in the first quarter of 2020 will remain weak. The real-time measurement reading of global trade trends is 95.5, which is higher than November last year. The reading is 96.6, which is well below the trend level reference value (100).
WTO trade statistics show that global merchandise trade in the third quarter of 2019 decreased by 0.2% year-on-year. Although the year-on-year growth slightly rebounded in the fourth quarter, the latest WTO barometer readings did not show signs of continued recovery in the global economy. This issue of the Global Merchandise Trade Barometer has not responded to the new crown pneumonia epidemic. It is expected that this new global health threat will further reduce global trade performance, which is already below trend levels, and the outlook for global trade may be further weakened.
The WTO predicts that global trade growth will decline again in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year, although official statistics will not confirm this until June of this year. The report said that since November last year, the container shipping index (94.8) and agricultural raw materials index (90.9) have further fallen, driving real-time readings of global commodity trade trends in the first quarter of 2020 down. In addition, the economic consequences of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the effectiveness of prevention and control efforts will affect each sub-index of the commodity trade barometer, but the above-mentioned indexes seem to have stabilized and are expected to rise in the coming months.
