2019: A Bad Year For the World's Trade Superpowers

The World Economic Forum's latest Global Risk Report shows the change in merchandise trade volume from 2018 to 2019 revealing a fall of 2.9 percent globally. As this infographic shows, there were also decreases for the world's top ten traders. This issue was most pronounced in Hong Kong and South Korea which saw a 7.5 and 7.4 percent change on 2018 respectively.

According to the WEF report: "Reduced trade volumes are largely the result of what the WTO has called “historically high levels of trade restrictions”. The potential result, according to the IMF, could be global growth slowing by 0.8 percentage points in 2020, should the United States and China uphold existing tariffs or implement new ones."

While both the U.S. and China experienced drops in volume, these were below the global average - coming in at 2.4 percent for China and 0.6 percent for the States. Germany, which relies heavily on trade, spent the year flirting with recession and this is reflected in a 4.7 percent decrease.