WTO Downgrades Global Trade Forecast

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Global Trade Outlook
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Global trade this year hasn’t lived up to expectations. Last month, the World Trade Organization published its updated Global Trade Outlook in which it downgraded its projection for trade growth this year to just 0.8 percent from 1.7 percent in April. The shift is a result of a number of factors – inflation, high interest rates, China’s underwhelming recovery, a high U.S. dollar and geopolitical tensions – and has affected a broad range of countries and sectors.

The WTO’s outlook for 2024 remained relatively unchanged, declining only slightly from 3.3 percent to 3.2 percent. Two key variables, however, could upend this forecast: a weak Chinese economy and high inflation rates in developed economies.

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Geopolitical Futures (GPF) was founded in 2015 by George Friedman, international strategist and author of The Storm Before the Calm and The Next 100 Years. GPF is non-ideological, analyzes the world and forecasts the future using geopolitics: political, economic, military and geographic dimensions at the foundation of a nation.