Foreign media said that the latest data released by the Dutch government showed that the global trade volume recently experienced the biggest decline since the financial crisis, which is close to the decline after the bursting of the Internet bubble in the early 21st century.
World trade fell 1.8 per cent in the three months to January from the previous three months as factories grappled with a deepening global industrial recession, according to the Netherlands bureau of economic policy analysis.
According to the report, the "perfect storm" that triggered the industrial recession was made up of a variety of factors, including the weakness of the automobile industry, the stalemate caused by brexit and President trump's attempt to subvert the international trading system by imposing tariffs on European and Chinese goods.In a tit-for-tat tariff dispute, the us slapped tariffs on heavy Chinese imports;Trade between Asia's industrial centers and Germany has fallen sharply in recent months.
The sharp decline in trade is roughly the same as it was in 2001, after the dot-com bubble burst, when trade fell as much as 2.2 percent, the report said.The figure is also the steepest decline since the depths of the great recession in 2009, when global trade was in free fall of 12.7%.
Stock markets rallied strongly in 2019 as the United States and China moved closer to a deal to end a trade war.However, tensions between the us and Europe have risen in recent days over Mr Trump's threat to impose tariffs on $11bn of eu goods.The White House also has until mid-may to decide whether to impose tariffs on eu cars.
Even if the trump administration strikes a deal with Beijing, the impact of the us tariffs could continue to disrupt the global trading system, the report argues.
Jamie Thompson, an economist at Oxford economics, warned: "tariffs have historically been particularly slow to be lifted in periods of weak growth."