World trade recorded its largest contraction since the 2008 global financial crisis in the first half of this year, according to figures that will feed concerns over the global economy and add fuel to a debate over whether globalisation has peaked.
The volume of global trade fell 0.5 per cent in the three months to June, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, keepers of the World Trade Monitor, said yesterday. Economists there also revised down their result for the first quarter of the year to a 1.5 per cent contraction, making the first half of 2015 the worst recorded since the 2009 collapse in global trade that followed the crisis.
Global trade actually rebounded by 2 per cent in the month of June, according to the World Trade Monitor, but its authors warned that the monthly numbers were volatile and that the more revealing pattern lay in the longer-term figures.