Strong growth, world trade has exceeded its pre-crisis level – Les Échos

Global merchandise trade has never been better. In view of the figures for the first half of the year, it even “exceeded its peak before the pandemic” of Covid-19 said the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Monday.

As a result, the Organization’s economists have revised their forecasts upwards compared to those they established last March . The volume of world merchandise trade is expected to grow 10.8% this year before slowing down slightly next year to 4.7%.

The main reason for this tremendous rebound was the collapse of the previous year, when trade had bottomed out in the second quarter. With a very low baseline, year-on-year growth reached 22% in the second quarter of 2021. But the figure is expected to drop to 10.9% in the third and 6.6% in the fourth quarter, the organization warns.

The fact remains that this current recovery is uneven. Developed countries, with their fiscal and monetary stimulus plans and their vaccination campaigns are doing better than developing countries and least developed countries, pointed out the Director General of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Inequitable access to vaccines exacerbates the economic divergence between regions. The longer the vaccine inequity persists, the more we run the risk of even more dangerous variants of Covid-19 appearing, which would halt the health and economic progress made so far, ”she stressed during the meeting. ‘a press conference.

Inflationary concerns

Growth in merchandise trade is expected to slow in the coming months. “Problems on the supply side like semiconductor shortage and the backlog in ports could strain supply chains and weigh on trade in certain sectors, ”said the Organization. “The category of integrated circuits does not show such a decline. It is possible that integrated circuits were oriented more towards other uses (such as consumer electronics) during the pandemic, which limited the availability for automotive industry applications when production recovered ” , observes the WTO.

“The factory fire in Taiwan, shutdowns in Malaysia, bad weather in Texas have disrupted semiconductor production,” commented Robert Koopman, WTO chief economist. Computer and mobile phone manufacturers have represented strong demand for semiconductors. “At the same time, the automotive industry had anticipated a decline in the market during the pandemic. But, with the recovery, these same producers are still hungry, ”he explained.

Investment uncertainty

Another worry: price pressures. “The risks to be considered are in particular peaks of inflation, a lengthening of port delays, higher freight rates “, Specify the economists of the WTO. These price pressures are only expected to “last for a while. However, if the inflation expectations were to be confirmed, the central banks could deem it necessary to tighten monetary policy sooner than expected, ”says the WTO. The volume of trade would inevitably suffer.

For the future, the policeman of world trade expects a marked moderation in trade growth. He will return to his long-term trend which was his before the pandemic. Generally speaking, the rebound observed this year is largely due to a surge in household consumption, helped by the stimulus plans.

For Robert Koopman, everything will depend on business activity and the business climate. “Investment is the great engine of world trade. However, the lack of investment explained the weak growth in trade that we experienced before the pandemic, ”he detailed. Will history repeat itself? In industrialized countries, public investment plans (United States, France, etc.) are ready to be initiated to take over from the recovery plans.