International trade appears to have fully recovered from the twin shocks of Covid-19 and conflict. In its latest Global Trade Update, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) suggested that the total value of goods traded in 2022 will exceed $32tn, 12.2% higher than 2021 and 40.3% more than the pandemic peak of 2020. Furthermore, world container shipping hit an all-time high in August of last year.
However, as recession threatens the world’s major economies and the World Trade Organization (WTO) trims its forecast for 2023 trade growth to just 1%, it’s clear the multilateral trading system isn’t yet resilient enough to withstand further geopolitical shocks.
