PARIS—A slowdown in international trade could be a harbinger of a new recession for the world’s leading economies, a leading global policy organization warned Monday.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says trade figures are worrisome because the stagnating or declining rates of trade seen this year “have, in the past, been associated with global recession.”
In its world economic outlook issued Monday, the Paris-based group projected global trade growth at 2 percent this year, improving to 3.6 percent next year.
In only five years of the past 50 has global trade grown at 2 percent or less, and each time has coincided with a world economic downturn, said Angel Gurria, the OECD’s secretary-general.
“Trade should be growing at about double the speed of growth of the world economy because trade is always a locomotive,” Gurria said. Instead, the OECD predicted the world economy would grow 2.9 percent this year and 3.3 percent next year.
The group says that in contrast to two years ago, when sluggish trade was blamed on advanced economies, the fault now centers on emerging markets such as China. As China transitions from massive infrastructure investment and manufacturing toward consumption and services, commodity prices have fallen, hurting exporters such as Australia, Brazil, Canada and Russia.
New figures released Monday in China highlighted the extent of the downturn: the country’s imports fell by 18.8 percent in October from a year earlier, while exports shrank 6.9 percent.
