WTO forecasts a contraction in trade of at least 0.2% in 2025
Keystone-SDA
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is forecasting a contraction in global trade of 0.2% in 2025. If the US applies reciprocal customs duties and general uncertainty increases, the drop could reach 1.5%, it said on Wednesday in Geneva.
In 2026, it is expected to rise by a further 2.5%. The analysis for this year is similar to that made on the evening of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of additional tariffs, which have since been suspended for 90 days. At the time, the WTO was predicting a 1% fall in merchandise trade this year. This figure has now been reduced to 0.8%.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The WTO is expecting an 81% drop in the volume of trade between the United States and China. More broadly, global uncertainty could cause merchandise trade to fall by a further 0.7 points.
Prior to these tensions, the WTO was expecting growth of around 3%. All regions are feeling the impact of the current situation, according to the organisation.
Adapted from French by DeepL/ac
How we work
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. An editor then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out this short survey to help us understand your needs: https://survey.survicate.com/d0df481d0b13412d/?p=anonymousExternal linkExternal linkExternal link
