The shock is of such magnitude that it is difficult to measure. In its annual forecasts published this Wednesday, April 16, the world Trade Organization (WTO) is counting on a decrease in the volume of the global trade in goods between 0.2 % and 1.5 % in 2025 depending on Trump’s customs policy, a decrease of at least 2.9 percentage points compared to its October 2024 estimates which envisaged an increase of 2.7 %.
The American president brought back customs duties on American imports on April 9 to a “Floor threshold” 10 % for a period of ninety days, the time to negotiate agreements with each country, except for Chinese goods, taxed at 145 %. It is mainly North America, whose external exchanges should go back by 1.7 % in 2025, which led to world trade in its fall.
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“The unprecedented nature of the recent change in trade policy is a challenge for forecasters, specifies the WTO in its reportbecause there is no comparable event in recent history. »» The reflux movement has already started, if we judge by the price of the FRET SCFI (Shanghai Containerized Freight Index), an indicator of the activity of maritime transport, which plunged 40 % over the first three months of the year. This deceleration even affects services, such as tourism or the sale of software, which is free from customs duties, with growth that should not exceed 4 % in 2025, a rate much lower than the recorded average of recent years. The global trade in goods should then reconnect with a modest growth of 2.5 % in 2026.
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