Coronavirus penalizes world trade: WTO predicts “weak” growth for the beginning of the year

The coronavirus balks world trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has published the results of the third quarter of 2019, in which world trade fell by 0.2%. According to the organization, this trend will continue in the first months of this year weighted by the coronavirus.

The organization suggests that global trade is likely to continue down in early 2020 and that the new global threat to health could reduce it further. 

In fact, dozens of commercial order departures from Chinese ports have already been canceled due to a drop in the productivity of the country’s factories and shipping volumes. In parallel, many of the ships have started their route with a substantially lower load.

“All the signs are that there has been a major dislocation in global supply chains and commodity trade as well,” said Carlone Bain, chief economist at Capital Economics.