World trade experienced an “unprecedented” decline in April as most big economies suffered from strict coronavirus lockdowns, according to widely watched data which found that the eurozone was the hardest-hit area. The volume of global trade in goods dropped by 12.1 percent in April compared with the previous month, according to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis – the largest monthly contraction since records began in 2000. The drop exacerbated the 2-4 percent decline in world trade in March, the bureau’s CPB world trade monitor said, leaving global goods trade volumes 16.2 percent smaller than the same time last year.
All regions reported a fall in trade volumes, but the eurozone was the hardest hit with trade volumes falling by 20.1 percent month on month in April. Its goods trade has contracted by 28.5 percent over the past year. Trade volumes in the US dropped by 16.8 percent month on month in April, while trade in emerging Asia, which includes China and India, fell by 6 percent. Chinese export volumes shrank in April, after a mild expansion in March as the pandemic eased in the country.
“As April was affected by the most widespread and stringent lockdown measures, trade volumes were dragged down by disruptions to production and logistics, as well as less demand for imports worldwide,” said Joanna Konings, a senior international trade economist at ING.
Thursday’s data leave global trade on track to be more than 10 percent lower this year than in 2019, according to estimates by ING. Adam Slater, lead economist at Oxford Economics, said the data “points to a decline in goods trade in 2020 of a potentially comparable magnitude to that seen in the global financial crisis in 2 00 9 ” .