It will take time for international trade, which has been battered, to resume growth

The COVID-19 outbreak has led to a sharp decline in global trade. The epidemic has hit global trade at its worst level since the 2008 international financial crisis. Countries implement the disease resistant measures such as restrictions, and closely related with the international trade greatly influenced many areas of the economy, the global value chain, manufacturing supply logistics network, international trade channel, a large number of import and export enterprises shut down, the order has been cancelled, the collapse of trade, trade sentiment and confidence remains subdued.

2020 global trade also suffered outbreaks of superposition of many other disadvantages, including the "o", the world trade organization (wto) dispute settlement mechanism of the appellate body lockout selection in a complicated situation and the new director-general, unilateralism and protectionism continuing threat to the multilateral trading system, geopolitical conflict happens, etc.

Relevant reports of THE United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) all pointed out that the COVID-19 has seriously disrupted the global economy, leading to a sharp decline and near collapse of international trade in 2020, which reached a record level. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reports that the global trade in goods will drop by 5.6% year-on-year in 2020, which is the biggest year-on-year decline in trade in goods since the international financial crisis in 2008. Compared with trade in goods, trade in services has been hit harder by the epidemic. Trade volume has dropped to the level of the 1990s, with a year-on-year decline of 15.4% for the whole year, the biggest drop since 1990. According to the WTO report, among the indicators of trade in services, the air passenger transport index and the container transport index saw the biggest declines, while the financial transactions index, the INFORMATION and communication technology services index, the construction industry index and the purchasing managers index of the service industry were all below trend levels.

The epidemic has exacerbated the global development gap. Due to their vulnerability and limited response to the epidemic, developing and least developed economies have been hit harder than developed economies. Trade in medical and medical vaccine products highlights the inadequacy of the crisis response capacity of most developing countries. Emerging and developing economies have been hit hard by the higher costs of trade caused by the epidemic, leading to a severe contraction in their trade finance. The decline in global demand and supply chain disruptions have hit the LDCS 'export-oriented economies hard, hitting their textile and clothing exports hard and wiping out tourism as a result of the embargo measures.

Regionally, trade in East Asia and the Pacific is significantly better than in other regions, followed by Europe and North America, with the biggest declines in West and South Asia.

In terms of trade structure, the epidemic has had a negative impact on most trade and economic sectors, with trade in industries with more complex value chains declining more sharply. Specifically, the energy and automotive industries have been hardest hit, with a sharp and sharp decline in trade volumes and severe setbacks in textiles and clothing, chemicals, machinery and precision instruments, office equipment and other industries. Commodity fuels, minerals, metals, food and agricultural raw materials fell by record amounts. While the epidemic has led to a surge in trade in medical-related goods, the growth in such trade has mainly benefited residents of rich countries. Trade in agricultural products has been stable during the epidemic, showing the least fluctuation among all industries and strong resilience.

International trade has played a key role in responding to the outbreak, ensuring that countries have access to vital products and services that they urgently need to fight the epidemic and that it has spawned new ways of working and living. For example, the embargo has stimulated strong growth in trade in home office equipment, medical and medical products and personal protective equipment, communications equipment, textiles and clothing, as well as rapid growth in demand for e-commerce, the Internet and mobile data services, making digital technology increasingly important in global trade. Moreover, while import restrictions continue to affect global trade, the general trend is that national trade policies continue to move in the direction of greater import promotion and openness. Countries have adopted unprecedented emergency support measures, including strong fiscal and monetary policies and temporary trade measures, including unprecedented amounts of government grants and subsidies, as well as rescue measures for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Countries have also implemented trade remedy actions, including anti-dumping investigations, trade safeguard measures and countervailing actions. In the area of trade in services, most of the new measures put in place have had an effect. Most of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, technical barriers to trade (TBT) measures and intellectual property rights measures that countries implemented in the early stages of the epidemic have been converted into trade promotion measures.

A highlight of global trade in 2020 is that China's international trade performance will be the best in the world, making China the only major economy to resume positive economic growth and achieve trade stabilization.