WTO Flashes Warning About Global Economy

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 17, 8:42AM EST

WTO Flashes Warning About Global Economy — © bfk92 / Getty Images

The World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that the economy, based on world merchandise trade slowed toward the end of last year. Its researchers warned that the outbreak of COVID-19 are not accounted for in their figures—yet.

The organization’s researchers reported that its Goods Trade Barometer is currently at 95.5 which is below trend. The trend line for expansion/contraction is 100. In November, the number was 96.6, which is still enough to create anxiety.

The final global trade number for the third quarter of last year was down .2% from the year before.

Commenting on the trend:

The Goods Trade Barometer provides information on the current trajectory of world merchandise trade relative to recent trends, based on best-available forward-looking data. It does not account for recent developments such as the outbreak of COVID-19, the new coronavirus disease, which may dampen trade prospects further.

Other signals are flashing red. The Japan Cabinet Office says that GDP for the world’s third largest economy fell 6.3% in final quarter of last year. Germany’s economy did not grow at all in the fourth quarter. Some experts believe that the spread of COVID-19 will cut China GDP growth to zero in the current quarter.

Most of the news issued in the last few days about the global economy and GDP in the world’s largest nations has been bad.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.