Today, the World Trade Organization presented its latest reading, relating to the last quarter of last year, of its Goods Trade Barometer, the barometer designed to formulate forecasts of development of world trade, with values above 100 indicating higher trade volumes to the trend and less than 100 indicating that trade in goods has fallen below the trend or will do so in the near future.

The last reading is 102.8, but the WTO has specified that the growing uncertainty about policies may have temporarily increased the volume of trade as businesses and consumers have anticipated imports before the introduction of potential measures, and more later in the year, there could be a possible reduction in the question.

With regard to the various component indices of the barometer, the WTO has announced that they are currently in line with or above the trend. The export orders (101.0), electronic components (102.3) and commodities (101.6) are in line with the trend, while indices of automotive products (105.5), transport of containers (103.7) and air freight (102.7) are above of the trend.

The World Trade Organization explained that in the third quarter by 2024, the volume of world trade in goods continued to recovering from the 2023 trade crisis by growing by +3.3% year on year. Developments in the first three quarters of last year - the WTO specified - have been largely in line with the most recent WTO trade forecasts of last October 10 which expected a +2.7% growth in trade volumes for the whole of 2024. Although the global average has remained stable - noted the WTO - there were some significant disparities growth in trade: in particular, the European exports and imports were much more weaker than expected, while Asian exports and North American imports exceeded expectations.