Trump-China trade war: Kuehne Nagel data shows trade slowdown

Shipping
containers

www.GlynLowe.com/Flickr

• Data from Swiss freight giant Kuehne + Nagel shows
  global trade grew 0.3% in November. In the same month last
  year, it grew 3.1%.
• The The impact of President Donald Trump’s trade war is
  clear to see: Every single region of the globe saw its foreign
  trade growth drop in November.
• Kuehne + Nagel’s data matches what Maersk, the world’s
  largest shipping company, said earlier this month, when it
  published data showing a slowdown in global container trade
  growth.

The negative impact of the ongoing trade battle between the US
and China is plain to see in new data from Swiss freight giant
Kuehne + Nagel.

According to the data, published on Tuesday, global trade was up
0.3% in November compared to the previous month. It’s a massive
shift from November 2017, when world trade grew 3.1%
month-over-month.

Read more:
‘A bumpy ride ahead’: Here’s how Wall Street is reacting to Trump
and Xi’s trade-war deal

The picture is a bit nuanced. For example, trade overall is up
6.4% from the same point last year, pushing Kuehne + Nagel’s
World Trade Indicator to 143.7, the highest level since records
began. But it’s still clear the US-China trade war is having an
impact. Going forward, the data shows a consistent downward
trend. The chart below illustrates this trajectory over the past
12 months:

Kuehne Nagel

Not only is overall global trade growth slowing, but in many
areas, it is actively shrinking.

“In ocean freight, measured by the live throughput of ports, the
unit volume declined slightly in November,” down 0.3% month over
month, Kuehne + Nagel said in the release.

On top of that, every single region of the globe saw its foreign
trade growth drop in November.

Kuehne Nagel

Kuehne + Nagel’s data matches what Maersk, the world’s largest
shipping company, said in November, when
it published data showing a slowdown in global container trade
growth.

Global container trade continued to lose momentum in the
third quarter. And so far this year, it has suffered “a much
slower pace of growth,” rising by 4.2% compared with the 5.8%
recorded over the same period in 2017, Maersk said.

Slowing global trade comes against a backdrop in which
the US has introduced tariffs of 10% on $250 billion worth
of Chinese goods entering the US, prompting Chinese policymakers
to retaliate, albeit on a smaller scale.

President Trump has also repeatedly threatened to place tariffs
on all US imports from China, an amount totaling more than $500
billion annually.

Relations have thawed a little in the last few days after Trump
and his Chinese counterpart, Xi
Jinping, came
to a tentative truce on trade at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, postponing an increase in
tariffs and agreeing to a 90-day window for further discussions.

The US agreed not to raise the 10% tariff rate on $200 billion
worth of Chinese goods to 25% on January 1, as originally
scheduled, while in return China committed to buying a “very
substantial amount” of agricultural, energy, and industrial goods
from the US.

The agreement, however, is seen by most commentators as merely a
temporary fix, with
many expecting a further escalation once the three month truce
comes to an end.