Deutsche Bank’s Dire Warning On Global Trade: “The Currency War Is Futile”

Jon Alternative Media, Blogosphere, Economy, Geopolitics

‘It’s almost like the timing belt on the global growth engine is a bit off or the cylinders are not firing as they should.’ That’s from WTO chief economist Robert Koopman, and it’s a quote we’ve used on a number of occasions. Koopman is referring to the fact that for several years in a row, the rate of growth in global trade has lagged GDP growth. That’s a problem for two reasons: 1) GDP growth is hardly robust as it is, and 2)before the recent downturn, the last time trade growth underperformed the rate of economic expansion was two decades ago.
As WSJ noted last autumn, trade growth has averaged just 3% per year. That’s half of the 1983-2008 average.
‘It’s fairly obvious that we reached peak trade in 2007,’ Scott Miller, trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D. C., think tank told the Journal.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 03/25/2016.