While many people oppose the spread of free trade, the fact of the matter is that in recent years, trade volumes have already not been growing as they had been prior to the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the volume of traded goods and services has expanded by only three percent a year since the end of two thousand and eleven and hasn’t expanded much at all since the end of twenty fourteen.
That compares to nine percent growth per annum from two thousand and three to two thousand and seven. Policymakers who favor pending trade agreements believe that the dearth of new deals is to blame, warning that failure to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership of TPP could exacerbate the problem.
Other trade experts, many from the business world, blame slower trade on shifts in global supply chains, with both Chinese firms and Western multinationals more likely to produce more of a finished product within a single nation rather than relying on far-flung suppliers who ship parts and components around the world. A synchronized global economic slowdown has also hurt trade volumes.
