ABSTRACT
In March 2009, the World Trade Organization (WTO) released its most pessimistic report
on global trade since the organization’s founding in 1947. The WTO announced that the
annual rate of growth of global trade of goods and services, which had been about 8 percent
in 2006 but had fallen off to 6 percent in 2007 and 2 percent in 2008, would turn negative
in 2009. Indeed, the WTO forecast that global trade would shrink by close to 9 percent during
the year. The projected trade shrinkage, the WTO indicated, would be caused by a drop in the
worldwide level of income of about 1.5 percent.
