Despite all the optimism around American attempts to forge free trade agreements with Asia and Europe, progress is in reality depressingly slow. The global, multilateral free-trade agenda has meanwhile been mired in apparently irreconcilable differences for more than a decade.
It would nevertheless be wrong to regard these protectionist pressures as a prime cause of what is now an extraordinarily unusual slow down in global trade growth. In fact, they are much more likely to be a response to it. When export growth becomes harder to achieve, countries naturally turn in on themselves, find ways of supporting domestic demand, and if they can, disadvantaging foreign goods and services.
Peak globalisation
It’s been called “peak globalisation”, and it is a good term for what is now not just a fashionable theory but an observable phenomenon. June saw a little bit of an uptick in global trade, but the trend is unambiguously down. In the second quarter of this year, the volume of global trade fell 0.5 per cent, following a fall of 1.5 per cent in the first quarter, according to new data. This is the first such fall in global trade since the collapse of Lehman’s.
Source Article from http://www.afr.com/opinion/columns/why-its-time-to-speak-up-for-free-trade-20150828-gj9p74
