Anyone taking a look at the long-term global data on trade and prosperity would struggle not to conclude that the two make perfect bedfellows. When trade growth is weak, the global economy is weak and over the past generation, trade growth has led economic growth. Over 50 years between 1960 and 2010, global economic growth averaged roughly 3.5 per cent a year with the annual growth of imports almost double that at 6.8 per cent.
With such a record of success, trade liberalisation, globalisation and openness has traditionally been a core ingredient of advice to rich and poor countries alike. With trade growing twice as fast as an economy, increasing trade growth by 1 per cent was thought to be linked to 0.5 per cent of economic growth.
Although there were always disputes about the direction of causation, international organisations have bemoaned the more recent slowing of trade growth because it became associated with a long mediocre spell in the global economy.