Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers:
U.S. Merchandise Trade Declines:

July 2008 - January 2009: 33.2%
October 1929 - April 1930: 30.4%

What They Mean:

As G-20 members prepare to meet in London a week from Thursday, some dark predictions. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the world economy will contract by about 1 percent this year: The only such worldwide decline since the 1930s. The World Trade Organization foresees a nine-percent fall in trade, as businesses around the world cut back and families stay out of stores and malls: again the largest decline in trade since the Second World War. American data on merchandise imports, merchandise exports and services trade illustrate the trends:

Goods imports have dropped by 34 percent from the July 2008 record, falling from $195 billion to $129 billion by January. (The last available month.) About half the drop is in commodity imports, and half in manufactured goods. Samples:

• Africa: Down from $10 billion a month in mid-2008 to $3 billion, reflecting above all the falling price of oil, which makes up about 80 percent of Africa's exports to the United States. (Middle East data are much the same.)



• China: Down from $31 billion in July to $25 billion in January; especially sharp drops appear in consumer electronics like TVs, personal computers, DVD players, phones, and cameras.



• Canada/Mexico: Down from $48 billion to $30 billion, mainly because of lower oil and gas prices and declining car imports.

Goods exports are down from a $121 billion peak, also in July 2008, to $82 billion as of January, or by 32 percent. The drop has been fastest in manufactured goods, with cars, chemicals and semiconductors hit especially hard; agriculture, pharmaceuticals, power equipment, and scientific instruments have held up a bit better. Examples:

• Asia: By region, trends seem depressingly consistent. U.S. exports to Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are all off by about a third. Asian trade has been hit a bit harder, with cross-Pacific exports down from $26 billion to $16 billion. The sharpest Asian declines are a nearly 60 percent drop in sales to Taiwan (from $2.5 billion in July to $1.1 billion in January) and a nearly equivalent fall in exports to Korea. Trade with Vietnam has held up best.



• FTAs: Exports to FTA partners have fallen at about the same pace as to other countries. Sales to Canada and Mexico are down from $30 billion to $20 billion a month, principally because of an especially severe slump in sales to Canada. With the other 14 partners, the drop has been from $9 billion to $6 billion.

Services trade is the comparatively good news, holding up noticeably better than goods trade. Total services trade is down about 10 percent, falling from a July peak of $81 billion to $74 billion, with exports imports both down about 8 percent.

By way of alarming comparison, this six-month drop is a bit faster than the six-month fall at the beginning of the Depression, when trade fell from $920 million in October '29 to $640 million by April of 1930: i.e., 30.4 percent. In May, the Congress added the Smoot-Hawley Act and foreign tariff retaliation to the effects of deflation and falling demand. Trade totals then fell by another 72 percent over the next three years, bottoming out at $184 million in February 1933.

Further Reading:

Melancholy analysis from the internationals --

Growth predictions from the IMF show world GDP dropping by 1 percent this year. The U.S. economy is set to shrink by 2.6 percent, and other rich countries will fare even worse. European economies are likely to average a 3.2 percent decline; Japan's will shrink by 5.8 percent; Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan may be hit even harder. Developing-world growth rates will not go negative, but will often fall faster from their peak rates than rich-country figures: Chinese growth, for example, may fall from 13 percent in 2007 to 5 percent in 2009. The analysis takes account of "stimulus" bills around the world, which will contribute about 1.2 percent of positive GDP growth, averting an even larger contraction. The United States, China, Russia, Korea, Australia, and Saudi Arabia have launched the largest measures, at 2 percent or more of GDP. The Italian, Indian, French, and Brazilian efforts are smallest, at 0.6 percent or less. IMF's most recent forecast:
http://www.imf.org/external/np/g20/pdf/031909a.pdf

Trade predictions from the WTO forecast a 9 percent drop in world trade, with rich-country trade falling somewhat faster than developing-country trade:
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres09_e/pr554_e.htm

Policy alarm from the World Bank -- Bank analysts Newfarmer and Gamberoni worry about protectionism, citing imposition of 47 trade-restriction policies since the crisis began last September and singling out the European Union for special censure. (The EU has reinstituted export subsidies for butter, cheese, and milk powder. "Export subsidies are especially egregious," they say, "because they contravene the draft Doha modalities.") Other examples include Russian tariffs on cars, "Buy American" provisions in U.S. stimulus legislation, Argentine import licenses, an Indonesian policy of limiting imports of textiles and toys to a few designated ports, and Chinese and Indian tax rebates for exporters. But they also find 12 trade-opening policies, and note that both economic interests and international law provide stronger guards against broad market-closing than they did in the 1930s. Summary of the report -- link at the bottom for full text:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/
NEWS/0,,contentMDK:22105847~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376
~theSitePK:4607,00.html

And some hope?

The UK's homepage for next week's G-20 summit, set to discuss stimulus, financial-system regulation, Doha Round, and the like:
http://www.londonsummit.gov.uk/en/summit-aims/