For all the hopes and analyst bets that the U.S.-China truce will lift the global economy in 2020, shipping gauges aren’t providing much optimism that a rebound will be quick.
Traffic at some of the world’s most significant ports has a lot of ground to make up, according to the latest data on our Trade Tracker:
The sickly shipping dashboard on the Tracker matches the sagging sentiment and country export categories, with the 10 indicators together painting a lackluster picture of global trade. We’ve been following these gauges for more than a year, with some improving in fits and starts as tariff battles raged then waned.
But the latest data are a reminder that it could take a while to pump more steam into trade flows. For one thing, U.S.-China détentes have shown quick reversals before, interrupting progress in these gauges. And the phase-one deal that the world’s two largest economies signed last week will take a while to implement, and even after it’s in place, the accord keeps in place some $370 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports as well as Beijing’s retaliatory levies.
So the watchword for those eager to see green again is patience: The numbers could get quite a bit noisier from here, as the unusually early Lunar New Year will start to make the results difficult to interpret over the next few months even more so than in a typical year.
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