Commenting on the findings, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said: “This Trade Monitoring Update underscores the resilience of world trade despite the challenging geopolitical environment. Even in a context of rising protectionist pressures and signs of economic fragmentation, there are governments around the world still taking meaningful steps to liberalize and facilitate trade. This attests to the benefits of trade for people's purchasing power, business competitiveness, and price stability.
At the same time, a series of import-restricting measures announced too recently to be captured in the update looks set to affect a significant amount of world trade. I am encouraged to see efforts by members to use the WTO and other venues to find solutions to their differences. This is far better than tit-for-tat retaliation that leaves everyone worse off.”
During the review period, WTO members introduced more trade-facilitating (169) than trade-restricting (99) measures on goods. Most of the measures were on the import side. The introduction of new export restrictions declined significantly during the review period. Reversing a trend observed between 2021 and 2023, new import restrictions outpaced new export restrictions.
The overall trade coverage of the trade-facilitating measures, on both import and export sides, was estimated at USD 1,219.0 billion, up from USD 977.2 billion in the last report. The trade coverage of other trade-related measures on import and export sides — covering those that are neither trade-facilitating nor remedies — was estimated at USD 433.6 billion, up from USD 337.1 billion in the last annual report.
The average number of trade remedy initiations increased during the review period (24.6) after years of a declining trend. Almost 90% of investigations recorded were initiated by G20 economies. Anti-dumping continued to be the most frequent trade remedy action, accounting for 70.3% of all initiations and 93.9% of all terminations.
The trade coverage of all remedy investigations initiated during this period was USD 56.1 billion (up from USD 24.6 billion in the last annual report), while that of terminations was valued at USD 2.5 billion (down from USD 15.5 billion).
In services sectors, most new measures introduced by WTO members were either liberalizing or moving towards an improved regulatory framework facilitating trade further fine-tuning intellectual property regimes as well as reducing COVID-19 related measures on goods services intellectual property government support steadily since2009 percentage total imports so far this year covered restrictions force was estimated representing activity terms provision subsidies industrial policy increasing rapidly especially areas referencing renewable non-renewable energy sources climate change national security.
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