The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released the January 2025 update to its World Economic Outlook (WEO), originally published in October 2024.
This update includes key revisions to global trade growth projections, particularly for advanced economies. According to the following figure, global trade growth is expected to reach 3.2% in 2025 and 3.3% in 2026. However, both figures have been revised downward in the latest update.
For advanced economies, trade growth in 2025 is now projected at 2.1%, reflecting a downward revision of -0.5 percentage points, while the 2026 projection was revised down by -0.3 percentage points to 2.5%. Although trade growth is expected to improve slightly in 2026 at both the global and advanced economy levels, emerging economies face a different trajectory.
Trade growth in emerging economies is forecasted at 5.0% in 2025 and 4.6% in 2026, with both figures revised upward. The projections indicate a downward trend in trade growth for these economies.
“What is concerning however, is that growth from Asia into North America and Europe accounted for a sizeable part of the container growth in 2024, hence a downward revision in trade growth in 2025 and 2026 is not positive news,” stated Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
Another concern highlighted in the report is the slowdown in China’s economic growth. After an economic output of 5.2% in 2023, growth slowed to 4.8% in 2024 and is projected to decline further to 4.5% by 2026.
Similarly, several advanced economies are expected to experience slowing economic growth heading into 2026. For instance, the United States is projected to see a significant decline, with growth dropping from 2.7% in 2025 to 2.1% in 2026.
