Global trade will still grow even if all tariffs proposed during President Trump’s election campaign are implemented, and other countries retaliate, said DHL in the latest edition of its Trade Atlas, published on 12 March. However, the tariffs could significantly reduce the rate of growth, it said.
The Atlas is published by logistics company DHL and the New York University Stern School of Business.
Global trade recovered in 2024 and is forecast to grow faster over the next five years than during the preceding decade, with India, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines leading the field. The countries with the fastest projected trade growth also include several in Africa and Latin America.
The evidence also suggests that the ongoing trade conflict has not substantially cut US reliance on Chinese goods, the report added.
It said that while uncertainty looms over future trade policies following US President Donald Trump’s re-election last year, global trade growth has proven surprisingly resilient in the face of recent disruptions. This pattern is likely to continue even as the US begins a campaign of tariff increases.
Recent forecasts predict goods trade will grow at a compound annual rate of 3.1% from 2024 to 2029. This roughly aligns with GDP growth and is modestly faster than the previous decade. DHL Express chief executive, John Pearson, said: “There is still significant potential for trade growth in advanced and emerging economies worldwide. It’s impressive to see how international trade continues to withstand every conceivable challenge, from the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic to tariffs and geopolitical conflicts.”
Between 2024 and 2029, India also stands out as the country with the third largest absolute amount of forecast trade growth (6% of additional global trade), behind China (12%) and the US (10%).
On a regional basis, the fastest trade volume growth from 2024 to 2029 is forecast for South and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the ASEAN countries – with compound annual growth rates between 5% and 6%. All other regions are forecast to grow at rates of 2% to 4%.
The Atlas ads that, despite widespread interest in nearshoring and producing goods closer to customers, the DHL Trade Atlas 2025 demonstrates that trade has not become more regionalized overall. In fact, it says, actual trade flows indicate the opposite trend. In the first nine months of 2024, the average distance traversed for all traded goods reached a record 5,000 kilometers, while the share of trade within major regions fell to a new low of 51%.
Despite a turn toward more restrictive US trade policies, most countries continue to pursue trade as a key economic opportunity, and US trade barriers could strengthen ties among other countries. Also, many of Trump’s tariff threats may end up being different from those originally proposed or they may be delayed to prevent a spike in domestic inflation.
While the US share of world imports currently stands at 13%, and its share of exports is 9% – enough for US policies to have substantial effects on other countries – it is not enough to unilaterally determine the future of global trade.
“While threats to the global trading system must be taken seriously, global trade has shown great resilience because of the large benefits that it delivers for economies and societies,” said Steven Altman, senior research scholar and director of the DHL Initiative on Globalization at NYU Stern’s Center for the Future of Management. “While the US could pull back from trade – at a significant cost – other countries are not likely to follow the US down that path because smaller countries would suffer even more in a global retreat from trade.”
The DHL Trade Atlas 2025 said that while trade between blocs of close allies of the US and China declined in 2022 and 2023 relative to trade within these blocs, those were minor and did not continue in 2024.
The US and China have reduced their shares of trade with each other, but not enough to constitute a meaningful “decoupling.” Direct US–China trade has fallen from 3.5% of world trade in 2016 to 2.6% over the first nine months of 2024. However, the US still brings in as high a share of its imports from China as the rest of the world does. Also, there is evidence suggesting that US imports from China are underreported. Moreover, data that also considers Chinese inputs in goods the US imports from other countries suggests no meaningful drop in US reliance on goods made in China.
dhl.com/tradeatlas
