Even by the standards of an extraordinary year, the collapse in global trade triggered by the financial turmoil of last autumn was spectacular. After having survived nearly a decade of shocks beginning with September 11 and ending in a global food crisis, the precipitate drop in commerce around the turn of 2008 was terrifying.
In two quarters, world trade volumes collapsed by about 20 per cent, wiping out three or four years’ of average trade growth in half a year. Pictures of a “ghost fleet” of dozens of empty, idle container ships moored off Singapore came to symbolise the slack that had suddenly appeared in the supply chains that snaked around the world.
