Poor outlook for global trade

The pace of the international flow of goods is a deciding factor in the
development of the logistics sector. Over the long term, global trade has
typically outperformed the global economy. Global trade has more than
quadrupled since the mid-1990s, whereas global GDP has nearly tripled,
resulting in a significant increase in global openness – the share of trade in
global GDP.

The role of trade in GDP, as a measure of globalisation, increased
from a little over 10% in the mid-1990s to more than 30% in 2008. In the wake
of the 2008/09 global recession, global trade suffered a setback. Openness fell
to around 27% in 2009. However, the fast economic recovery pushed the
foreign trade quota back up to the levels seen prior to the crisis by 2012.