According to the 31st World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Trade Monitoring Report on G20 trade measures, trade restrictive measures introduced by G20 economies significantly increased in coverage over the past year.
Although G20 economies also continued to introduce wide-ranging trade facilitating measures, the report points to increasing evidence of inward-looking and unilateral trade policy decisions.
During the review period, which ran from mid-October 2023 to mid-October 2024, G20 economies introduced 91 new trade-restrictive and 141 trade-facilitating measures on goods, both of which mostly dealt with imports. The trade coverage of the trade-restrictive measures was estimated at USD 828.9 billion which was up significantly from USD 246.0 billion in the last G20 report. Similarly, the trade coverage of trade-facilitating measures grew to USD 1,069.6 billion (up from USD 318.8 billion).
Regarding export restrictions, 22 new measures were introduced during the review period covered by the report, covering an estimated USD 230.8 billion of merchandise exports, representing 1.3% of the value of G20 merchandise exports or 0.9% of world exports. A year ago, the trade coverage of export restrictions was estimated at USD 121.7 billion (0.7% of G20 exports or 0.5% of world exports).
The average number of trade remedy initiations (against dumping and subsidizing) by G20 economies was 25.4 per month during the review period, close to the highest peak observed so far in 2020 (28.6 initiations per month)
Source: WTO