Between 1960 and 2012, in constant US dollars (2005=100), world merchandise trade has grown at the annual average rate of 6.2%, while the GWP (Gross World Product) grew at the much lower annual average rate of 4.2%. The curves show the growing role of trade as a component of GWP. In 1960, it accounted for 20% of GWP, to reach 52% in 2012, after a peak of 53% in 2008, when the global financial crisis crippled the world economy. The correlation between the two variables is very high, as given by the R² statistic above 0.9.

The successive GATT Rounds of trade and tariffs negotiations, and the following WTO (World Trade Organization) multilateral talks aimed at increasing the global trade succeeded in opening the throttle and significantly accelerated trade growth — on average by 1,4% annually. From 1948 to 1960, trade grew at the average rate of 4.71% per year. Since 1960, trade growth preceded GWP growth by 6.15% to 4.22%. Growth rates have accelerated particularly since 2002, the trend having not been impaired by the 2008 crisis.

Ultimately, who are the genuine beneficiaries of trade growth ? Allegedly trade is good for the producers and the consumers, for sellers and buyers, for workers and financiers, for those at the ends of the trade chain and for the middlemen, for the rich and the poor. Reality is less rosy. As Amancio Ortega (Zara), Bernard Arnault (LVMH), the Waltons (Walt-Mart), Stefan Persson (H&M), Karl Albrecht (Aldi), or Jeff Bezos (Amazon) grow their multi-billion trade-generated fortunes, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers, often in their childhood, survive on miserable wages, threatened by spreading unemployment, fearful of a sudden collapse of their meager income that would curtail their capability to feed the family, pay for the shelter, or exercise the "unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" that the law lavishly offers to the wretched of the world.

Trade is a sucker's bargain. People around the world are induced to further indebt themselves purchasing the latest fashion apparel from Benetton, Bonmarché, Cato Fashions, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Mango, Matalan, Primark, Wal-Mart, and what have you. To supply them with the stuff, garment workers producing for those firms pay a heavy toll — this was the case when the inadequate eight-story Rana Plaza building, in Savar, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh collapsed, causing 1,129 killed and approximately 2,500 injured, on 24 April 2013. Maybe someone should suggest to Mr Pascal Lamy, the French socialist-affiliated WTO boss, or his Brazilian successor, that WTO provide proper compensation to the families of the Bangladesh workers who so involuntarily went beyond their line of duty and sacrificed their lives for the glorious advancement of global trade.

Sources: WTO for trade data, World DataBank for GWP data, and BEA for $US GDP deflator.

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