GLOBAL TRADE IMBALANCES – AN ANALYSIS BEFORE AND AFTER THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to define the
notion of global imbalances as well as to present the
amounts of trade imbalances of the world's largest traders
in the period before and in the aftermath of the global
economic crisis. Although the global economic crisis has
somewhat corrected high deficits, or surpluses of the world's
largest traders, data show that after the recovery of world
trade after the global economic crisis, there is a resumption
of trade imbalances in these countries. The global trade
imbalances of the world's largest traders are shown in
absolute terms as the difference between the import and
export of goods, but also in relative terms expressed as a
share of the surplus or deficit in the gross domestic product
of each country. It is important to point out that thirteen
countries whose trade imbalances are represented in this
paper, either individually or as aggregated within a group of
countries, make up over half of the world's total trade in
goods.