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.