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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (32795)	2/16/2009 12:37:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I suspect the percentage drop is the largest in a long time (with any other similar drops being due to large scale war, or a major trade war combined with an economic downturn like Smoot-Hawley and the Depression). OTOH I suspect the absolute level of trade is still very much above what it was several decades ago, and is definitely massively above even the level from even earlier times. I suspect even that the percentage of GDP, or by other measures comparing trade to the size of the economy, that its still a lot higher than in the past. How far back you have to go to get below today's levels (both absolute and relative to the economy) would be interesting. If its a couple of decades or less, and for those decades trade was a lot higher even as a percentage than just about any point in the past, then perhaps we've had a sort of bubble like expansion in trade, and a big drop would be expected. OTOH if you have to go back a long ways to see trade at this level then the drop looks more like a decisive break from what had been a stable increasing trend (hopefully a temporary break, but still a bad thing even then, and if protectionist ideas gain more currency and the economic slowdown is worse than I expect, it could be a much longer break)