Trends in Trade, the Story Is Not so Simple

The NYT had an interesting article arguing that trade has stopped growing in the last couple of years. The piece notes data showing that combined U.S. exports and imports fell in the 2015 compared to 2014 and seem likely to fall again in 2016. It then raises the concern that this will lead to slower growth going forward. There are a couple of points that complicate this issue.

The first is that the drop in the dollar value of trade is the result of lower prices, not a smaller volume of goods...