President Donald Trump’s global trade war continues to have ripple effects on global trade
In the latest issue of Sea‑Intelligence, Murphy wrote there is a critical disconnect with the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which headlined a “steady” global economy.
“The WEO reported a global GDP growth at 3.3% for both 2025 and 2026, but an in‑depth review of the report reveals that this stability masks that world trade growth is expected to slow down significantly from 4.1% in 2025 to 2.6% in 2026,” said Murphy. “This decrease appears to be a direct consequence of the “front-loading” phenomenon seen throughout 2025, where shippers accelerated imports to pre‑empt anticipated trade policy shifts. This 2026 outlook suggests that volume growth may struggle to absorb new vessel capacity, potentially putting renewed pressure on freight rates.”
Murphy warned the IMF trade outlook is skewed because it is based on the higher-valued technology exports.
“IMF’s trade projections are based on monetary value rather than TEU (containers),” explained Murphy. “This creates a challenging scenario for container shipping stakeholders. The headline growth is largely value‑driven by the technology sector, obscuring the reality of weaker physical demand for volume‑dense goods.”
