According to the DHL Trade Atlas 2025, a report from DHL and the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business, global trade is forecast to continue growing, albeit at a slower pace, ‘even if all tariff increases proposed by the Trump administration are implemented and countries retaliate in turn’.
In 2025, the report forecasts ‘a small additional acceleration in global trade growth’ and, while acknowledging that the medium-term is more uncertain, it predicts that trade growth will ‘continue at a similar rate’ through to 2029.
“The DHL Trade Atlas 2025 reveals highly encouraging insights,” said John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express.
He added: “There is still significant potential for trade growth in advanced and emerging economies worldwide. It’s impressive to see how international trade continues to withstand every conceivable challenge, from the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic to tariffs and geopolitical conflicts.”
The report does take account of the impact of US president Donald Trump’s recent tariff announcements, however, noting that trade uncertainty spiked to an unprecedented level after Trump’s re-election.
It points towards a model constructed by Oxford Economics, which estimates that in what it considers to be the most extreme scenario – a 45% additional tariff on goods from China and 15% on the rest of the world, with reciprocal tariffs – the result would be a reduction in global trade volumes of 9-10% relative to the Oxford Economics baseline forecast by 2031.
The DHL Trade Atlas 2025 outlines ‘several reasons for optimism about the future of global trade
despite a turn toward more restrictive US trade policies’. It claims that ‘most countries continue to pursue trade as a key economic opportunity, and US trade barriers could strengthen ties among other countries’ and that ‘many of Trump’s tariff threats may end up different than originally proposed or delayed to prevent a spike in domestic inflation’.
Furthermore, it identifies that ‘the US share of world imports currently stands at 13%, and its share of exports is 9%’. This, it says, is ‘enough for US policies to have substantial effects on other countries, but not enough to unilaterally determine the future of global trade’.
Steven A Altman, senior research scholar and director of the DHL Initiative on Globalization at NYU Stern’s Center for the Future of Management, commented: “While threats to the global trading system must be taken seriously, global trade has shown great resilience because of the large benefits that it delivers for economies and societies.
“While the US could pull back from trade – at a significant cost – other countries are not likely to follow the US down that path because smaller countries would suffer even more in a global retreat from trade.”
India, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are identified in the report as new leaders for trade growth, all forecast to rank among the top 30 for both growth rate and scale of trade growth.
The report identifies that, at the level of major world regions, the fastest trade volume growth from 2024 to 2029 is forecast for South and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries – with compound annual growth rates between 5% and 6%. All other regions, it says, are forecast to grow at rates of 2% to 4%.
In addition to the Supply Chain Excellence Awards in the UK, this year will see the return of the Supply Chain Excellence Awards USA, and further worldwide expansion of these prestigious awards with the launch of the Supply Chain Excellence Awards MEA and the Supply Chain Excellence Awards APAC.
And as the largest logistics and supply chain event in the UK – IntraLogisteX 2025 – fast approaches, don’t forget to register for free, and check out its counterparts taking place throughout the year in the USA, MEA and APAC regions.
To read more about the Supply Chain Excellence Awards around the world and get an exclusive preview of IntraLogisteX next week, click here to read the March issue of Logistics Manager.
