SINGAPORE (Apr 9): Evidence that March marked the start of a deep global recession is mounting. The breadth of the collapse is beginning to appear in the initial trickle of economic data across the world, revealing a cratering of trade, reined in business investment, cowering consumers and surging unemployment that is sparing few industries.
The hit to demand is visible on the world’s oceans, where a measure of US export volumes in the first two full weeks of March showed shipments abroad at less than half the year-earlier level, IHS Markit data compiled by Bloomberg showed. The damage is acute for autos: The number of anchored ships used to transport vehicles has jumped to 19% of the fleet, up from 11% a year ago, according to Bloomberg data.
After the US on April 2 reported higher-than-expected job losses, other figures for March have illustrated how the Covid-19 pandemic is extending the paralysis from producers to households, from big trading powers to more insulated economies and emerging markets.
In Germany, new-car registrations in March — usually a peak month — plunged 38% from a year earlier, and a reading in the UK tanked 44%. Three of the biggest Arab economies buckled, a services index in Brazil was the lowest since 2016 and vehicle sales in South Africa slid 30%. In Australia, which has dodged recession for three decades, job advertisements plummeted by the most since 2009, even though the nation did not go into a strict lockdown until late in the month.
“The whole system — the whole aggregate of supply chains has been rocked quite significantly,” Roberto Azevedo, the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), said in an interview. “In some respects the picture today looks bleaker than after the 2008-2009 crisis”.
The WTO is scheduled to release a new forecast for global trade on April 8 (after this issue goes to print). Azevedo said the Geneva-based organization’s latest outlook may project scenarios with “significantly larger drops” than the 12.6% slide in global trade and 2% contraction in the world economy in 2009.
Azevedo’s outlook echoes projections from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are both expecting a major downturn this year, as well as the increasingly gloomy projections of private economists.
The already-receding global economy is losing steam faster than in the early days of the financial crisis, according to Bloomberg Economics’ new global GDP tracker. The reading for March shows the global economy contracting at an annualised rate of 0.5%, compared with 0.1% in February.
From India to Italy, coronavirus lock downs have closed businesses and kept billions of people homebound for weeks, provoking a simultaneous supply and demand shock that has snarled global production and logistics networks built without sufficient capacity to absorb a jolt of this magnitude.
‘Economic disruption’
Companies including Airbus in Europe and FedEx in the US have cautioned in recent days that it is too early to estimate the length of the slump or assess the damage — displaying a level of uncertainty that stretches into supplier networks of small firms, often located in rural areas and developing economies. That has spurred governments in Europe and the US to rush aid to small businesses to prevent more from closing permanently.
Airbus, with about 135,000 workers, told employees in a letter sent in the week ending April 5 that a return to full operations is not feasible in the short term because of parts shortages and the inability of struggling airlines to take delivery of new aircraft.
In a regulatory filing on April 2, FedEx warned that an “extended period of global supply chain and economic disruption could materially and adversely affect our business” and “an extended global recession” would add even more strain. International sales make up more than half of the revenue at FedEx, which employed 177,000 last year.
The parcel-delivery company added that it is taking steps to manage cash flow and liquidity, “including review and consideration of opportunities and strategies for capital expenditure reductions and deferrals”.
Vicious cycle
With investment set to slide and more people out of work, global GDP rates could dip lower depending on how long governments maintain their lockdowns — many of which are expected to last into May or June. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that for each month of containment, there will be a loss of 2 percentage points in annual GDP growth.
Unless the virus is contained within several weeks, declining output and falling demand for trade may provoke a vicious cycle that only worsens the outlook for corporate investment and employment, compounding the labour market’s problems.
Signs are not yet pointing to a quick end and recovery. On Tuesday, Honda Motor said it will stop paying furloughed workers at all of its 10 factories in the US for three weeks.
More than 10 million Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last month, and the International Labour Organization warned almost 25 million jobs will be lost if the virus is not contained quickly.
“Getting this right is predicated on social dialogue between governments and those on the front line — the employers and workers,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement, “so that the 2020s don’t become a re-run of the 1930s.”
