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This edition of the Global Trade Update examines the strong, but increasingly uneven expansion of international trade in the first half of 2026.
Global goods trade is estimated to have reached approximately US$13.7 trillion in the first half of 2026, up 12.5 % from the same period in 2025. Services trade grew by 10.5 %. Together, goods and services added around US$2 trillion to global trade, putting it on course for a record annual value.
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The 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing Sustainable Transformations warns of a lasting sustainable development divide as SDG financing needs are growing but development financing is not keeping pace. It calls on the international community to align financing with sustainable development by combing three sets of actions. First, scale up development cooperation and SDG investment. Second, strengthen the international financial architecture. Third, accelerate national sustainable industrial transformations.
Download the 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing Sustainable Transformations
According to a new report from the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global trade was worth a record $32 trillion in 2022, but amid deteriorating economic conditions and rising uncertainties, growth turned negative in the last half of the year and is set to stagnate in the first half of 2023.
The silver lining was the strong performance of trade in environmentally friendly “green goods,” says UNCTAD’s latest Global Trade Update.
“This is good news for the planet,” says Alessandro Nicita, one of the report’s authors, “as these goods are key to protecting the environment and fighting climate change.”
The world is headed towards a global recession and prolonged stagnation unless we quickly change the current policy course of monetary and fiscal tightening in advanced economies, according to a new report from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Supply-side shocks, waning consumer and investor confidence and the war in Ukraine have provoked a global slowdown and triggered inflationary pressures. All regions will be affected, but alarm bells are ringing most for developing countries, many of which are edging closer to debt default. Climate stress is intensifying, with mounting loss and damage in vulnerable countries who lack the fiscal space to deal with disasters, let alone invest in their own long-term development.
UNCTAD projects that world economic growth will slow to 2.5% in 2022 and drop to 2.2% in 2023. The global slowdown would leave real GDP still below its pre-pandemic trend, costing the world more than $17 trillion – close to 20% of the world’s income.
Read highlights from the report.