Responding to the need for timely information on rapidly changing trade patterns emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in 2021, the OECD began producing regular updates which provided analysis of impacts of recent and developing challenges to the international trading system (hereafter OECD Trade Updates). OECD Trade Updates are designed to inform trade policy discussions in OECD countries and feed into other trade-related work at the OECD. Using detailed data and modelling tools, past reports provided updates on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery and shed light on potential trade implications of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and accompanying sanctions.1
This report continues to assess how trade has developed since the pandemic and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and includes an assessment of recent disruptions in key maritime transportation routes as well as an overview of the evolution of concentration in international trade in electric vehicles (EVs) and EV batteries. Section 2 starts with an overview of what happened to goods and services trade in the past year and provides a discussion of projections for 2024 and 2025. The section also highlights trade developments in China and Russia and ends with an assessment of the commodity markets in the context of recent shocks, with a view of helping to better understand recent trade performance. Section 3 focuses on international trade transport, providing background information in the context of recent disruptions to key maritime routes. The section provides information on how goods are typically transported internationally, gives an overview of important trade routes and maritime chokepoints, and discusses how recent disruptions in the Red Sea and Panama Canal may have impacted other trade routes, shipping costs and global trade overall. Given the recent tensions over the spike in exports of EVs from China, Section 4 includes a discussion on China’s increasing dominance in exports of EVs and EV batteries in the context of key features of the passenger car supply chains evolution over the last two decades.