G20 should help address common global challenges
China DailyBrazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva greets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as he arrives ahead of the G20 Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 17, 2024. The EU recently joined the fray by imposing tariffs of up to 45.3 percent on Chinese-made electric vehicles, raising tensions between the two major economies and threatening to destabilize international trade and stall global economic growth. The WTO's latest report highlights how global trends — geopolitical competition, regional conflicts and trade sanctions — have eroded the stable foundation of world economic growth over the past 30 years, leading to the fragmentation of the global trade system. Punitive tariffs imposed by the US on Chinese products have disrupted the normal flow of trade, investment and technologies, resulting in severe misallocation of resources and damaging global value and supply chains. This prompted more than 40 countries to impose retaliatory tariffs on US goods, igniting a global trade war that reduced the world trade volume by 66 percent and global industrial output by 33 percent in 1934, bringing the global economy to the brink of collapse.