Last week 2,833 delegates from across China met in Beijing for
the annual National People's Congress. Less than a mile away a
smaller gathering took place, as Deloitte economists from around
the world met for Deloitte's Global Economics Forum.
One of the messages to come out of the Deloitte Forum is that
manufacturing, exports and investment are under pressure across the
world.
The hard numbers bear this out. Manufacturing activity is
shrinking in the US and China, the world's two largest
economies. Output is still rising in the euro area, but at the
slowest pace in a year. Britain's manufacturing sector is back
in recession.
Part of the problem is lacklustre global demand for manufactured
products, particularly in emerging market economies. This has
contributed to a slowdown in trade, one of the pre-crisis drivers
of global growth. The value of global goods exports last year fell
by 13.8% in dollar terms, the first contraction since 2009. You get
a sense of how
