1 Over the past 50 years, global trade has more than tripled relative to world gross domestic product (GDP), and the ratio of total exports to global GDP now stands at about 30 percent – though, interestingly, the rate of growth of global international trade has declined to the level of the growth rate of world GDP since the start of the Great Recession.
International trade has not loomed as large in the U.S. national accounts as it has for many other countries, but it is an increasingly important driver of the U.S. economy, with the share of trade in U.S. GDP currently at about 15 percent.