Global trade was slowing even before President Donald Trump was elected. The ratio of total world exports to global gross domestic product -- a rough measure of how many times a dollar of goods gets passed back and forth between national economies in order to create a single dollar of economic value -- has been drifting lower since 2011. Hyun Song Shin, the head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, attributes the change to weaker financing conditions for exporters, as well as a stronger dollar.
