Less skewed

In the run-up to the financial crisis the world economy was marked by huge current-account imbalances. China’s surplus alone was 0.7% of global GDP in 2008; America had a deficit of over 1% of world GDP that year. Since then the world has rebalanced. The current-account balances of the world’s big surplus economies have totalled less than 2% of global GDP since 2009, thanks partly to the strength of the Chinese currency and lower oil prices. Weak growth has cut European demand for imports. An energy boom has helped reduce America’s trade deficit, as a percentage of global GDP, to a 16-year low.