| 2024 | 2026 | |
| Working satellites | ~11,500 | ~18,000 |
| Fiber-optic cables | 561 cables | ~637 cables |
| Container ships | 30.4 million TEU | 33.9 million TEU |
| Freighter planes | 2,375 | ~2,675 |
Two of the three big drivers of “economic integration” have faded or gone dark. The Trump administration’s tariff binge, even after the Supreme Court scrapped its “international emergency” decrees, leaves the world economy more “closed” than it was a year ago. Peace among big powers is growing steadily shakier. This ought to chill commerce — that was the path of the 1930s — but so far it hasn’t. In fact, the WTO’s calculations of “trade growth by volume” (essentially, though not exactly, an inflation-adjusted real-dollar count of export growth) put trade growth in 2025 faster than any year since the anomalous pandemic-recovery year 2021, and well above the last decade’s 3.0% average.
| 2025 | 3.60% |
| 2024 | 2.90% |
| 2023 | -1.20% |
| 2022 | 2.70% |
| 2021 | 9.70% |
| 2020 | -5.30% |
| 2019 | 0.10% |
| 2018 | 3.00% |
| 2017 | 4.70% |
| 2016 | 1.70% |
Why? In contrast to the 1930s, rising trade barriers aren’t a worldwide policy. Back then, lots of big economies followed the Hoover administration into high-tariff isolationism. In the 2020s, by contrast, most have kept policy stable, and many are continuing to integrate and ‘liberalize’. The European Union and South America’s “Mercosur” group (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) signed a Free Trade Agreement in January; the U.K. has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership; the African Continental Free Trade Area just got its 49th ratification, etc.
The U.S.’s large share of trade — 12.8% of goods & services imports, 9.8% of exports as of 2024 — means American policy choices should nonetheless affect total trade flows at least a bit. But that impact may be cushioned or entirely offset, though, by the strength of the third driver: the steady decline in communication and logistics costs as physical infrastructure improves.
Even over the last two years, it’s become noticeably cheaper and easier to move information and goods around the world. Some indicators:
Information carriers: Much of the world’s $8 trillion in services trade (setting aside personal travel and transport) moves in digital form, converted to information and then sent under the sea along a glass wire or through the sky via satellite beam.
Cables: Fiber-optic cables carry most information traffic, and therefore most services trade. Cable-tracker TeleGeography’s count of active cables has risen from 561 to a projected 637 this year, and newer cables are not only numerous but more powerful than their older siblings. As an example, last year’s “Bifrost” (oddly named for the “rainbow bridge” to heaven in Norse myth) is a 16,500-kilometer wire connecting Singapore to California, with branches in Oregon, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Bifrost can carry 32.5 terabits of data per second. By comparison, all of the 111 world cables in 2010 put together could carry about 239.5 terabits per second. A decade earlier, as fiber-optics replaced the older copper wires, the total world capacity was below 2 terabits per second.
Satellites: Satellites carry less information than cables but offer more options with fewer geographic dead spots, and are multiplying even faster than cables: Jonathan’s endearingly “2005 blogger-style web page” count of operating satellites, having risen from about 5,000 operating satellites in 2020 to 9,100 in early 2024, likely passed 15,000 this month. Liftoff schedules suggest the total may be near 20,000 when the next Congress takes office in January 2027.
Goods carriers: Luxuries and perishables, manufacturing inputs, metals, ores and energy, appliances and clothes, all move in ships, trucks, pipelines, and planes. About 45% of the $24 trillion in annual merchandise trade — measured by value rather than weight — travels by container ship, and 35% by plane.
Container ships: As of early 2026, container trackers at Alphaliner report 7,520 container ships steaming around the world’s oceans. Taken together, they can carry 33.9 million TEU worth of containers. (TEU: “twenty-foot equivalent units,” a standard measurement standing for a container 20 feet long, 8 feet high, and 8.5 feet wide.) The container fleet of 2024 had 6,464 ships with a capacity of 31.4 million TEU. For a more dramatic counterpoint, the entire worldwide container ship count in the year 2000 was 2,595 ships with 4.3 million TEU. So the last two years of yardwork have added nearly the equivalent of the whole millennial fleet. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of the Biden era, meanwhile, put $17 billion into U.S. seaports — more efficient terminals, better links to roads and railways, etc. — meaning that even in the U.S., cargo arrivals are incrementally getting faster and cheaper, offsetting some tariff increases.
Air freighters: The count of active large civil aircraft, meanwhile, has jumped from 28,400 to over 35,500, or by about a fifth. This isn’t simple to relate directly to air cargo flows, as some planes move only people, some just cargo, and many do both. But the count of planes strictly meant for cargo gives at least a sense of direction. Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Outlook estimated that by 2039, the world’s delivery services would be using 2,439 freighter planes. Their most recent edition says we’ve already arrived: by 2024, the cargo fleet employed 2,375 freighters — 920 at standard size, 800 medium widebodies, 655 large widebodies — and about 300 more took off in 2025 and 2026. Their new long-term projection is that the cargo fleet will reach 3,975 planes by 2044, up 70%, with the fastest growth in the largest planes.
In sum: So far, the world of the 2020s isn’t following the example set in the early 1930s. As the Trump administration is trying to make trade more expensive and difficult for Americans, other forces are trying to make it cheaper and easier. As to which will win out, from the U.S. angle, it seems to be a draw so far. From the world perspective (should the Trump program remain in place for a while), the apparent trend is for the administration to diminish parts of the American role in the global economy, rather than shrink the global economy itself.
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
Trade flows:
The WTO’s stat dashboard (through 2024).
… Census’ U.S. trade data for 2025.
… and the Port of Los Angeles tracks container arrivals.
Cables and satellites:
TeleGeography’s interactive Submarine Cable Map shows all 637 active fiber-optic cables, with years of deployment, capacity, and more.
Jonathan’s Space Pages count satellites.
… and PPI’s Mary Guenther has recommendations for next-generation space policy.
Ships and planes:
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport series counts ships, evaluates port efficiency, etc, through 2025.
Alphaliner’s up-to-date running count of container ships and capacity.
Boeing’s most recent Commercial Outlook reviews the 43,600-plane worldwide commercial air fleet of 2024, and looks ahead to the 2040s.
And the Maritime Administration’s summary of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s seaport program.
Policy:
The U.K. explains CPTPP benefits.
The European Commission on its FTA with Mercosur.
… and the view from Brasilia.
And the African Union’s AfCFTA page.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
