The World Trade Organization is calling for more active participation among its members in the face of escalating trade tensions, which it said had dealt a blow to two-thirds of global trading activity, despite involving two warring economic behemoths, the United States and China.

WTO secretary-general Roberto Azevêdo said the multilateral trading system had become even more important for providing trade stability and certainty, referring to the escalating tension that the rest of the world has been watching with deep concern.

Researchers at the WTO found, said Azevêdo, that should tensions grow into a full-blown trade war, global trading activities would diminish by 17.5 percent.

Some 1.9 percent growth would also be knocked off of global GDP, adding up to an even dimmer future for global economic growth, which the International Monetary Fund had recently adjusted to 3.7 percent from 3.9 in 2018 and 2019.

“Some countries would be affected more than others. The more integrated they are, the more affected they will be,” Azevêdo told a press briefing taking place within the 2018 Annual Meetings of IMF-World Bank Group on Wednesday evening.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development secretary-general Angel Gurría said earlier in the day that global trade growth had contracted to 3 percent in the first half of 2018, a significant decline from 5 percent in the same period last year.

It actually did not matter much to the world which countries fought with each other, Azevêdo said, especially as two-thirds of global goods trade was composed of products manufactured in two or more countries.

Nevertheless, the WTO had been in touch with the administration of US President Donald Trump, he said.

The US had expressed concerns not only about the well-being of global trade but also the urgency for reform in the WTO, the world’s only international trade organization with legal power.

“We have several groups talking to each other, [such as a] trilateral discussion between the US, Europe and Japan,” he said. “This is something that is very much ongoing — it’s still at the earliest stages and we don’t know where we are going yet because there are so many different perspectives on the table [...] and some would not want to discuss anything.”

He expressed hope that the talks between WTO member countries would progress further, albeit slowly, into something more than just reform ideas for the organization, such as initiatives to simmer down trade tensions.

Meanwhile, OECD’s Gurría said separately that the world had been in the middle of recovering from the 2008 global financial crisis, which had affected Western economies the worst, when trade tensions suddenly struck.

“Simple damage will go a long way for the GDP and GDP growth, but we are now regressing instead of what we have been doing for years [which is recovering],” Gurría said during an introductory remarks session on trade growth during the meetings.

“We have stopped believing [in multilateral trading for growth] but what we have to do is continue putting evidence in front of everybody so that they cannot deny it.”

Zooming in on Indonesia, International Chamber of Commerce secretary-general John Denton said that as the only G20 member from Southeast Asia it should utilize the platform to voice its concerns about the effects of trade tensions and the lack of trade integration within the region.

“President Joko Widodo is a person who has listened to all the global stages. He will become a welcomed voice in supporting the global trading system,” Denton said. “If Indonesia is able to use its political strength in ASEAN and channel its way to the [trade integration] discussion, very much stronger trading relationships would come out.”

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