The OECD is the latest organization to issue a report with downward global growth projections:

Global growth has eased to around 3% this year, well below its long-run average. This largely reflects further weakness in EMEs. Deep recessions have emerged in Brazil and Russia, whilst the ongoing slowdown in China and the associated weakness of commodity prices has hit activity in key trading partners and commodity exporting economies, and increased financial market uncertainty. Global trade growth has slowed markedly, especially in the EMEs, and financial conditions have become less supportive in most economies. Growth in the OECD economies has held up this year, at around 2%, implying a modest reduction in economic slack, helped by an upturn in private consumption growth.

The OECD report rehashes the general theme developed in this column and elsewhere over the last few months. First, the decline in Chinese raw material demand is hurting emerging economies.Second, this lowered growth slightly hurts developed markets with weaker demand for industrial goods (this partially explains the shallow US industrial recession of the last few months).But the OECD report adds some important color, especially in the area of trade.They note,

A key uncertainty stems from the unexpectedly sharp slowdown in world trade growth this year, to an estimated 2%. Over the past five decades there have been only five other years in which global trade growth has been 2% or less, all of which coincided with a marked downturn of global growth. “

The accompanying chart shows how large a historical anomaly this event is:

Brazil, China and Russia are responsible for half of this decline.With China rebalancing its economy, it’s natural to wonder if this trend will continue into next year.

Chinese news continues to be bearish. Producer prices contracted again, this time at a 5.3% annual rate.CPI printed a weak 1.3% Y/Y advance.The Chinese statistics agency reported industrial production up 5.6% — a six year low.Fixed asset investment advanced 10.2% — the slowest pace since 2000.The 11% Y/Y retail sales increase was the only positive news as it potentially shows the economy is in fact rebalancing.