The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) top decision-making body will have every reason to fret when it meets on February 26. International trade—a key engine of global prosperity since the fall of the Berlin Wall— has ground nearly to a halt and is set to remain anemic in the coming years.  In 2023, trade in goods and services expanded by the slenderest of argins, an estimated 0.2 percent, the slowest pace in 50 years outside of global recessions. It would have declined outright but for the growth of trade in services. Trade in goods shrank roughly 2 percent, the sharpest contraction during this century outside of a global recession. Trade growth will improve this year but it will still be half the average rate in the decade before the pandemic. In fact, by the end of 2024, global trade will register the slowest half-decade of growth since the 1990s.