This note outlines the results of an in-house analysis carried out by DG TRADE that estimates how the reduction in economic activity following the COVID19 outbreak has affected international trade. The increasing spread of the virus has caused a significant amount of governments to introduce measures that shut down businesses temporarily and have restricted travel and the movement of people. These measures will lead to sharp contractions in the level of output, household spending, investment and international trade. While there are a wealth of forecasts on GDP growth in 2020, there is a limited range of work done on trade projections for 2020, in particular for EU trade. The analysis outlined in this note is one of the few attempts at predicting the impact of the COVID19 outbreak on trade flows. In order to test the robustness of this analysis, results are compared to the latest WTO trade forecasts published on 8 April
