The World Trade Organisation has sharply cut its forecast for global merchandise trade from solid growth to a decline, saying further US tariffs and spillover effects could lead to the heaviest slump since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The WTO said it expected trade in goods to fall by 0.2 per cent this year, down from its expectation in October of 3.0 per cent expansion.

It said its new estimate was based on measures in place at the start of this week.

“I’m very concerned, the contraction in global merchandise trade growth is of big concern,” WTO director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told reporters in Geneva.

US President Donald Trump imposed extra duties on steel and car imports as well as more sweeping global tariffs before unexpectedly pausing higher duties on a dozen economies.

His trade war with China has also intensified with tit-for-tat exchanges pushing levies on each other’s imports beyond 100 per cent.

The WTO said that if Trump reintroduced the full rates of his broader tariffs that would reduce goods trade growth by 0.6 percentage points, with another 0.8 point cut due to spillover effects beyond US-linked trade.

Taken together, this would lead to a 1.5 per cent decline – the steepest drop since 2020.

“If we have contraction in global merchandise the concern is spill over into broad GDP growth. We’ve seen that the trade concerns can have negative spill overs into financial markets, into other broader areas of the economy,” Okonjo-Iweala added.

She also raised alarm about the effect on developing countries.

The head of the WTO said her greatest fear was that the economies of China and the US were decoupling from one another.

The WTO estimates that merchandise trade between them will fall by 81 per cent – a drop that could have reached 91 per cent without recent exemptions for products such as smartphones.

“A decoupling could have far reaching consequences if it were to contribute to a broader fragmentation of the global economy along geopolitical lines to two isolated blocks,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

In this scenario, global GDP could shrink by 7.0 per cent in the long term, which the director general described as “significant and substantial”.

“The unprecedented nature of the recent trade policy shifts means that predictions should be interpreted with more caution than usual,” said the WTO, which is also forecasting a modest recovery of 2.5 per cent in 2026.

“Forecasting a credible baseline scenario has become virtually impossible,” Hector Torres, a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund, told Reuters.

“The remnants of a deteriorated ‘rules-based’ trading system are giving way to a capricious ‘deals-based’ disorder, where any projections hinge on government’s capacity to strike bilateral deals with the Trump administration,” Torres said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the United Nations Trade and Development agency said global economic growth could slow to 2.3 per cent as trade tensions and uncertainty drive a recessionary trend.

The Geneva-based WTO said disruption of US-China trade was expected to increase Chinese merchandise exports across all regions outside North America by between 4.0 per cent and 9.0 per cent.

Other countries would have opportunities to fill the gap in the United States in sectors such as textiles, clothing and electrical equipment.

Services trade, though not subject to tariffs, would also take a hit, the WTO said, by weakening demand related to goods trade such as transport and logistics.

Broader uncertainty could dampen spending on travel and investment-related services.

The WTO said it expected commercial services trade to grow by 4.0 per cent in 2025 and 4.1 per cent in 2026, well below baseline projections of 5.1 per cent and 4.8 per cent.

The expected downturn follows a strong 2024, when the volume of world merchandise trade grew by 2.9 per cent and commercial services trade expanded by 6.8 per cent.

Spotify has been hit by a service outage which has left thousands of users unable to stream music.

The audio streaming giant has confirmed it is aware of a problem with its services and said in a statement posted to social media that it was “checking them out”. 

Thousands of users have reported being unable to stream music via Spotify online, with audio already downloaded to a user’s library only being accessible. 

According to service monitoring site Downdetector, problems began at Spotify about 10pm AEST on Wednesday, with more than 20,000 reports of user issues with the service being logged since then. 

It said users were reporting problems with both the Spotify app and website. 

In February, the Sweden-based firm announced its user numbers had hit a record high of 675 million globally, a rise of 12 per cent over the last year.

This includes 263 million subscribers across more than 180 markets, it says.

Voters will have the final say on which leader prevailed after Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese spanned well-trodden ground in a debate rematch.

The prime minister faced off against the coalition leader at the ABC’s western Sydney studios for the second out of four campaign trail clashes on Wednesday night.

Unlike the first debate, where an audience of undecided voters declared a winner, this contest – moderated by the ABC’s national lead David Speers – will only be decided when viewers go to the ballot box on May 3.

The leaders covered everything from housing to international relations, amid moments of humility and thinly veiled hostility.

Mr Dutton admitted he was wrong after claiming the Indonesian leader had announced Russia had asked to station aircraft in the country.

“It was a mistake,” he said.

The duo traded barbs throughout the match-up, with Mr Albanese alleging the opposition leader had “verballed” the Indonesian president, and Mr Dutton accusing the prime minister of “complete dishonesty” in his portrayal of the coalition’s nuclear policy.

US President Donald Trump was also a hot topic.

Mr Dutton threaded his usual needle by claiming he could seal a deal on a tariff exemption while also distancing himself from the Republican leader.

“We trust the United States and I don’t know the president,” he said.

The prime minister, on the other hand, said he had “no reason” not to trust Mr Trump but maintained the tariffs imposed by the US were an act of economic “self-harm”.

When the moderator attempted to create a moment of levity by asking whether it would truly be a disaster for Australia if each man’s opponent won, neither leader took the bait.

“I think that Peter has taken his party to a more conservative bent than it has ever been,” Mr Albanese said.

Mr Dutton said there were some shared bipartisan positions, but he noted they had different visions and pathways.

“The prime minister is running a scare campaign,” he said.

“He doesn’t want to talk about the reality of the last three years, which has been a failure for our country.”

Halfway through the campaign, Labor is in pole position to form government according to new polling conducted by Freshwater Strategy for the Australian Financial Review.

This survey has has favoured the coalition compared with other pollsters and the latest 50-50 two-party-preferred result – alongside other polling data – indicates a swing in Labor’s favour.

Outside the ABC studios, about 100 pro-Palestine protesters gathered to oppose the major parties’ responses to Israel’s violence in Gaza.

The first leaders’ debate, hosted by Sky News and the Daily Telegraph, ended in a narrow victory for Mr Albanese after 44 per cent of the undecided voters in attendance deemed the prime minister the winner.

But 21 per cent remained unsure, indicating there is still room for Mr Dutton to make a comeback.

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have kicked off their rematch with hope for the future and a look to the past.

The prime minister is facing off against the coalition leader at the ABC’s western Sydney studios for the second out of four clashes before the May 3 election.

In the showdown moderated by the ABC’s David Speers, Mr Dutton opened by urging voters to reflect on the past three years when they go to the ballot box in a few weeks.

“It’s obvious to me that people don’t feel better off,” he said on Wednesday night.

The prime minister quickly followed up with a message of hope.

“I’m really optimistic about Australia’s future if we seize the opportunities that are right in front of us,” Mr Albanese said.

Halfway through the campaign, Labor is in poll position to form government according to new polling conducted by Freshwater Strategy for the Australian Financial Review.

This survey has has favoured the coalition compared with other pollsters and the latest 50-50 two-party-preferred result – alongside other polling data – indicates a swing in Labor’s favour.

Outside the ABC studios, about 100 pro-Palestine protesters gathered to protest the major parties’ responses to Israel’s violence in Gaza.

The first leaders’ debate, hosted by Sky News and the Daily Telegraph, ended in a narrow victory for Mr Albanese after 44 per cent of the undecided voters in attendance deemed the prime minister the winner.

But 21 per cent remained unsure, indicating there is still room for Mr Dutton to make a come back.

China’s economy expanded at a 5.4 per cent annual pace in January-March, the government says, supported by strong exports before US President Donald Trump’s rapid increases in tariffs on Chinese products.

With the trade war clouding the outlook, analysts expect the world’s second-largest economy to slow significantly in coming months, however, as tariffs as high as 145 per cent on US imports from China take effect. 

Beijing has hit back at the US with 125 per cent tariffs on American exports, while also stressing its determination to keep its own markets open to trade and investment. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visits is visiting several other Asian countries this week as he makes a case for free trade, presenting China as a source of “stability and certainty” in uncertain times. 

Exports helped China’s economy expand at a five per cent annual rate in 2024 and 2025’s official target is about five per cent. 

In the near term, the tariffs would put pressure on China’s economy, but they would not derail long-run growth, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Sheng Laiyun told reporters on Wednesday.

He noted China’s exports to the United States had fallen to less than 15 per cent of total exports from more than 19 per cent five years ago. 

“China’s economic foundation is stable, resilient and has great potential,” Sheng said, adding it had the confidence and ability to cope with external challenges and reach its development goals. 

The economy grew 1.2 per cent in January-March, slowing from 1.6 per cent in the last quarter of 2024. 

Chinese exports surged more than 12 per cent from a year earlier in March and nearly six per cent in US dollar terms in the first quarter, as companies rushed to beat Trump’s tariffs. 

Industrial production rose 6.5 per cent from a year earlier in the last quarter, led by a nearly 11 per cent increase in output of equipment manufacturing. 

The strongest growth was in advanced technologies, such as production of battery electric and hybrid vehicles, which jumped 45.4 per cent year-on-year. 

Despite relatively fast growth by global standards, the Chinese economy has struggled to regain momentum since the COVID-19 pandemic as a downturn in the property market pushed unemployment higher, leaving families wary about spending. 

Consumer prices fell 0.1 per cent in the first quarter, while investment in real estate also remained weak, falling nearly 10 per cent from a year earlier despite government efforts to spur more lending for housing purchases. 

Australian households and businesses could be exposed to power price spikes under proposals to keep sweating, ageing coal generators.

The patchy reliability of old coal stations is frequently neglected in energy policy development, including modelling underpinning the coalition’s nuclear energy pathway, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis research suggests.

The institute’s lead analyst Johanna Bowyer said history pointed to much lower availability of coal generation than the numbers crunched for the opposition by Frontier Economics.

The analysis reveals a generation shortfall from coal of 9300 gigawatt hours per year, on average, from 2034 to 2043.

That is equivalent to the power consumption of two million households.

The federal coalition responded by claiming “proper maintenance” prevented coal plants from closing prematurely.

The spokesperson said Labor’s renewables-based energy agenda was “unrealistic” and “seeing them relying on the very coal capacity they have long vilified in order to keep the lights on”.

“Labor talks about phasing out coal, but behind closed doors they are cutting deals with the states to keeping them online,” the coalition spokesperson said.

Seven nuclear plants would be built to eventually start producing electricity by 2035 under the federal coalition’s vision for Australia’s net-zero energy system.

In the meantime, old coal power stations would need to be kept running longer than they would otherwise.

The plan differs from the Labor government’s transition blueprint which targets 82 per cent renewables backed by clean storage and gas.

Australia’s fleet of ageing coal power stations are already causing jumps in wholesale prices, with wear and tear and technical hiccups lowering the average availability of close-to-retirement generators to just 66 per cent.

The institute’s findings suggest Australian households and businesses will be exposed to electricity price spikes as gas generation – already expensive and facing domestic shortages in the southeast – will likely be needed to make up the shortfall.

“You’ve got these coal outages, and you weren’t expecting them, so all of a sudden you need all this extra gas,” Ms Bowyer told AAP.

“Where’s that going to come from? And that could lead to spikes in the price of gas. It could lead to spikes in the price of electricity.”

Ms Bowyer said the findings had implications for other proposals to extend the life spans of coal power stations, such as the Queensland government delaying Callide B’s retirement beyond 2028.

Separate research from Nexa Advisory highlighted consistent reliability issues at the Callide Power Station.

“The most recent ‘explosion’ at Callide C that occurred earlier in April is the third major incident at this power station in four years and confirms what we already know – that aging coal-fired assets cannot be relied on even as band-aid solutions,” Nexa Advisory chief executive officer Stephanie Bashir said.

British inflation has slowed to its weakest in three months in March, according to official figures that show other measures closely watched by the Bank of England cooling, too.

Inflation slowed to an annual rate of 2.6 per cent in March from 2.8 per cent in February, and below expectations of 2.7 per cent in a Reuters poll of economists, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday.

Falling fuel prices and unchanged food costs helped bring down the inflation rate but the price of clothes rose strongly after a surprise fall in February, the ONS said.

The BoE’s most recent forecasts show inflation is set to peak at 3.7 per cent in the third quarter in 2025 – nearly double the central bank’s two per cent target – driven mostly by energy costs and regulated tariffs for household utility bills and bus fares.

Since those forecasts were made, US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose sweeping trade tariffs have raised the prospect of a slowdown in the global economy.

Martin Sartorius, principal economist at the Confederation of British Industry, said the higher US tariffs could put both upward and downward pressure on inflation in the UK, but the BoE was likely to cut interest rates in May.

“Looking ahead, we expect them to continue their ‘gradual and careful’ approach to reducing borrowing costs amid an uncertain economic environment,” Sartorius said.

BoE deputy governors Clare Lombardelli and Sarah Breeden and Monetary Policy Committee member Megan Greene have said it is too early to judge the inflation implications resulting from Trump’s moves.

Sterling fell by about a fifth of a cent against the US dollar after the figures were published.

Inflation for services slowed to 4.7 per cent from 5.0 per cent in February. 

Core headline inflation, which excludes energy, food and tobacco prices, also eased a touch.

However, despite a slowdown in price growth from levels above 11 per cent in 2022, inflation in Britain continues to be a concern for consumers.

Inflation expectations among the public and business have risen, adding to unease among BoE policymakers who are keeping a close eye on other gauges of price pressures in the economy as they assess when to reduce borrowing costs.

China has appointed a new top international trade negotiator amid tariff tensions with the US.

The government said Li Chenggang has been appointed to replace Wang Shouwen, who took part in the trade negotiations for the 2020 trade deal between China and the US.

The world’s two largest economies have been steadily increasing tariffs on each other’s goods since the US raised tariffs on dozens of countries.

China faces 145 per cent taxes on exports to the US, while other countries were given a 90-day reprieve for most duties.

Earlier on Wednesday, China announced its economy expanded at a 5.4 per cent annual pace in January-March, supported by strong exports.

Analysts expect the world’s second-largest economy to slow significantly in coming months, however, as tariffs on US imports from China take effect.

Exports were a strong factor in China’s five per cent annual growth rate in 2024, and the official target for 2025 remains about five per cent.

Beijing has hit back at the US with 125 per cent tariffs on American exports, while also stressing its determination to keep its own markets open to trade and investment.

In the near term, the tariffs would put pressure on China’s economy, but they would not derail long-run growth, Sheng Laiyun, a spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, told reporters.

It was not clear why China was changing negotiators, but the change comes as Chinese officials say the country has multiple options to respond to US actions, including relying more on its own vast market of 1.4 billion consumers, and on Europe and countries in the global south. 

But as China’s domestic consumption continues to languish, it will be difficult to replace the US consumer.

China also imposed more export controls on rare earths, which include materials used in high-tech products, aerospace manufacturing and the defence sector.

Urgent care clinics have reduced hospital wait times, the prime minister insists, despite a report saying it’s too early to tell.

Anthony Albanese has continued to spruik health measures on the campaign trail, with the issue likely to feature prominently at the second leaders’ debate on Wednesday night.

A government report said it was too soon to determine if Labor’s much-touted urgent care clinics had led to shorter wait times in emergency departments, but the prime minister maintained the centres were making a difference.

“I do (have evidence), come and talk to anyone … you can talk to people there about whether they would have ended up in an emergency department,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday.

“(The expansion of the clinics) is justified.

“It’s taking pressure off those (emergency departments), every state health minister is saying the same thing, Labor and Liberal.”

The report said 344,000 trips to the emergency department would be avoided each year if the urgent care clinics were operating.

The government would also save $368 per presentation to the clinics, the report found.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said patients should still expect to fork out for their health care despite separate promises by Labor to expand bulk billing to 90 per cent by the end of the decade.

“The bulk-billing rate … is in free fall … because the prime minister wants to pretend that people can just go to the doctors, flash their Medicare card and somehow they’re not going to have to pay an out-of-pocket fee,” he said.

“That’s just not the reality of families here in Melbourne and right across the country.”

Australian Medical Association president Danielle McMullen said the government’s $8.5 billion pledge to boost bulk billing – a promise quickly matched by the coalition – wouldn’t fix the system.

“The extra incentive doesn’t meet the cost of providing that care (for longer appointments) and we want to make sure that all Australians get a decent rebate back in their pocket,” she said.

“They really needed to reform the structure of Medicare and put more investment into those longer visits, more nurses, more allied health into general practice.”

While the prime minister was declared the victor in the first leaders’ debate, Mr Albanese was still playing the underdog card ahead of the second showdown.

“You have to take any campaign day by day and I don’t think the outcome of the last debate affects tonight’s debate at all. It’s very different,” he said.

“I was grateful for those people who put their little bit of paper in the red box rather than the blue box and that was a good thing for me. But I don’t take anything for granted.”

The debate, hosted by the ABC in western Sydney, will be the second of four head-to-head verbal jousts between the leaders ahead of the May 3 election.

ANU political scientist Jill Sheppard said while debates tended not to shift the dial for any leader or party, they could turn into massive traps for candidates who perform badly.

“It’s not so much that they say or do something particularly stupid, but that they have to be on the ball for a whole hour, and that’s really tough,” she said.

“What we find is that leaders tend to come through unscathed, but it takes a heap of preparation and a heap of co-ordination and strategy to make sure that they do come through unscathed.

“At the end of all that, you haven’t necessarily won votes, but you haven’t lost votes, and them not losing votes is the most important.”

President Donald Trump has ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports, a major escalation in his dispute with global trade partners and an attempt to push back on industry leader China.

The order lays bare what manufacturers, industry consultants, academics and others have long warned Washington about: that the US is overly reliant on Beijing and others for processed versions of the minerals that power its entire economy.

China is a top global producer of 30 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the US Geological Survey, for example, and has been curtailing exports in recent months.

Trump signed an order on Tuesday directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to begin a national security review under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

That is the same law Trump used in his first term to impose 25 per cent global tariffs on steel and aluminium and one he used in February to launch a probe into potential copper tariffs.

US dependency on minerals imports “raises the potential for risks to national security, defense readiness, price stability, and economic prosperity and resilience,” Trump said in the order.

Within 180 days, Lutnick is required to report his findings to the president, including whether to impose tariffs. Were Trump to then impose a tariff on a nation’s critical minerals, the rate would supersede the reciprocal tariffs Trump imposed earlier this month, according to the White House.

The review will assess US vulnerabilities for the processing of all critical minerals – including cobalt, nickel and the 17 rare earths, as well as uranium – how foreign actors could be distorting markets, and what steps could be taken to boost domestic supply and recycling, according to the order.

The US currently extracts and processes scant amounts of lithium, has only one nickel mine but no nickel smelter, and has no cobalt mine or refinery. While it has several copper mines, the US has only two copper smelters and is reliant on other nations to process that key red metal.

The order takes a broad view of processing as all the steps after rock is taken out of the ground and where they are done. It also directs a review of US capabilities to produce so-called semi-finished goods, including battery cathodes and wind turbines.

The move is the latest in Trump’s effort to jumpstart US minerals production and processing. The president last month signed an order directing federal agencies to create a list of US mines that could be quickly approved and federal lands that could be used for minerals processing.

Still, it takes years to build a new mine and processing facility, a timeline that has sparked concern about where the US could procure minerals were tariffs broadly imposed.

“Ultimately the US gets certain minerals from China because there are not alternative supplies elsewhere,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Beijing earlier in April placed export restrictions on rare earths in response to Trump’s tariffs, a move that further exacerbated supply concerns amongst Trump officials.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements used across the defence, electric vehicle, energy and electronics industries. The United States has only one rare earths mine and most of its processed supply comes from China.

The restrictions from China were seen as the latest demonstration of the country’s ability to weaponise its dominance over the mining and processing of critical minerals after it put outright bans on the export of three other metals last year to the US and slapped export controls on others.

Chinese mining companies across the globe have been flooding markets with cheap supplies of many critical minerals in recent years, fuelling calls from industry and investors for Washington to support US projects.