The long-awaited slowdown in global trade activity is close. Analysis of 10 early stage data points in three categories – seaborne freight, preliminary government export data and business sentiment – showed two of the three categories declined in December. Export data from China, Japan, South Korea and Japan all fell, though India increased modestly, while two of three sentiment indices fell versus the prior month. Maritime data for U.S. imports and Singapore’s container handling both climbed – by 13.8% and 5.9% – on a year earlier in December. The 10 measures and three categories’ direc...