International trade post COVID: analysis of Ecuador's foreign trade

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic unfavorably deepened the international trade situation worldwide, which had
already been affected since the US financial crisis in 2009 and which, starting in 2018, the trade war
between China and the US had contributed to establishing a panorama of low growth, mainly in
merchandise trade with respect to trade in services, which due to its forms of access had favorable
growth. The situation of our country at the end of 2019 was not the best, an economy affected by bad
governments, corruption and the impact on the price of the main income generator for our country, such
as oil, resulted in unemployment, more recession, etc. COVID was the trigger that exacerbated the
crisis that international trade suffered later and all the efforts not only in terms of health and control that
have been made, of the efforts of international organizations such as the WTO, regional organizations
such as ECLAC, ALADI, The CAN has not yet been able to reach the levels of commercial exchange
that it had before the virus appeared. This work aims to take a retrospective look at world trade in the
pandemic, its impact, the measures that have been implemented and at the level of our country. The
outlook for our main export sectors, possible contingencies that help increase the volume of exports
and be able to take advantage of the opportunities that, even in this unfavorable situation, we can create
as a country.