The slide in emerging market (EM) trade this year is a trend mainly made in China. Of course, China’s own falling numbers depress the overall EM average, but there is more to it than that. China’s appetite for commodities is on the wane, while its manufacturing imports have started to fall off a cliff.

Oxford Economics, a research company, calculates that whereas China added about 0.5 percentage points per year to the global trade in goods between 2012 and 2014, it subtracted roughly 0.7 percentage points (see chart) in the first quarter of this year.

This marked the first time since the 2008/09 financial crisis (aside from a blip in 2012) that China has detracted from world trade growth. It also stood in contrast to the US, which added 0.7 percentage points to trade values in the first quarter.