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WTO Projects Slow Economic Growth In 2012

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with more signs of a slowdown.

The World Trade Organization projects that global trade in goods will grow by only 2.5 percent this year. Not so great. That's down from last year's 5 percent growth, and much lower than the nearly 14 percent in 2010 as a global recovery began.

Analysts told The Wall Street Journal that economic problems in Europe are playing a major role here. It's bad news for China, for which the European Union has been a huge export market, and it is also bad news for the United States.

The Obama administration has been relying on exports to bring up the U.S. economy. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.