By Emily Kaiser
WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - If recent signs of life in the global economy are for real, we should soon start to see some stabilization in world trade too.
The collapse in trade since Lehman Brothers imploded last September has shocked even veteran economists, and alarmed world leaders so much that they committed $250 billion to support trade financing at last week's Group of 20 summit.
"I am terrified by the numbers I have seen so far on trade," said Uri Dadush, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former director of international trade for the World Bank. "I am truly taken aback by the speed and the breadth of this decline."
At the Port of Long Beach in California, where a large portion of U.S. imports from Asia land, the number of containers arriving in February dropped 43 percent from a year earlier. Exports, which kept rising last year long after imports faded, fell 37 percent.
That would suggest this week's trade reports may be grim reading. The United States, Germany, China and Britain are all scheduled to release monthly figures, and economists polled by Reuters expect the data to confirm that exports are hurting all over the world.
Trade is typically one of the later economic indicators to rebound, which is why these reports are likely to stay ugly even when some other readings are suggesting the severity of the global economy's downturn may be starting to ease.
The plight of global trade, which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said was in "free fall," clearly illustrates how the global upheaval has claimed casualties well beyond the financial sector.
Countries whose banks never touched the sort of souring assets that dragged down the rich world nevertheless have suffered steep declines in exports, which in turn is curbing domestic production and demand.
Over the last five months alone, the world economy has lost 15 percent of its industrial production, said Hans Timmer, a World Bank economist.
"That is really unheard of that it happened so suddenly," he said. "It happened in every country. It happened in the high-income countries and it happened in the developing countries."
THE NEW NORMAL
Outside of trade, there have been some indications that the worst of the global recession may be over, and that has spurred stock markets worldwide.
Recent surveys of factory activity in the United States, Europe and China have recovered from record lows, and U.S. consumers have resumed buying more than just the basics.
China in particular has shown promising signs that a $585 billion government spending program is reviving growth. China's manufacturing sector expanded in March for the first time since September. New export orders still showed contraction but improved from the previous month.
China's trade report, which may come as early as Friday, bears close watching to see whether it confirms those upbeat readings. Some economists aren't yet convinced.
"For all the energy of China's export recovery, few countries are showing any increased import demand these days, and those countries that supply China with economic inputs have not been bragging about a recovery in sales," said James Pressler, an economist with Northern Trust.
Still, China's trade data is especially useful because its report will cover March, while the U.S., German and British reports are for February and therefore provide less real-time insight into whether the recession is truly easing.
Even when the global slump ends, trade may not resume its pre-crisis trajectory any time soon. As President Barack Obama pointed out to fellow world leaders last week, the days of the "voracious" U.S. consumer underpinning strong growth are probably over.
Consulting group AlixPartners recently polled 5,000 U.S. consumers to see whether the current crisis had long-term implications for their spending plans.
The result was that Americans said their spending will return to just 86 percent of pre-recession levels, which would work out to a drop of 10 percent, or about $1.4 trillion, in annual gross domestic product.
"The future size and shape of virtually every business in America as well as those businesses that export goods to America rests upon a simple equation -- how much Americans think they need to save versus how much they think they can afford to spend," said AlixPartners Chief Executive Fred Crawford.
"It would appear that this recession has dramatically altered the mindset of Americans vis-a-vis that equation." (Editing by Neil Stempleman)