International merchandise trade: trends and the results of the 2016

The article investigates current changes in the dynamics and the geographic structure of modern international trade that occurred during the recently ended 2016. While the official summary statistics of the main international institutions, that characterize the movement of international trade in goods for the year 2016 (available to the general reader) are not yet published, it is interesting to evaluate the existing materials to identify the likely changes and trends in this field. Considerable influence on the evolution of international merchandise trade in 2016 had such global factors as the decline in demand, fluctuations in the world markets, making it largely unsustainable and hardly predictable, and the extension of the sanctions of the West against Russia, which caused counter measures of the Russian Federation. The author actively uses methods of the comparative and statistical analysis.