Since the health crisis, the main advanced economies have lost market shares to some of the emerging economies, first and foremost China. Between 2019 and 2023, the market share of the advanced economies, defined as the weight of their exports by value in world trade in goods, declined by almost 2% (both in the Eurozone and the United States), while that of China increased by 10%.

A comparison of the export performance of the main advanced economies in goods by volume – which adjusts for the geographic orientation of exports as well as for relative price variations – confirms this diagnosis: since the health crisis, China’s performance has significantly improved (+20%) while that of the advanced economies has generally declined, to varying degrees. US performance has declined by -6% compared with its 2019 performance level, against -4% for the Eurozone. The countries of Southern Europe (Spain, but especially Italy) have more or less maintained their export performance. However, the performances of the United Kingdom (-19%), France (-9%), and Germany (-8%) have deteriorated particularly significantly since the health crisis. These developments mark a turning point: Italy and France had stabilised their export performance since 2010 (the United Kingdom since 2015) after losing considerable ground in the 2000s; Germany and the United States had generally maintained their performance since 2002; China made no further progress from 2012 to 2019.

This decline in the Eurozone’s export performance in recent times could be linked to the deterioration in the zone’s cost competitiveness: the rise in energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is specific to the Eurozone, giving rise to an asymmetric supply shock. The economic model developed in this Focus shows that this was a contributory factor to the deterioration in European performance, although only in part, to the tune of around 20% to 25%.

A detailed analysis by product of changes in market share over the recent period confirms this macroeconomic diagnosis. Goods from “energy-intensive” branches have indeed contributed in recent times to market share losses by European countries and to China’s gains, but they account for only about a quarter of this change. Other products are also responsible for the Chinese economy’s market share gains over its western competitors since the health crisis: this particularly applies to automobiles and electronic equipment. For these two market segments, the price of energy plays a more secondary role and the loss of performance tends to reveal a deterioration in competitiveness, excluding cost...