Subject: Re: Berkshire and Tariffs
I'm pretty sure that's not really it. It isn't a measure of global trade, it's a measure of global trade as a fraction of the size of global production. Both trade and GGP shrank, but GGP recovered faster than trade did.

Isn't that essentially saying the same thing? The European and Asian countries that had their industrial capacity destroyed had to rebuild everything, so "all" their increased production went to domestic rebuilding instead of being shipped to other countries ("trade").