Rhain, you are probably right in that the figures indicate so.
However a very large amount of that trade is resources such as oil, gas,
and minerals.
Take steel production; Steel production is moving back to the US from
China because the transpacific shipping costs are rising to overcome
the cheap labour in China.
Take furniture production; It is leaving China because furniture is
very bulky for its value and when I recently purchased a lounge I asked
the shop manager how much of the furniture was imported and he said
"Only that table over there". Turns out Australian made furniture is cheaper.

So you can see the trend, as fuel gets dearer the bulkiest goods go
back to local production.

Regional and bilateral trade agreements are poor subsitutes for the kind of multilateral agreements that the WTO administers, but given the failure of the Doha round,there's not much choice.

Bazz

Sorry, I can’t see that trend at all. China’s steel production has slipped back a bit, but global trade is growing as strongly as ever. There is no evidence of a decline in trade in coal, iron ore, wheat and dozens of other products. If China is becoming less competitive in some areas it is because its labour costs are rising as you would expect in a country that is becoming more prosperous.

Australia’s real imports rose 8.5% a year in the 10 years to 2012, while real gross domestic product rose at 3.0% a year.

There is no persuasive evidence to support the theory that rising transport costs are choking off word trade

Rhian;
I can see the point you are making but while the bulk of trade is not
changing there are starting signals of a change.
China's growth has fallen from 10%+ to 8% and no doubt will fall
further. After all it cannot double its economy in the next 9 years.
There just isn't the energy to do it.
They have in the last year increased their demand to 6Mbb/day.
They only got that because the US & Eu cut back by about 4Mbb/day.
There has been a cutback in iron ore the last I read.
That may have been because they stock piled a lot.
Certainly Europe has a growth problem and they are China's biggest customer.
So China will continue to show growth as will other "developing"
countries as they can afford the higher costs of energy but that does
not apply to rest of us.
One of the problems with China is the unreliability of their statistics.
Many report sources just accept them at face value.
I just read a book, Tiger Head Snake Tails which was very informative
on how China operates. This new President, Xi Jingping, may make a
difference as he seems to be a pragmatic operator.

Ahh well, it will be interesting to watch and I must go and check a
few later figures than I have seen previously.

Rhian, did you see ABC's Lateline Tuesday night ?

They had an segment about industry returning to the US from China.
They call it Reshoring, ie the opposite of offshoring.

They gave various reasons, higher wages in China, Quality control,
delays in delivery, container costs forcing larger orders than needed.
It appears to have generated a million jobs, I think they said.

It will be interesting to watch.

Bazz

No I didn’t see Lateline, but I’m not surprised. It’s part of the normal process of development that, as countries like China become more productive, their wages and costs increase and they lose the comparative advantage they once had based on low labour costs, and move on from basic labour-intensive processing to more technologically challening production. It happened to Japan and Hong Kong a generation ago.

None of what you say suggests that transport costs are choking off trade