Q3 Geographic Split: Asia Still ~54% of Growth — Q2 Softness Trims Sensitivity to ~51%

Our 2026 geography print already answered the map question with a two-layer story: Asia clears ~54% of world PPP growth contribution and 71% of merchandise trade-volume gains, while North America still holds ~18% of PPP stock with only ~10% of growth — and elevated CPI burden sits thick in the US and EM, not in China. The Q3 hard-data check and Q3 concentration companion then asked whether Q2 prints (China 4.3% YoY, US 1.5% SAAR, CPB May +1.0% MoM) rewrote the tip of the distribution. This Q3 geography vintage keeps the regional anchors and asks the desk follow-up: does Q2 softness move where growth and trade land on the map — or only refresh the sensitivity meters beside a still-Asian activity map?

The interactive dashboard above is built as a Q3 geography lens. Toggle Mismatch, Regions, Trade + flow, and Prices + Asia. On Mismatch, read stock–growth gaps and the vintage slope from the prior geography print into Q2 sensitivity. On Regions, flip PPP / base growth / Q2 sens. / trade / export value. On Trade + flow, keep WTO corridors beside the CPB Mar–May MoM path. On Prices + Asia, open regime pies and Asia’s internal base-versus-sensitivity ladder. The punchline is deliberately multi-map. Base activity geography stays Asian. Q2 sensitivity softens Asia’s growth share (~54%→~51%) without rewriting WTO’s 71% trade-growth corridor. Stock weight and price burden still disagree with flow geography — North America and Europe remain stock-thick / growth-thin, and elevated CPI still coats the US while China prints near-zero inflation beside the largest growth engine on the board.

The headline ladder: Q3 vs prior geography

Read the table as a stability-plus-sensitivity scoreboard. Q3 did not invent a new WEO PPP census or a new WTO volume-growth decomposition. It restated how Q2 hard data would feel if run-rate growth replaced the base contribution ladder — and it parked CPB’s Mar–May rebound beside, not on top of, Asia’s 71% corridor. Desks that treat “China slowed to 4.3%” as “Asia lost the map” are reading the wrong column.

Mismatch: where stock and growth disagree

Open Mismatch. The stock–growth bars still put Asia at roughly +14 pp (growth contribution above PPP stock) and North America / Europe near −8 to −9 pp (stock thick, growth thin). That geometry is the same hinge the prior geography print owned: owning the stock weight is not the same as owning the flow. Europe’s export-value share near 28% of a ~$26T merchandise perimeter still sits beside a single-digit growth contribution — a reminder that dollar corridors and volume-growth contribution are different maps.

The vintage slope is the Q3 addition. Flip the meter among Asia growth, Asia trade, Asia PPP, NA mismatch, and soft-CPI growth contribution. Asia trade and Asia PPP stay flat by construction (carried). Asia growth steps from ~54% to ~51% under Q2 sensitivity. NA mismatch widens slightly as the US SAAR softens. Soft-CPI growth contribution stays near 34% — China-led soft prices still punch above their ~22% PPP stock weight on the growth side even after the China YoY cool.

The GDP-print × growth-sensitivity scatter (bubble = PPP share) makes the same point in country space. China sits mid-right on a 4.3% YoY print with a still-large sensitivity share and near-zero CPI. The US sits left-and-lower on 1.5% SAAR with elevated CPI and a thick PPP bubble. India remains the high-growth / elevated-CPI Asian counterweight. Filter by region to isolate the continent without pretending the scatter is a new WEO weight table — it is an illustrative run-rate map.

Regions: base ladder sticky, sensitivity softens Asia

Switch to Regions. Toggle the metric among PPP stock, base growth contribution, Q2 sensitivity, trade-growth share, and export-value share. On base growth, Asia still clears ~54%, North America ~10%, Europe ~8%. On Q2 sensitivity, Asia slips to ~51%, North America softens toward ~9%, Europe ticks up slightly on the EA Q2 +0.4% QoQ flash, and the residual ROW bucket absorbs the arithmetic close. On trade, Asia’s 71% WTO-disclosed corridor does not move. On export $, Europe’s thick value share reappears beside Asia’s volume-growth dominance — the same dollar-versus-volume disagreement the research and geography vintages keep restating.

The Asia internal base-versus-sensitivity panel is the regional hinge. China steps from ~32% of world growth contribution toward ~29% on the Q2 YoY print. India and ASEAN hold or gain slightly in the sensitivity mix. Japan+Korea remain export-thick / growth-thin inside Asia. That is the Q3 geography claim in one sentence: Asia still owns the activity map; China softens the intensity of that ownership without handing the corridor to another continent.

Pair this panel with the Q3 concentration lens: that post measures Top-1 / Top-3 tips on the same perimeters. This lens asks where those tips sit geographically when Q2 run-rates are applied as sensitivity, not as a new census.

Trade + flow: WTO corridors meet CPB’s rebound

Toggle Trade + flow. Horizontal corridor bars and the donut still put Asia at 71% of 2025 merchandise volume-growth contribution (3.2 pp of a 4.6% world volume print), Europe ~15%, North America ~11%, ROW the residual. Those shares are carried from WTO GTOS March 2026 — the same disclosed Asia corridor the prior geography and concentration posts used. Q3 does not pretend May’s MoM rebound rewrote 2025 contribution geography.

The CPB composed chart is the flow overlay. March −2.1% MoM, April +0.7%, May +1.0% — a two-month rebound that still leaves the Mar–May chain near −0.4%. That path matters for desks watching momentum, not for desks that need a new regional share table. A rebound month is not a re-ranking of who contributed last year’s volume gains. Export-value versus volume-growth dual bars keep Europe’s dollar thickness visible beside Asia’s volume-growth tip — useful when a slide confuses “share of export dollars” with “share of trade-growth contribution.”

IMF July goods+services trade volume for 2026 near 3.5% and Asia import growth near 3.3% remain the annual path context from the July update and Q3 vintage check. This geography post does not re-litigate those annuals; it parks them next to the map.

Prices + Asia: soft CPI still funds growth geography

Open Prices + Asia. The regime pie still allocates roughly 22% of world PPP GDP to near-zero / soft CPI, 28% to target-adjacent, 38% to elevated (3–6%), and 12% to high/outlier. Dual bars show the soft band delivering ~34% of growth contribution — punching above stock weight — while the elevated band holds the largest stock slice and a smaller growth share than Asia’s soft-price engine. July vintage prints keep the hinge concrete: US CPI 3.4% YoY, EA HICP 2.9%, China ~0.2%. North America’s share of the elevated-CPI GDP perimeter remains thick; Asia’s elevated share is real (India and others) but not the China story.

Asia internal toggles (base growth / Q2 sens. / PPP / export $) restate the country geography without another Top-k panel. China leads growth contribution even after sensitivity; India is the second engine; ASEAN is the middle corridor; Japan+Korea are the export-value ballast. The soft-growth paradox survives Q2: the region that prints the softest major CPI still owns the thickest growth contribution — even when that contribution softens in sensitivity space.

Who is exposed — and what would change the story

Exposed: desks that translate China 4.3% YoY into “Asia lost growth geography” while the base ladder still clears ~54% and sensitivity only softens to ~51%; US-centric slide decks that quote ~18% PPP stock as if it were growth contribution; trade desks that treat CPB May +1.0% MoM as a rewrite of WTO’s Asia 71% volume-growth corridor; price watchers who average world CPI near 4.7% (IMF July path) without separating China soft from US elevated; Europe-export dollar narratives that confuse ~28% of merchandise value with single-digit growth contribution.

Relative winners under current rules: Asia-weighted growth books that keep base and sensitivity columns separate; import-demand stories tied to Asia’s 3.3% merchandise import path; portfolios that already priced Europe as export-value thick / growth thin; desks that pair this map with the China–US–India long view instead of forcing a single-country slogan onto a six-region board.

What would change the story: a new IMF WEO PPP weight census that cuts Asia’s stock or growth contribution sharply; a WTO period print that breaks Asia’s ~71% trade-growth corridor; a multi-quarter China rebound that restores sensitivity shares to (or above) the base ladder; or a US/EA disinflation path that empties the elevated CPI band’s ~38% PPP GDP share. None of those clear this Q2 / July-CPI / WTO-2025 window.

Caveats and methodology

• PPP stock and base growth-contribution shares roll IMF WEO April 2026 country weights into continental bucketsstaff-aligned where Table 1.1 omits full PPP weights; labeled estimated where residual.
• Q2 growth sensitivity restates China 4.3% YoY and US 1.5% SAAR as an illustrative run-rate sharenot a new WEO weight table and not a forecast.
• Merchandise trade-growth corridors follow WTO GTOS March 2026 regional decomposition of 2025 volume growth (Asia 3.2 pp / 71% disclosed); other regional splits are estimated residuals that sum to 100% for visualization.
• CPB Mar–May MoM is a flow overlay from the May 2026 World Trade Monitor printnot a re-rank of 2025 contribution shares.
• Export-value geography uses WTO 2025 merchandise export values vs ~$26.3T world; energy and price effects inflate some $ shares vs volume.
• Price regimes mix WEO/BLS/Eurostat prints; elevated-CPI GDP share is a burden perimeter, not an additive market share. Türkiye’s outlier CPI is excluded from median scatter views.
• mismatchPp = growth contribution − PPP stock share on the base ladder; sensitivity mismatch is shown on the vintage slope where labeled.
• Geography ≠ causation. A softer China YoY does not automatically hand trade-growth share to another region; a CPB rebound month does not rewrite last year’s corridor.

The shareable takeaway

In the Q3 2026 geography vintage, Asia still delivers ~54% of base world PPP growth contribution and 71% of merchandise trade-volume gains, with ~40% of PPP stock. Q2 hard-data sensitivity softens Asia’s growth share to ~51% (−3 pp) as China prints 4.3% YoY and the US 1.5% SAAR — without moving WTO corridors or PPP stock. Stock–growth mismatch stays Asia-positive (~+14 pp) and North America / Europe negative (~−8 to −9 pp). Elevated CPI still coats ~38% of world PPP GDP while soft-CPI geography punches above its stock weight on growth. Base map Asian. Sensitivity softer. Price burden elsewhere.

Related reading: Geography 2026 · Q3 concentration · Q3 hard-data check · August CPI vintage · July IMF update · April research · China–US–India GDP.