Strengths: A clearly written report on a topic of general interest.
Points for consideration:
Using difference of logs can be a good way to measure growth.
This is a big model and may have poor behavior of the Fisher standard errors (e.g., Chapter 5 of the notes). Maybe do a profile to check.
Once you have a preliminary model for trade, you can look for covariate time series. That could be within the scope of a midterm project.