Geneva — Global trade in goods is rebounding faster than expected on the back of an AI hardware boom and resilient demand in emerging markets, the World Trade Organization said Tuesday, even as it cautioned that policy uncertainty and new barriers could sap momentum next year.
In its Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report, the WTO raised its forecast for 2025 merchandise trade growth to 2.4%, up sharply from 0.9% projected in August. As recently as April, WTO economists expected a 0.2% decline this year. The upgrade is driven largely by what the organization called “robust trade in artificial-intelligence-related goods.”
“The rise in AI-related trade seems to have been fuelled by structural investments in digital infrastructure, from semiconductors to cloud servers,” said WTO senior economist Marc Bacchetta. AI-linked products delivered a disproportionate lift: they accounted for 42% of global trade growth despite making up about 15% of world trade by value.
The brighter near-term picture is tempered by a softer outlook for 2026. The WTO cut next year’s merchandise growth projection to 0.5% from 1.8%, citing the risk that trade-restrictive measures and policy uncertainty could widen across more sectors and economies.
Trade in services is also expected to cool from last year’s rapid pace. The WTO now sees services exports rising 4.6% in 2025 and 4.4% in 2026, down from 6.8% in 2024, as post-pandemic travel tailwinds fade and higher borrowing costs weigh on demand.
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said measured policy responses helped steady global flows despite a turbulent environment, including sweeping and uneven tariff actions announced by the U.S. earlier this year. “Countries’ measured response to tariff changes in general, the growth potential of AI, as well as increased trade among the rest of the world — particularly among emerging economies — helped ease trade setbacks in 2025,” she said.
South–South commerce is a bright spot. The value of trade between developing economies climbed 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, outpacing 6% growth in overall global trade value, the report said — evidence of supply-chain diversification and stronger intra-emerging-market linkages.
Still, the WTO flagged a “main downside risk” from the spread of trade-restrictive measures, warning that an escalation could undercut investment, fragment markets, and blunt the AI-driven upswing that has buoyed goods shipments this year.
