WTO cuts 2026 global goods trade growth forecast but sees AI-related products as bright spot

“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. Trade resilience in 2025 is thanks in no small part to the stability provided by the rules-based multilateral trading system. Yet complacency is not an option,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

The World Trade Outlook report said that based on around 100 AI-related product lines, from semiconductors and processors to finished computers, servers and telecommunications equipment, trade in this group expanded by more than 20 per cent year-on-year to $1.92 trillion in the first half of 2025, compared to $1.61 trillion in the same period of 2024.

By contrast, trade in non-AI goods in the first half of 2025 grew by less than 4 per cent to $10.9 trillion compared to $10.5 trillion. Although AI-related products account for less than one-tenth of world merchandise trade, they contributed nearly half of overall trade growth during this period, constituting 15 per cent of global imports and exports and 43 per cent of total trade growth, the WTO said.

“These figures reflect economies’ restructuring activities around artificial intelligence. The growth covers every layer of the digital value chain – from raw silicon and speciality gases to the machines that produce semiconductors, and the computers and servers powering cloud platforms and AI applications worldwide,” the report said.

The WTO said that projections indicate current tariff increases have altered the global trade outlook by less than 0.1 percentage points for 2025 and 2026 combined, compared to the April forecast. “At the same time, the WTO’s assessment is that trade policy uncertainty has diminished, cushioning the trade fallout from tariff policies. The reason for this is that no economy has announced or introduced higher tariffs on imports from the United States in response to the US tariff increases, except for China,” the report said.