The World Trade Organization is sharply raising its forecast for trade growth in goods this year after an unexpectedly strong first half due to rising AI-related purchases, front-loaded imports in the United States over tariff fears and robust developing-world trade.
The Geneva-based trade body released its latest Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report on Tuesday.
The organisation said its economists are increasing their prediction of growth in merchandise trade to 2.4% this year, up from 0.9% as recently as August. In April, WTO experts were actually anticipating a decline of goods trade this year of 0.2%
However, they’re lowering the prediction for 2026 to 0.5%, from 1.8%.
The growth of export in services, meanwhile, is expected to come in at 4.6% in 2025 and 4.4% next year — both slower rates than the 6.8% tallied in 2024.
WTO pointed to “robust trade in artificial intelligence-related goods” that are driving the increase in merchandise trade.
“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.
A staggering 42% of global trade growth came from AI-related goods, much higher than their 15% share in world trade.
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala suggested solid trade growth among developing countries and a cool-headed reaction to sweeping — and often-varying — tariffs announced by the Trump administration earlier this year had also underpinned the gains.
“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.
The value of South-South trade climbed 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, outpacing the 6 percent growth in overall global trade value.
The report said the main downside risk to the outlook is the spread of trade-restrictive measures and policy uncertainty to more economies and sectors.
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