The World Trade Organization (WTO) has forecast that an investment boom in artificial intelligence (AI) will push global goods trade volumes to expand at a pace last seen during the period of rapid globalization that was ended by the global financial crisis, according to forecasts released on Thursday and reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Geneva based body now expects world merchandise trade volume to grow by 3.9% in 2026, up from the 1.9% it projected in March, and it forecasts a further 4.1% in 2027. The upgrade follows stronger than expected performance in the first half of 2026, when merchandise trade volume grew 3.5% despite disruptions to energy, fertilizer and transport markets, although the expansion is being driven by a small number of economies.
Strong demand for semiconductors, data centers and digital infrastructure has supported trade in the goods needed for AI development. Supplies of such goods are concentrated in a small number of economies in East and Southeast Asia, while North America is the main source of demand, which explains why the gains are not spread evenly across the world. The WTO expects Asia to record the fastest merchandise export growth in 2026 at 9.9%, followed by North America at 5.7%, Africa at 5.6% and South America at 3.4%. Exports from Asia are forecast to rise by a further 5.2% in 2027, which keeps the region at the centre of the trade expansion over the next two years.
Other regions are expected to move in the opposite direction. The WTO projects that merchandise exports from Europe will decline by 0.1% in 2026, while exports from the Commonwealth of Independent States are forecast to fall by 3.9% and those from the Middle East by 17.2%. These figures show that significant parts of the world are missing out on the expansion, and that the headline forecast of 3.9% hides very different outcomes for individual regions. The outlook for the Middle East is affected by the ongoing conflict in West Asia, which has disrupted energy, fertilizer and transport markets during the year, even though supply chains elsewhere have shown that they can adapt to geopolitical disruptions.
The picture for services is weaker than the picture for goods. Trade in services is set to grow more slowly than the WTO had previously expected as a result of the war between the United States and Iran, which has weighed on transport and international travel. The organization downgraded its services trade forecast, although it still expects growth in that segment to remain positive. The forecasts were released in the latest edition of the Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report, and they show an upgrade that depends on goods trade linked to AI investment rather than on a broad recovery across all sectors and regions of the world economy.
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