This year has been defined by global trade turbulence, yet more goods are set to move across borders in 2025 than in 2024, according to new World Trade Organization estimates.
After US President Donald Trump unveiled sky-high tariffs in April, the WTO forecast that global trade would contract by 0.2%; but many duties have since come down, while purchases of AI-related equipment — semiconductors, computers, cloud servers — have propped up cross-border commerce.
The world’s trading system “has been knocked, it’s been battered, but it is showing very strong resilience at the core,” WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said at a recent Semafor event. Still, the organization slashed its 2026 outlook, forecasting the world’s economy will cool.