WTO Says AI Could Lift Global Trade Nearly 40% by 2040
With the right policies, AI could raise global trade 34–37% by 2040 and lift GDP 12–13%, the WTO says, if countries narrow digital gaps and keep markets open.
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Artificial intelligence could supercharge cross-border trade over the next 15 years, provided countries close digital gaps and keep markets open, the World Trade Organization said in its latest flagship World Trade Report.
The WTO Secretariat’s modeling finds that with the right enabling policies, the value of global trade in goods and services could be 34 to 37% higher by 2040. The same scenarios point to a 12 to 13% boost in global GDP, driven by productivity gains and lower trade costs.
The report said trade will itself act as a catalyst for inclusive AI-enabled growth by helping economies source key inputs, from raw materials to semiconductors and other intermediate goods.
The WTO estimated that global trade in AI-enabling goods reached $2.3 trillion in 2023, underlining how supply chains for chips, sensors and compute infrastructure already underpin the technology’s spread.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala framed the opportunity and the risk in stark terms. “AI has vast potential to lower trade costs and boost productivity. However, access to AI technologies and the capacity to participate in digital trade remains highly uneven,” she wrote in the foreword.
“With the right mix of trade, investment and complementary policies, AI can create new growth opportunities in all economies. With the right frameworks, trade can play a central role in making AI work for all. The WTO is committed to supporting this effort,” she added.
Distribution of gains will depend on narrowing infrastructure and adoption gaps. In a scenario where low- and middle-income economies halve their digital infrastructure gap with richer countries and adopt AI more widely, incomes in these economies could rise by 15% and 14%, respectively. That finding underscores the report’s central message that connectivity, affordability and skills determine whether AI scales benefits broadly or concentrates them.
Policy choices around openness matter as well. The Secretariat noted a sharp rise in quantitative restrictions applied to AI-related goods, climbing from 130 measures in 2012 to nearly 500 in 2024, largely introduced by high- and upper-middle-income economies. Access remains uneven on the tariff side too, with bound tariffs on some AI-enabling goods as high as 45% in certain low-income economies. The report linked these frictions to higher costs for hardware and inputs critical to building data centers, deploying networks and adopting AI tools.
To keep the gains inclusive, the report called for sustained investments in education and training and for carefully designed labor-market policies. The aim is to equip workers for tasks that will complement AI rather than be displaced by it and to avoid widening inequality within economies as new tools change how services are delivered and how supply chains operate.
Geneva served as the launch pad for the findings at the opening of the WTO’s annual Public Forum on 17 September.
Okonjo-Iweala told participants, “The new report comes amid the worst disruptions the global trading system has experienced in 80 years. Yet amid the risks to trade, growth and development prospects, there are bright spots – and one of them is the potential of artificial intelligence.”
She warned against repeating past policy blind spots. “The ongoing political backlash against trade has much to do with underinvestment in education, skills, retraining and social safety nets during these past three or four decades of globalization. We cannot afford to repeat this mistake with AI.”
Deputy director-general Johanna Hill and Marc Bacchetta, who leads the Secretariat’s quantitative economic research unit, presented the key findings, followed by a panel discussion.
