The World Trade Organization (WTO) has nearly doubled its forecast for merchandise trade volume growth this year amid a stronger than anticipated surge in artificial intelligence-related capital investment. The group raised the forecast to 3.9 per cent from an earlier prediction of 1.9 per cent, it said in its global trade outlook report published on Thursday.

“It is somewhat surprising that [merchandise trade growth] is so resilient to all the shocks that have been going on,” said WTO chief economist Robert Staiger.

Besides the accelerating AI investment boom, the expansion was also supported by trade resilience to the Middle East conflict as supplies were diverted and new suppliers stepped in to help the global economy mitigate downward pressure on trade, he said.

Meanwhile, the WTO lowered its forecast for growth in services trade volume this year to 3.3 per cent from 4.8 per cent, citing depressed travel and tourism, as well as higher global fuel input costs stemming from the conflict.

In 2027, trade volumes in merchandise and services were expected to grow by 4.1 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively, pending “a timely resolution” of the war, according to the report.

While making up less than 15 per cent of world trade, AI-enabling goods accounted for 47 per cent of the growth in global merchandise trade, in value terms, in the first half of 2026, offsetting declining shipments of oil, natural gas and fertiliser, the report said.

The AI-enabling category includes a broad range of items, from raw materials that go into circuit boards to finished chips and systems, as well as data-centre needs such as power and cooling equipment.

Export of such goods is dominated by East Asia excluding China, which represented 40.4 per cent of total export value in 2025, followed by Southeast Asia at 23.2 per cent. China, North America and Europe accounted for 13.6 per cent, 11.5 per cent and 10.6 per cent, respectively.

East Asia excluding China also held the top spot for imports of AI-enabling goods at 27.4 per cent, with China and North America in second and third place with 20.1 per cent and 19.9 per cent, respectively. Europe’s share was 12.3 per cent.

China’s share of AI-enabling goods imports fell between 2015 and 2025 as the country’s domestic production of the relevant items grew, according to the report.

With the top 10 economies representing roughly 80 per cent of all trade in AI-enabling goods, the resilience of the category’s growth was an open question, according to Staiger, though he added that the trade showed no signs of slowing down yet.

“I think there is a valid concern, or if not concern, at least a thought that one would want to make sure that the AI boom is not going to drive other concerns under the rug, so to speak,” he said.

“And given that it is narrowly defined in terms of both its sector and also regions, it does tend to mask the headline numbers … to mask the very real disruptions that are occurring in certain regions.”The report also identified other risks, including the accelerating US-China decoupling, which the WTO said had become the main driver of bloc divergence, while the broader pattern of bloc-based fragmentation had not continued to intensify.

Amid growing trade frictions among major economies, Staiger also made a case for the WTO’s continued utility and the resilience of the rule-based system.

He cited MIT economist Lester Thurow’s famous declaration in Davos in 1989 that The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – the WTO’s predecessor – was dead. The pronouncement was contradicted several years later when the WTO was founded, Staiger said.

“There was often a view that the rules-based system was on its last leg, and yet it continues,” he said. “Those basic principles do have an economic line that is, in some sense, timeless, to help economies solve problems that they have in the international arena on trade policy.”