AI to boost trade by nearly 40% by 2040 if gaps are bridged: World Trade Report

15 October 2025: World Trade Report (2025) reveals that, with the right enabling policies, artificial intelligence (AI) could boost the value of cross-border flows of goods and services by nearly 40% by 2040 thanks to productivity gains and lower trade costs.

According to the report, AI could lead to significant increases in trade and GDP by 2040, with global trade projected to rise by 34-37% across different scenarios based on different degrees of policy and technological catch-up between low-, middle- and high-income economies. Global GDP could meanwhile see a 12-13% increase across different scenarios. Trade, in turn, can be a powerful enabler of inclusive AI -supported growth by helping economies access AI-enabling goods, such as raw materials, semiconductors and intermediate inputs. The WTO report estimates that global trade in these goods totalled USD 2.3 trillion in 2023.

“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,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says in her report.

In a scenario in which low- and middle-income economies narrow their digital infrastructure gap with high-income economies by 50% and adopt AI more widely, these economies are projected to see incomes rising by 15% and 14% respectively .

The report also points to the need for open and predictable trade policies, noting that the number of quantitative restrictions applied to AI-related goods has climbed sharply over time, from 130 in 2012 to nearly 500 in 2024, driven by high- and upper middle-income economies. Access to AI-enabling goods remains uneven, with bound tariffs reaching up to 45% in some low-income economies.