WTO Deputy Director-General: AI Boom to Lift Global Trade Nearly 40% by 2040

The WTO framing AI as a trade story, not just a tech story, matters because it puts compute and data-center infrastructure alongside traditional goods flows in the same forecast. If the projection holds, the beneficiaries skew toward economies that can host and power that infrastructure, and toward the sectors where AI cuts trade costs. The open question is whether the productivity and cost gains arrive broadly enough to offset the concentration of AI capacity, and whether trade policy keeps pace with the infrastructure buildout.