On the 7th, the World Trade Organization (WTO) released its latest Global Trade Outlook report. Due to sluggish global economic recovery and factors such as U.S. tariff policies, the growth forecast for global goods trade in 2026 has been sharply lowered to 0.5%, a significant drop from the 1.8% predicted in August.
Due to the link between goods trade and production, services trade will also be indirectly affected by tariffs.
The report predicts that the growth rate of global services exports will decline from 6.8% in 2024 to 4.6% in 2025, and further drop to 4.4% in 2026.
WTO economists emphasized that the spread of trade restrictive measures and policy uncertainty to more economies and industries constitutes a major downside risk.
At a press conference that day, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stated that despite strong headwinds from unilateral tariff measures and trade policy uncertainty, global trade has still demonstrated a certain degree of resilience, thanks to the stability provided by the multilateral trading system and the appropriate responses taken by members to tariff changes.
In the report, the WTO raised its forecast for global goods trade growth in 2025 from 0.9% in August to 2.4%.
The report shows that, in the first half of 2025, the global volume of goods trade will increase by 4.9% year-on-year, and the global value of goods trade measured in U.S. dollars will increase by 6% year-on-year. The main drivers of this growth are North America's increase in imports in advance to avoid high tariffs, improved macroeconomic conditions, and surging demand for goods related to artificial intelligence.