GeopoliticsMarket noteFriday 9 October 2026, 00:45
WTO trade forecast: AI is holding up world trade, and that is the risk
The WTO doubled its 2026 goods trade forecast to 3.9%, and AI goods drove almost half the growth. The productivity gains are hard to see. The borrowing is not.
By The Notebook Desk
The World Trade Organization has doubled its forecast for trade in goods this year, and artificial intelligence is the reason. Merchandise trade volume will grow by 3.9% in 2026, up from 1.9% in its March forecast, the WTO said on Thursday. Goods that go into AI, such as chips and servers, made up 47% of the growth in world goods trade in the first half of the year. Trade in them rose by 67%.
The war in the Middle East pulled the other way. Crude oil exports from the region fell by about 24% in the first half and exports of liquefied natural gas by 47%. The WTO’s full report describes “two opposing forces”, AI investment and lost shipments of oil, gas and fertiliser, and says that “for the year to date the former has outweighed the latter”.
A small share doing most of the work
AI goods are less than 15% of world trade, but they now drive close to half of its growth. Before 2024, the WTO says, their contribution was marginal. In two years they have gone from one part of trade to its main engine.
The spending behind it is huge. Estimates for AI capital spending by the big US cloud companies this year range from $660bn to $765bn, the report says. Goldman Sachs Research, at the top of that range, puts the rise on 2025 at 77%. Chipmakers feel it most: Samsung’s third-quarter operating profit rose almost ninefold, as we reported on 8 October. Semiconductor stocks now make up almost a fifth of the value of the S&P 500, a concentration the WTO says has not been seen since the 1960s.
The gains we were promised are hard to see
The leading AI labs promise a leap in productivity. It has not shown up in the figures yet. Output per hour in the US non-farm business sector grew 2.2% in the year to the second quarter, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the first two quarters of 2026 it grew at annual rates of just 0.8% and 1.4%. During the internet boom, from 1995 to 2004, it grew by about 3% a year, by our calculation.
So the effects of AI on the economy are real, but for now they come from building it, not from using it. Data centres, chips and power lines are being paid for today. The returns are still a promise.
Our view: too much money, and too much of it borrowed
Our position is that funds are not only overinvested in AI companies but overleveraged on them too. More and more of the building is paid for with debt. The big cloud companies issued about $120bn of bonds in 2025, against an average of about $28bn a year from 2020 to 2024, and in the first half of 2026 they had already issued more than in all of 2025, the Chicago Booth Review found. They have also signed about $675bn of data-centre leases that have not yet begun, which stay off their balance sheets.
That is where the dominoes are. If AI revenue disappoints, spending is cut, and the companies that lent against chips and data centres take losses. The WTO itself warns that a disruption in AI investment would hit trade hard, because so much of the equipment is imported. It also points to the wealth effect: households own AI stocks through index funds, which follow the S&P 500 automatically and now hold more than active funds. A fall in AI valuations would reach them directly.
The world economy is leaning on one industry. If that industry stumbles, it will not be quiet.
What to watch next
The big cloud companies report third-quarter results in the coming weeks. Watch their spending plans for 2027: analysts expect AI spending to rise by a further 10% to 20%, the WTO says. A cut would be the first domino. The WTO’s next full forecast usually comes in the spring.
Disclosure
This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice.