The World Trade Organization (WTO) reported that its outlook for world trade is for a 0.2% drop in 2025 and 2.6% growth in 2026, in volume terms.
To obtain this projection, the WTO averaged its forecast for exports and imports.
World Trade Outlook
In 2023, world trade had a significant weight in the global economy. According to World Bank data, it accounted for about 58.5% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
On the other hand, most of the goods traded cross the oceans. In fact, around 90% of goods are transported by sea.
This is the outlook for world trade, in year-on-year percentage growth:
- 2018: 3.2.
- 2019: 0.4.
- 2020: -5.0.
- 2021: 9.6.
- 2022: 3.0.
- 2023: -1.0.
- 2024: 2.9.
- 2025: -0.2.
- 2026: 2.5.
Affected by tariffs
At the beginning of 2025, the WTO projected sustained growth in world trade. Merchandise trade was expected to increase gradually, in line with GDP.
However, since January, new tariff measures were announced. This forced WTO economists to adjust their forecasts. As a result, they significantly reduced the outlook for merchandise trade.
Key risks include the possible reinstatement of reciprocal tariffs by the United States and the spillover of trade uncertainty to other international relationships.
If implemented, tariffs could reduce world merchandise trade growth by 0.6 percentage points in 2025, while uncertainty would reduce it by a further 0.8 percentage points. In total, the combined impact would be a 1.5% drop in world trade that year.
In 2024, world trade had a solid year. Merchandise trade grew 2.9 percent and commercial services trade grew 6.8 percent, outpacing global GDP growth of 2.8 percent.
It was the first time since 2017, excluding the pandemic, that merchandise trade grew faster than output.
World merchandise exports rose 2 percent to $24.43 trillion. China was the top exporter, while the United States led imports.