Global trade splits into two speeds, with AI as the dividing line

Read only the headline and 2026 looks grim for trade: merchandise volume growth is set to fall to 1.9% from 4.6%, a Middle East war has at points emptied the Strait of Hormuz of commercial traffic, and the share of world trade hit by new tariffs and export measures has climbed to roughly $2.97 trillion, the highest in over fifteen years. The instinct is to brace for contraction.

But the WTO's own leading indicator tells a more interesting story. Its Goods Trade Barometer still reads 101.7, above the 100 trend line, because one component is doing the heavy lifting. The electronic-components sub-index sits at 105.5, well above trend, as the global build-out of AI infrastructure pulls semiconductors, servers and networking gear across borders. Automotive (99.8) and agricultural raw materials (98.9) are slightly below trend; air freight and container shipping are still expanding. In other words, the goods economy is not slowing uniformly. It is bifurcating around AI.

The bigger divergence is between goods and services. Total trade grew 7% in 2025 to $34.65 trillion, but services expanded 8% against goods' 6%, lifting the services share of world trade to 27.6%, its highest since 2005. Digitally delivered services, the slice that travels down a fiber line rather than through a port, grew about 6.1% and is largely insulated from tariffs, shipping disruption and energy prices. India's computer-services exports rose 13% in the first half of 2025; Ireland's, 14%.

This matters because most export-development machinery (trade missions, logistics subsidies, port-centric promotion, goods-focused market intelligence) was built for the physical economy. The fastest-growing, most resilient export categories are increasingly invisible to it. A software firm exporting cybersecurity subscriptions or a design studio billing overseas clients rarely shows up in the pipelines that economic-development and export agencies actively cultivate.

The tariff surge sharpens the point. With a record share of goods trade now subject to new measures, the risk-adjusted return on chasing the next marginal goods exporter into a contested market is falling, while services exports route around most of those barriers entirely. The agencies that win the next cycle will be the ones that treat digitally delivered services as a primary export class, with their own metrics, missions and incentives, rather than a footnote to the manufacturing story.

None of this argues for abandoning goods. The AI-electronics pull is real, and supply-chain diversification spending, from the EU's €12 billion Global Gateway push in South Africa to the critical-minerals frameworks reshaping who trades with whom, is creating genuine openings in physical value chains. The point is sequencing: in a year when the goods headline slows and the services current strengthens, export strategies should be rebalanced toward where the growth has actually gone.