World Trade & Tech Day: AI and trade increasingly intertwined

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala welcomed the enthusiastic interest from WTO members and the public generated by the event, noting that over 600 people had registered to attend  in person and around the same number having registered to follow online. 

"The AI revolution promises to transform the way we trade, by lowering trade costs and enhancing productivity growth, particularly in services. Trade is the backbone of the AI value chain, from cross-border data flows all the way back to critical minerals," she noted. 

AI and trade growth have been going hand in hand, said the Director-General. She pointed out that global goods trade volume expanded by 4.6% last year, with an estimated 42% of that growth coming from trade in AI-related products. Trade is the backbone of the AI supply chain, she said.  

"Semiconductors are designed in one country, fabricated in another; packaged and tested elsewhere; assembled into servers in a fourth country, and deployed in data centres worldwide. No trade, no compute," said the Director-General. 

She pointed to the relevant rules of the WTO that are the pillars of AI development and deployment. They include: the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which removes tariffs from much of the equipment AI runs on; the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which underpins the services it depends on; the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement, which commits members to common standards; and the Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, which shapes how technology is diffused and the way that intellectual property is protected.

But while those rulebooks remain key pillars of digital trade, she noted that they were developed long before the development of AI and LLMs. She expressed the hope that today’s series of events and dialogues would help shape new policies and bring coherence across borders for regulatory frameworks.