Covering the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) activities in 2024 and the early part of 2025, the WTO’s Annual Report 2025 highlights strong growth in the early part of the period under review with a 2.9% increase in the volume of merchandise trade and a 6.8% rise in the value of commercial services trade. However, the report also warns that rising tariffs and trade policy uncertainty in 2025 have caused WTO economists to downgrade their forecasts in both areas.
At the start of 2025, the WTO expected growth in world merchandise trade volume to remain steady at 2.7% for the year. It has now downgraded that forecast to −0.2%.
Although not directly subject to tariffs, services trade is expected to be adversely affected by tariff increases. A decline in goods trade as a result of higher tariffs tends to weaken demand for related services, such as transport and logistics, while slower economic growth and heightened trade policy uncertainty would deter spending on travel and investment-related services.
WTO Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, explained that the global trading system is experiencing its worst disruptions since the Second World War, with multilateral co-operation itself being called into question. “One silver lining of the current disruptions is that they have reminded many governments, businesses and households why the predictable trading conditions they had come to take for granted are so valuable,” she said. “The WTO has an important role to play as a forum where all 166 of our members can share their trade concerns and propose solutions.”
The report also includes detailed accounts of the WTO’s work in various areas such as:
- standards for health and safety
- technical regulations
- services trade
- intellectual property protection
- border procedures
- government procurement transparency
- organisational structure
- staffing levels
- budget information
The report marks 30 years of the WTO, which was inaugurated on 1 January 1995, succeeding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which had regulated world trade since 1948. In 2024, the organisation saw its first membership expansion since 2016, with Comoros and Timor-Leste becoming the 165th and 166th members.
