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AI is a policy challenge disguised as a tech revolution. We dissect the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) World Trade Report 2025, balancing its promise of monumental growth with the stark warnings of widening global and domestic inequality.
Our program synthesizes WTO, Morgan Stanley, and Penn Wharton data to give you the critical, actionable knowledge on how AI will fundamentally reshape global trade, corporate value, and your career.
AI is projected to trigger an economic step change, but its benefits are concentrated:
Global Economic Uplift: AI could boost the value of global trade by nearly 40% and increase global GDP by 12% to 13% by 2040.
The Services Engine: The most powerful driver is digitally deliverable services, projected to see a 42% increase in trade. This is because AI cuts operational trade friction, creates a new class of highly tradable digital exports, and benefits from the rapid productivity growth in AI-intensive sectors.
Corporate Windfall: Successful AI adoption could generate an annual net benefit of up to $920 billion for the S&P 500, leading to a market capitalization increase of $13 to $16 trillion.
The AI revolution is fundamentally shifting who is most exposed to automation, defying conventional wisdom:
The Most Exposed: The highest level of task exposure is concentrated around the 80th percentile of earnings (high-earning professionals like programmers, financial analysts, and paralegals). Why? Because AI is highly effective at automating the intermediate, structured cognitive tasks that make up about half of their work.
The Least Exposed: Jobs requiring complex physical dexterity (construction, food service) or deep, unstructured human interaction (clergy, nurses) are the least exposed.
Wages and the Skill Premium: AI is projected to slightly narrow the global skill premium (the pay gap between high- and low-skilled workers) because it automates intermediate-to-high skilled tasks more effectively. However, real wages are still projected to rise for all labor groups because the overall economic pie grows due to higher productivity.
AI's benefits are heavily concentrated in a handful of high-income countries (98% of global AI subsidies), threatening to deepen global inequality.
The Deepening Gap Scenario: If Low Income Economies (LICEs) maintain the status quo on policy, their real income is projected to grow by a modest 8% by 2040, while high-income economies grow by 14%—structurally embedding greater inequality.
The Catch-Up Leap: The WTO models that if LICEs make significant policy changes—closing the digital infrastructure gap by 50%—their income growth skyrockets to 15% by 2040.
Policy Roadblock: Trade barriers (tariffs, quotas) against AI-enabling goods (semiconductors, servers) are increasing, primarily imposed by high-income nations, which directly blocks the path to the "catch-up leap".
Final Question: Given that AI automation hits the high-skilled middle hardest and 2/3 of people in developing countries are optimistic about AI, how can developing nations strategically design their education and economic policies to harness that optimism and leapfrog the displacement anxiety gripping richer nations?
