A co-packaged optics demonstration is displayed at the booth of Taiwan’s Topco Scientific Co. (TSC) during SEMICON Taiwan in Taipei on September 2, 2026.
Photo by I-Hwa Cheng / AFP via Getty Images
The Briefing:
AI-enabling goods drove 42% of global goods trade growth in 2025 — a share that jumped to 76% in Q1 2026, according to WTO and OECD analysis cited in the DHL Globalization TrackerGlobalization hit a record 25.8% in 2025, its highest level ever measured, even as U.S. tariffs reached their steepest point in decadesU.S. AI hardware imports are running at an annualized pace exceeding $1 trillion in 2026, with tech imports rising 151% year-over-year as of September
The global race to build AI infrastructure is rewriting the rules of international commerce faster than any trade policy can respond — and the steepest tariff increases in a generation have done little to slow it down.
While protectionists were tallying symbolic wins, AI demand was quietly turning their countries into the planet’s largest net importers. The outcome: globalization closed 2025 at its highest recorded level in history — 25.8% on the DHL Globalization Tracker, produced in partnership with NYU Stern School of Business.
Numbers That Leave No Room for Debate
Global goods trade expanded faster in the first half of 2026 than in any comparable six-month stretch over the past 15 years — the only exception being the demand rebound that followed the pandemic’s historic collapse. AI-enabling goods accounted for 42% of that growth in 2025, a share that climbed to 76% by the opening quarter of 2026, based on WTO and OECD data.
“The biggest story in global trade right now is AI, not tariffs,” said John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis research puts sharp numbers behind that claim. As of January 2026, trade in AI-related products had expanded 73% since 2023, compared with just 3% growth across products classified as having low AI relevance. Had AI-related imports tracked that non-AI pace, the U.S. goods trade deficit would have been roughly $200 billion smaller in 2025, the study estimated. By September 2026, monthly U.S. imports of computers, computer accessories, and semiconductors totaled $90.65 billion, up approximately 152% from $35.96 billion a year earlier, according to the Senate Joint Economic Committee’s September 2026 trade update. These broad customs categories are not an AI-only measure, so their annualized value does not establish that full-year AI hardware imports will exceed $1 trillion.
Asia’s Engine: Chips, Cables, and Data Centers
No region reflects this shift more sharply than East Asia and the Pacific, where trade expanded 24% in the first five months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. Europe grew 12%; Sub-Saharan Africa, 11%.
Asia’s dominance has a structural explanation. Nearly the entire AI hardware supply chain runs through the region. As The Economist has detailed, Nvidia chips are designed in the United States, fabricated in Taiwan using Dutch lithography equipment built with German precision optics, and paired with South Korean high-bandwidth memory. Even when some manufacturing shifts to Arizona, the chips circle back to Asia for final packaging. That web of cross-border dependencies has not just sustained regional trade — it has accelerated it, lifting East Asia’s intraregional trade share from 57% in 2025 to 60% in early 2026.
Where Tariffs Failed Most
The Trump administration’s tariff strategy contains a structural contradiction documented by the McKinsey Global Institute’s 2026 trade report: U.S.-China trade fell 12.3% in 2025. McKinsey’s trade-flow decomposition also identifies a $130 billion reduction associated with the U.S.-China trade drop; that figure is not a measure of Chinese exports to the United States alone. Meanwhile, AI-related imports were shielded by product-level exemptions: a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis research paper found that nearly 69% of high-AI-relevance imports fell under at least one exemption list.
At the end of 2025, the effective tariff rate on products with high AI relevance was 4.5%, compared with 12.1% for products with low AI relevance, according to Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis researcher Michael Waugh. Within the AI-related basket, compute hardware faced an effective rate of 0.8%, while networking and telecom equipment faced 3.1%; the comparatively low rates reflected product-level exemptions. EU auto shipments to the United States declined 17% in 2025, according to McKinsey’s analysis.
The broader damage from tariffs was further constrained by a structural fact: the United States accounts for only 13% of global imports, and roughly half of those were exempted from the highest duties in effect through mid-2026.
A Structural Wave, Not a Business Cycle
Prof. Steven A. Altman, director of the DHL Initiative on Globalization at NYU Stern’s Center for the Future of Management, distilled what the data are showing: the trade outlook has grown stronger “than it was before either shock” — a reference to both the new tariff regime and the Iran conflict that disrupted global energy flows in early 2026.
Trade in AI products surged 55% in the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to The Economist’s calculations using WTO product classifications. Even as global merchandise trade growth decelerates from its 4.6% pace in 2025, the rates already posted this decade outpace the annual average of the previous one.
Tiago Devesa, co-author of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Geopolitics and the Geometry of Global Trade: 2026 Update, framed the distinction in an interview with Euronews: “The tariffs were last year’s disruptive splash.” The AI boom, in his reading, is the long-term wave that will keep reshaping trade flows for years to come.
The divide between those two forces is not just one of scale. Tariffs are political decisions that can be reversed. Global demand for AI infrastructure is, for now, a structural necessity with no ready substitute.
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