710 
About Documents
At present, the global economic landscape continues to confront a multitude of challenges, such as geopolitical fragmentation, intensifying protectionist policies, and a persistent global economic deceleration that has yet to recover to pre-COVID-19 levels. These negative factors directly impact the aggregate performance of merchandise trade in the global market.
Based on the World Trade Organization (WTO) forecasts in October 2025, the growth rate of global merchandise trade is projected to decelerate from 2.8% in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025, and further decline to 0.5% in 2026, respectively.
Although the 2025 global merchandise trade forecast has been revised upward from the WTO’s previous projections in April and August, thereby illustrating a better than expected trade outlook, despite concerns regarding the effect of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff measures, this figure was bolstered by temporary accelerating factors in the short term, namely: 1. Frontloading of imports in the United States to circumvent the impact of impending tariffs which would incur incremental costs for operators in the future; and 2. Significant growth in investments related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), accelerating demand for goods within the associated supply chains, such as semiconductors and computer equipment.
These two temporary factors drove global merchandise trade volume to expand higher than anticipated in the first half of 2025, increasing by 4.9% year-on-year. However, in 2026, it is projected that the tangible impacts of enforced tariff measures and fully saturated inventories will become evident, coupled with a global economy beginning to slow down due to heightened trade policy uncertainty. This signals a potential economic crisis for nations heavily reliant on exports.
When examining data specifically for the Asian region from the WTO report, it is found that the growth rate of Asia’s merchandise trade is projected to decelerate from 5.7% in 2025 to 2.7% in 2026. Conversely, commercial services trade is projected to expand from 4.6% in 2025 to 5.5% in 2026, representing the highest forecasted figure compared to other continents globally. This demonstrates a greater degree of resilience to the direct impacts of tariff measures and trade policy uncertainty than that of the merchandise trade sector.
The growth of the services sector has been driven by various positive factors, such as the recovery of Japan’s tourism sector driven by the depreciation of the Yen, the continuous growth of India’s digital services, the significant expansion of China’s transport service sector, and Singapore’s role as a financial services hub. Therefore, as Asia’s merchandise trade faces a downturn, the expansion of trade in services may serve as the key driver in driving the region’s economy toward continuous and sustainable growth.
Author:
Mr. Atit Saerepaiboonsub
Senior Researcher
International Institute for Trade and Development (ITD)
www.itd.or.th
Publication: Bangkok BIZ Newspaper
Section: First Section/World Beat
Volume: 39 Issue: 13051
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025
Page: 8 (left)
Column: “Asean Insight”
