IMF says AI lifted global trade, with a bumpy road ahead

The artificial intelligence boom has been a key driver of global growth, experts and policymakers said this week at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, while warning of economic risks if investment in the technology falters.

Spending on data centres and microchips has helped cushion the shock of rising global energy prices caused by war in the Middle East, the International Monetary Fund said. Chief economist Silvana Tenreyro noted that global trade rose 8.3 percent between 2023 and 2025, a figure she said would have been closer to 4.6 percent without AI-related products.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said AI is already showing up across markets. “It is everywhere in the global economy,” he said. “You see it in GDP. You see it in the stock market. You see it in the bond market… So it is here, and it’s just the beginning.”

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh called AI the “most consequential change” to the global economy in his lifetime and said it had “a huge benefit”. He warned the path ahead would be “bumpy”, both in understanding of the technology and because the market structure of these new technologies is still unknown. Other top officials in Bangkok cautioned against relying too heavily on AI investment.

Many delegates to the IMF steering committee walked out of a meeting on Saturday when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov addressed the group in Russian, three sources familiar with the matter said. Nearly a dozen delegates left, including members of the European Union. Delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were among those who left.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has divided the International Monetary and Financial Committee and prevented consensus statements in the years since. Deep divisions returned at this week’s meetings in Bangkok, as new tensions flared between the United States and Ukraine.