AI boom bolstered growth in global trade, benefiting China and India, IMF says

BANGKOK: The strong demand for AI has bolstered growth in China, India and other Asian countries and outpaced the overall growth in global trade, the IMF's new chief economist Silvana Tenreyro said on Tuesday. Global trade would have grown at a far slower rate without the AI boost, Tenreyro told reporters at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok. A long-time professor at the London School of Economics, Tenreyro started her new job at the IMF in August. Tenreyro said the IMF remained concerned about high debt levels, urging countries to start cutting budgets to reduce deficits. She said central bankers should pursue more restrictive policies, including raising interest rates to get inflation rates back to target. Tenreyro said the AI-related boom in investment and trade had been a key driver of global growth, but AI supply chains were highly concentrated in a few countries and sectors, which created potential chokepoints. Global trade grew 8.3% between 2023 and 2025, while global trade in AI grew by 29%, she said. Without the AI trade, overall growth in trade would have been only 4.6%. The IMF flagged that a market value correction and AI threats to cybersecurity could also weigh on growth and add to financial stability risks. Tenreyro said the IMF's baseline forecast assumed the AI boom would dissipate over time, but another scenario showed that actual productivity gains from a prolonged AI boom could limit its inflationary impact. If the AI boom persisted but did not result in productivity gains, the gains for growth would be smaller and inflation would be higher, she said. And a reassessment of the profitability gains from AI would result in downward adjustment in demand. "It's basically an unwind of this boom that we are seeing," Tenreyro said, adding that the IMF was updating its research on the impact of AI on jobs. - Reuters