Blockchain, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 3D printing and other breakthroughs would fundamentally change trade, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said as he launched the report.

“This is structural, this is here to stay … It is a revolution,” he told a conference at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva.

“Notwithstanding the current trade tensions, we predict that trade could grow yearly by 1.8 to 2.0 percentage points more until 2030 as a result of the falling trade costs, amounting to a cumulated growth of 31 to 34 percentage points over 15 years,” he wrote in his foreword to the WTO’s World Trade Report 2018.

That compares with a fall in global trade costs of 15% between 1996 and 2014, the report said.

Global e-commerce transactions were estimated to be worth US$27.7 trillion in 2016, of which US$23.9 trillion were business-to-business, the report said.