(Yicai) March 20 -- The United States’ new Section 301 investigations into several major trading partners, launched after the Supreme Court ruled against a number of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies last month, along with anticipated tariff changes this year, are unlikely to significantly affect the overall tariff landscape, according to the World Trade Organization’s chief economist.

The tariffs that might be implemented are expected to be similar to those authorized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Robert Staiger told Yicai. This expectation aligns with the World Trade Organization’s baseline view that any tariff changes this year are unlikely to significantly disrupt the global tariff environment faced by countries.

While the US has launched an unfair trade practices probe under Section 301, the tariffs under Section 122 only last for 150 days, Staiger said. Therefore, if the Section 301 investigations lead to positive findings, they may result in the temporary Section 122 tariffs being replaced by new ones. Whether these replacement tariffs will be higher or lower than the 10 percent Section 122 tariff is uncertain, but it is expected that the tariffs ultimately put in place will be similar to those under the IEEPA.

WTO research indicates that after the unprecedented policy changes last year, global trade based on the Most-Favored-Nation principle had rebounded to 72 percent by the end of February. This analysis confirms that MFN remains the dominant framework for regulating international trade in most sectors of the global economy.

While the share of trade subject to MFN tariffs has declined markedly, reflecting the erosion of a core principle of the rules-based trading system, nearly three-quarters of global merchandise trade still takes place under the MFN tariff framework, Robert Staiger said.

AI Investment Boom

The investment boom in AI-related goods and services was a major force driving global trade growth last year, Staiger said. WTO data shows that global trade in goods and services grew at a rate of 4.7 percent in 2025, far exceeding the global gross domestic product growth rate of 2.9 percent.

“Investment is typically the second-largest component of GDP after consumption, and it is usually more import-intensive than consumption,” Staiger said. “A change in the composition of investment can alter its import content, with implications for global trade flows and their relationship to GDP.”

The WTO’s latest Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report shows that investment in AI-related goods and services is unusually import-intensive, with an import intensity of 70 percent to 90 percent for computer equipment and recent AI investments. This means that for every US dollar invested in AI-enabling goods, 70 cents to 90 cents would be spent on imports.

“Many AI products come from a relatively small number of countries. These include the US, which is known for chips design, cloud infrastructure and software, South Korea, which manufactures memory chips and semiconductors, the Netherlands, which produces chip making equipment, Japan, which makes precision manufacturing tools, and China, which specializes in hardware assembly, servers and components. As a result, North America, Europe and Asia are the regions most directly impacted by the AI investment boom,” said Staiger.

The WTO report suggests that if the Middle East conflict is short-lived and AI-related spending remains strong in 2026 and 2027, global merchandise trade could expand by 2.4 percent this year and 2.7 percent next year.

Editor: Kim Taylor