America’s Big Trade Win

By Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala - Project Syndicate | March 19, 2025

Despite the uncertainty surrounding global trade, there are some bright spots – namely, booming trade in services. And here, ironically, the United States is leading the way, running a services trade surplus with most major economies and generating millions of good jobs for American workers.

GENEVA – News about global trade these days is all about tariffs, protectionism, and uncertainty. There is considerable anxiety among businesses, consumers, and public officials. But the world must remain calm and focused on the main objective: averting unproductive trade wars.

In fact, beyond the tariff-induced gloom, there are some bright spots. Global trade in services, for example, is booming. And there is a clear winner on this front: the United States.

Trade in services, especially finance, legal, entertainment, and high-tech services, has quietly become a major source of US economic strength. In 2023, US services exports were worth more than $1 trillion, accounting for 13% of the global total, and they expanded a further 8% in 2024. The country runs a services trade surplus with most major economies, including key partners in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, to the tune of nearly $300 billion in 2024. US companies last year received more than $144 billion in intellectual-property royalties and licensing fees – much more than their global counterparts.

American workers are reaping the rewards. Services exports directly generated 4.1 million jobs in America in 2022, according to the US International Trade Administration, while around half of the 5.1 million US jobs supported by manufacturing exports actually involve services. Importantly, tradable services jobs are good jobs. Professional and business services jobs paid an average hourly wage of $43.60 in February 2025, compared to $34.83 for manufacturing, according to preliminary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Moreover, these well-paying employment opportunities are increasingly spread nationwide, and across a range of sectors, from finance and consulting to health care and creative industries. Services are also vital inputs for efficient manufacturing and farm production.

Despite accounting for roughly 80% of US GDP and employment, services are harder to imagine as a tradable part of the global economy than goods like clothing and chemicals. Economists often joke that the difference between goods and services is that you can drop the former on your foot.

And unlike non-traded services such as fast-food restaurants and home health care, tradable services are frequently invisible. You may not see it when US law firms sell their services to companies in Europe, when fans in Mumbai stream an American artist’s song on Spotify, or when billions of people around the world use Apple’s App Store, but all of it is trade just the same.

While trade in manufactured goods has lost momentum since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, services trade remains robust, generating major benefits for the US government, the country’s businesses, and its trading partners. It is also poised to expand. While goods accounted for three-quarters of the $30.5 trillion in global trade in 2023, trade in services is outpacing trade in goods. New World Trade Organization data indicate that trade in services grew 10% year on year in value in the third quarter of 2024, compared to 4% growth for trade in goods.

Meanwhile, new technologies are making it possible to supply and consume more kinds of cross-border services. WTO economists estimate that digitalization will boost services’ share of total world trade to 37.2% by 2040. Digitally delivered services – everything from remote consulting to streaming video – are already the fastest-growing segment of global trade, quadrupling in value between 2005 and 2023, to $4.25 trillion. The US accounts for more than 15% of these exports.

To raise future living standards, the US should lean into services alongside manufacturing. The share of employment in tradable services is set to increase, as manufacturing – like agriculture before it – becomes increasingly machine-intensive. Moreover, US output per worker is growing fastest in services, especially tradable ones, and AI promises to increase that productivity (although the jury is still out on its impact on jobs). Promoting investment in these high-productivity sectors is therefore a win-win proposition.

Of course, revitalizing manufacturing around the world would help reduce the vulnerabilities associated with excessive supply concentration and address national-security concerns. That is why the WTO has been calling for “re-globalization” – diversifying and decentralizing supply chains to boost resilience and to support the people and places, both in poor countries and advanced economies like the US, left behind by global economic integration.

To pursue policies that maximize innovation, growth, and job creation, the new US narrative about trade should integrate the country’s undeniable success with tradable services. Its impressive performance on this front is a clear win to be built upon.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

Copyright Project Syndicate

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