The Current Column

WTO Global Review 2026

Aid for Trade at twenty: Between help, headwinds and donor interests

Stender, Frederik & Tim Vogel
The Current Column (2026)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), The Current Column of 2 November 2026

In an era of economic insecurity and geopolitical challenges, Aid for Trade’s greatest value may lie in building stronger and more resilient economic partnerships, rather than in boosting trade alone.

Bonn, 2 November 2026. From 29 to 30 October, the World Trade Organization (WTO) hosted its 10^th Aid for Trade Global Review in Geneva. Held every two years, the Review is the WTO’s main forum for assessing progress and shaping the future direction for Aid for Trade (AfT). Twenty years after its launch, the anniversary offered a chance to celebrate achievements but also to reflect on the role of AfT in an increasingly fragmented and volatile global economy.

AfT is built around a simple idea. Countries that face high trade costs cannot fully benefit from access to international markets. The scale and focus of the initiative matter. AfT accounts for around one-fifth of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and, according to the WTO, roughly 98 percent of all commitments are directed towards economic infrastructure and productive capacity, with only a small fraction allocated to trade policy and regulatory capacity-building. AfT is therefore far more than a narrow trade-policy instrument. In practice, it helps countries participate more effectively in international trade and thereby supports broader economic development. 

How the debate is changing

This logic now faces a new political reality. Fiscal pressures in donor countries, the increasing politicization of trade, and ideological attacks on development cooperation, which often overstate public scepticism, have changed the terms of the debate on aid. In response, governments have cut aid budgets while more explicitly framing the remaining aid in terms of national interests, for example by emphasizing the employment and export opportunities it creates for domestic firms. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with acknowledging that development cooperation should also generate benefits for donor countries. The problem arises when those benefits become the primary objective rather than a consequence. This distinction is particularly important for AfT, where evidence on the magnitude and significance of donor export gains remains mixed. 

For ODA more broadly, recent research has attracted public attention by identifying substantial positive effects on donor-country exports and employment, including in Germany. Crucially, these effects appear to operate largely through long-term and indirect channels that are not necessarily linked to direct trade support. These findings also point to the need to look beyond immediate contracts and export orders to understand how much of AfT’s value to donors lies in the longer-term economic relationships that development cooperation helps establish.

There are good reasons to adopt this perspective on AfT. By supporting poorer countries in their efforts to cut trade costs, modernise customs procedures, strengthen productive capacity, connect to global value chains and meet international standards, evidence suggests that these interventions can significantly expand recipients’ overall trade performance, particularly in least developed countries. 

The potential benefits, however, extend well beyond recipients’ increased trade capacity. Focusing exclusively on donor export balances thus misses much of the bigger picture. As countries become more successful traders, they may also become more resilient and more reliableeconomic partners. For highly trade-dependent economies such as Germany, these developments could represent a significant potential benefit in their own right. But emerging research also suggests that donors may benefit through unlocking access to critical raw-material suppliers, forming more sustainable trade partnerships, and building stronger coalitions in support of a rules-based trading system. These effects are harder to capture in simple export statistics, but they may ultimately be more consequential.

Looking ahead

The debate, then, should move beyond the question "What do we get back?” toward a more strategic “What kinds of partnerships are we trying to develop?”. This shift matters not only for the political arena but also for researchers. Future research should go beyond identifying direct effects to examine the causal mechanisms through which AfT generates benefits for donors and recipients alike. Understanding these channels would help guide the strategic design of AfT. 

This is particularly relevant in a trading environment increasingly shaped by industrial policy, economic security, supply-chain concerns, digitalization and artificial intelligence, climate pressures and geopolitics. To remain effective, AfT needs to be understood as a more integrated and comprehensive approach. The programme of this year’s Global Review reflects a broader and more forward-looking understanding of trade integration, highlighting resilience, inclusion, investment and public-private partnerships alongside traditional trade capacity-building.

This broader perspective could pave the way for bringing AfT’s core objectives into closer alignment with realities and adjustment needs of today’s global economy. If well designed, AfT, with its explicit mandate to support development in an interconnected global economy, may be a prime candidate for mutually beneficial partnerships. Twenty years after its launch, that may be one of AfT’s most relevant ideas for the next twenty years.