【英文】WTO报告： 2019年世界贸易报告WORLD TRADE REPORT 2019 The future of services trade（232P）

Services have already transformed national economies  on a massive scale. Not only are services indispensable  to running our increasingly complex and sophisticated  industrial economies – from logistics, to finance, to  informatics – but the services sector is the fastest  growing economic segment in its own right – from  business services, to healthcare, to entertainment.  Services generate more than two-thirds of economic  output, attract over two-thirds of foreign direct  investment, and provide almost two-thirds of jobs in  developing countries and four-fifths in developed  ones. Services now seem to be transforming international  trade in similar ways. Although they still only account  for one fifth of cross-border trade, they are the fastest  growing sector (WTO, 2017). While the value of  goods exports has increased at a modest 1 per cent  annually since 2011, the value of commercial services  exports has expanded at three times that rate, 3 per  cent (see Figure A.1).

The services share of world  trade has grown from just 9 per cent in 1970 to over  20 per cent today – and this report forecasts that  services could account for up to one-third of world  trade by 2040.1 This would represent a 50 per cent  increase in the share of services in global trade in just  two decades.  There is a common perception that globalization is  slowing down. But if the growing wave of services  trade is factored in – and not just the modest  increases in merchandise trade – then globalization  may be poised to speed up again.  2. Digitalized services: the nontradable becomes hyper-tradable The main driver of this shift is technological change.  Thanks to digitalization, the internet and low-cost  telecommunications, many services sectors that  were once non-tradable – because they had to  be delivered face-to-face in a fixed location – have  become highly tradable – because they can now be  delivered remotely over long distances. Of course, some services, such as taxis, hotels or  hair salons, will continue to be delivered locally and  require a physical presence (although companies  such as Uber and Airbnb demonstrate how even these  sectors can be radically transformed by new internetbased business models).