The Great Economic Transformation
Here's Why 3D-Printed Infofacturing Will Make Some Tariffs Obsolete
*Op-Ed Written by Jeremy Rifkin
*Editor's Note: The following op-ed is an excerpt from Rifkin's latest book, Rescuing the Future: Reimagining Artificial Intelligence in a World on the Edge.
While nations are fighting with one another in a vicious geopolitical tariff war that threatens to pull the global economy apart, a path-changing AI-directed 3D-printed additive infofacturing revolution is quickly moving onto the global stage, making tariffs obsolete on a vast number of physical goods. This additive infofacturing revolution is accelerating on an exponential curve alongside the conventional “subtractive manufacturing” modality, and Wall Street is betting that it will race ahead by 2050 and along with it the neutering of the geopolitical era. The current global tariff war will only speed the transition in the years ahead. The infofacturing revolution is the core of a wholly new economic paradigm that is going to fundamentally change the way we think of economic life.
The big news: companies are bypassing tariffs by sending AI digital files of 3D printed products over the internet at near zero marginal cost to vendors around the world, who then print out and distribute the smart products to clients and customers. Unlike physical goods, the transfer of digital software files used in additive infofacturing are not subject to tariffs. This shifts the zeitgeist from manufacturing in global “seller–buyer markets” of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions to infofacturing in glocal “provider–user networks” in the Third Industrial Revolution.
In 2024, the global logistics cost of cargo transport via ocean, air, and land was estimated to be $12.8 trillion dollars, or 11.6 percent of the $110 trillion dollar GDP that year. On the upside, partially avoiding ocean, air, and land logistics that go along with the movement of physical products all around the planet means dramatically reducing the cost of doing business as well as the price attached to the sale of goods and services for much of the human family across every continent. There is also the time element. In dire situations like the one that faced the global community during the COVID-19 pandemic, when vital supplies were stalled in ocean, air, and land shipping, 3D printing could have saved time and lives.
While over 4,700 global seaports facilitate shipping, which serves as the mode of transport for roughly eighty percent of trade, it’s estimated that trade could be cut by forty percent with the growth of AI additive infofacturing as soon as 2040. The ports are likely to balance the losses with equally impressive gains by renovating unused port warehouses and renting the facilities to companies infofacturing AI-directed 3D printing/additive infofacturing product lines. The products can then be couriered to industrial parks, wholesalers, retailers, and end-consumers on updated smart AI road and rail systems that already lead out from the ports. The port of Los Angeles, the largest seaport in North America, has already made a partial shift solarizing its facilities and leasing out retrofitted warehouses to additive infofacturing companies who can print out product lines and send them on their way via interstate highway systems and rail to end-users.
The Ecology and Economy of Infofacturing: An Exponential Curve
The First and Second Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were based on subtractive manufacturing models. Subtractive manufacturing shaves material to create the final products resulting in extensive waste and a high entropy bill in the production process. The additive infofacturing technology of the Third Industrial Revolution in the twenty-first century, by contrast, pours out products layer by layer, creating objects with near zero waste.
What we are witnessing is a change in the very way we go about creating products, taking us from “manufacturing” to “infofacturing,” and from a long history of extracting and transforming nature into resources, substances, and things to a wholly new paradigm of interacting with and adapting to nature with AI-directed technologies driven by processes, patterns, and flows – all of which is beginning to transform economic life from markets to networks and from the Tragedy of the Commons to the Comedy of the Commons.
The 3D printer prints out layers arranged in rows designated by the software, pouring out the entire product or structure often in minutes or hours.
The laterally integrated AI additive infofacturing revolution of the twenty-first century is unstoppable and will probably surpass and replace the vertically integrated subtractive manufacturing platforms by mid-century. The reason is, unlike the First and Second Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the lead time and fixed cost involved in the twenty-first-century Third Industrial Revolution-directed research, development, and prototyping, along with the marginal cost of production and distribution of product lines, is so much faster, cheaper, and adaptive and comes with a far smaller entropic footprint.
Let me introduce you to the Italian architect Mario Cucinella, who poured out a clay house sourced entirely from locally available clay soils using 3D printing. The eco-sustainable structure was poured by the printer in 200 hours, with little waste or scraps generated in the construction.
No less important is the new commercial exchange model that goes along with the AI infofacturing revolution and distribution of 3D printed goods. Cucinella can shift his business plan from a “seller–buyer market” to a “provider–user network” by uploading and instantaneously sending the software instructions by computer at “near” zero marginal cost to any part of the world, allowing developers onsite to print out buildings on a just-in-time and just-in-need basis and pay a license fee to the provider for each building downloaded.
3D printing/additive infofacturing is on an exponential growth curve, similar to solar and wind technology. A growing number of Fortune 500 companies are pioneering the use of AI 3D printed technologies including Airbus, Siemens, Volkswagen, Boeing, Medtronic, General Electric, Caterpillar, BASF, and SAP. In 2025, SAP became the highest valued company in Europe and a global leader in 3D printing/additive infofacturing by providing digital content management, data storage, and archiving solutions to other companies.
While global companies are fast switching over to the new AI-driven additive infofacturing model, the technology favors high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in a rich latticework of economic exchanges by sending and sharing digital files all over the world at near zero marginal cost to end-users who pour out the products, all the while avoiding the steep cost of ocean, air, and land transportation and logistics and tariffs. “SMEs account for approximately 90 percent of all firms globally, generate 70 percent of employment, and contribute up to 70 percent of global GDP.”
With the fixed cost plummeting and the marginal cost falling in AI-driven 3D printed product lines across most sectors of the economy, accompanied by the delivery of tariff-free software in distributed AI provider–user networks around the world, it’s easy to understand how high-tech SMEs are scaling and will likely bypass giant global companies in conventional seller-buyer markets well before mid-century.
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Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of twenty-five books translated into over thirty-five languages. He is a principal architect of the European Union’s and China’s economic plans for transitioning into a Third Industrial Revolution and he served as an economic advisor to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer on the U.S. infrastructure plan. He is listed among the top ten most influential economic thinkers in The Huffington Post’s global survey of “The World’s Most Influential Voices."
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