All species must balance their allocation to growth, survival and recruitment. Among trees, evolution has resulted in different strategies of partitioning resources to these key demographic processes, i.e. demographic trade-offs. It is unclear whether the same demographic trade-offs structure tropical forests worldwide. Here, we used data from 13 large-scale and long-term tropical forest plots to estimate the principal trade-offs in growth, survival, recruitment, and tree stature at each site. For ten sites, two trade-offs appeared repeatedly. One trade-off showed a negative relationship between growth and survival, i.e. the well-known fast−slow continuum. The second trade-off distinguished between tall-statured species and species with high recruitment rates, i.e. a stature−recruitment trade-off. Thus, the fast-slow continuum and tree stature are two independent dimensions structuring most tropical tree communities. Our discovery of the consistency of demographic trade-offs and strategies across forest types in three continents substantially improves our ability to predict tropical forest dynamics worldwide.