Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. January 4, 2024 |
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More for ’24: The Global Economy and US–China Relations |
On Tuesday, the Global Briefing noted major trends to watch in 2024: wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere; potential crises like sabotage of undersea cables or Myanmar’s civil war spilling over into China and India; and a global wave of elections. Since it’s hard to fit all sorts of predictions into one newsletter, we’ll note here two more sets of well-considered and well-rounded forecasts.
On the global economy, former Morgan Stanley Head of Emerging Markets and Global Macro and current Financial Times columnist Ruchir Sharma predicts conventional wisdom will be right in some cases and wrong in others. Interest rates will stay high, Sharma predicts: Tightened-up central banks are no longer buying so many government bonds, and private bond buyers will probably “demand something extra to keep absorbing the huge supply.” On the overall health of the economy and markets, Sharma suggests the “air could still come out slowly” from both. “With borrowing costs still relatively high, the economy is likely to slide downward,” Sharma writes, “though possibly avoiding the classic bust.”
As others have predicted, Sharma suggests China’s economy will continue to slow. Meanwhile, Europe and emerging markets both look resilient. Europe has absorbed the pain of interest-rate hikes and the energy crunch wrought by Russia’s war on Ukraine, Sharma points out, and developing economies did not see the wave of public-debt defaults some predicted in 2023. On this Sunday’s GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET, Sharma joins Fareed to detail his forecasts in depth.
Taking a macro view of geopolitics in 2024, Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus Richard Haass makes several predictions at Project Syndicate, including that this is unlikely to be a “decisive” year on the battlefields of Ukraine and that the US–China relationship is unlikely to see major changes. “Chinese officials are for the most part focused on the economy and not looking for a confrontation with the US that could lead to more export controls and investment restrictions,” Haass writes. |
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Many of the world’s democracies will vote this year, and Sharma points to a staggering stat: “In all, 46 per cent of the global population will have an opportunity to vote (in 2024), the largest share since 1800 when such records first began, says Deutsche Bank research.” The biggest election, per Haass, will be in the US, where a Trump–Biden rematch appears likely.
The current print issue of Foreign Policy, entitled “The Year the World Votes,” examines several major electoral trends to follow, among them populism, nationalism, and technology. (As the Global Briefing has noted, Allison Meakem runs through the most important elections to watch, from the US to India to Iran.)
As for trends, Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes that nationalism remains strong as a political force (and tool) and will loom over 2024’s votes, dividing and polarizing. Examining social media’s role in elections, Jan-Werner Müller writes that social media is “particularly useful for populists” in that it “allows for what can seem like a direct connection between political leaders and potential followers.” But while social media has generated high anxiety about warped politics, Müller writes that the problem isn’t as severe as some critics had expected: “Filter bubbles—or online echo chambers curated by algorithms—exist but are much less common than often assumed; they are not the main cause of polarization, even as they help spread disinformation and propaganda more swiftly; and our offline life is in many ways less diverse than our online existence.”
Artificial intelligence is another big concern, given its capacity to generate deepfakes and turbocharge disinformation. There are indeed reasons to worry, Rishi Iyengar writes, but there are also mitigating factors—including the fact that disinformers haven’t needed AI to succeed in the past (meaning it might not boost them so much) and that AI can also be used to fight disinformation, not just spread it. |
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If former US President Donald Trump wins again in 2024, will the course of the world be altered severely? Some think not, Haass notes at Project Syndicate: On China and trade, Trump and President Joe Biden favor similar policies. Both wanted to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan.
But there’s a fundamental difference in the Trump and Biden worldviews, Haass writes, and US allies—whom Trump scorns—would likely bear the brunt of his return to the White House. In the same Foreign Policy issue, Leslie Vinjamuri underscores that difference: “For more than seven decades, the United States has provided the backbone for a multilateral order.” Biden is an avowed multilateralist. Trump is the opposite, and there are real fears “that Washington could take irreversible steps toward isolationism if Trump returns,” Vinjamuri writes. |
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