20 Risks and Trends for 2025

AI and Jobs. Resource Nationalism. Managed Trade. Quantum Computing. GreenTech. Commercialization of Space. On January 15, WITA hosted noted futurist Robert Moran of Brunswick Group to discuss 20 notable global trends and risks for 2025.

Featured Speakers:

Robert Moran, Partner, Brunswick Group

Moderator: John Miller, Chief Economic Analyst, Trade Data Monitor

Watch the Full Event Recording Here

01/15/2025 | WITA

The Return of the Trump Tariffs – Navigating the Challenges of Trump’s Return to the White House

President-elect Trump will return to the White House…on 20 January 2025. He has already announced far-reaching policy changes, particularly in the area of international trade. He plans to impose a wide range of cross-sector tariffs with a particular focus on Chinese goods, but also targeting global imports with “universal tariffs”. This will put further pressure on globally operating business actors that are already dealing with U.S. tariffs, largely maintained under the Biden administration, coupled with a worldwide trend of protectionist trade measures.

The next “episode” of the Trump Tariffs saga is likely to affect various businesses, with some critical sectors such as steel, aluminium and automotive facing particular challenges. In general, the trade agenda pursued by Donald Trump will represent another step back from the principles of barrierless, cooperative and predictable global trade. Globally operating businesses will need to prepare for further cost increases and supply chain disruptions.

Key takeaways

President-elect Trump’s threats to impose tariff hikes should be taken seriously. He is likely to face little (legal) obstacles to impose far-reaching tariffs with significant impacts on global markets.
The planned tariff agenda will have significant implications for the majority of globally operating businesses, with particular impact on those in the automotive, pharmaceuticals, steel and aluminium sectors.
The introduction of the proposed tariff increases is likely to result in significant disruptions to global trade, creating a volatile environment for the private sector.
Businesses should prepare to reassess their risk exposure to the planned tariff agenda. In general, businesses operating on a global scale, particularly those that rely heavily on imported materials or on the United States as a major sales market, will need to keep a close eye on developments over the coming weeks and months in order to address the potential impact on their market access conditions and to identify any possible supply chain disruptions.

What measures are planned and who will likely be most affected?

Donald Trump’s tariff agenda during his second term will most likely build on the measures implemented during his first term and, to a large extent, maintained under the Biden administration.

Recap: Trump Tariffs Episode I

During Donald Trump’s first term tariffs have already been a central element of his trade policy. The introduction of tariffs was presented as a retaliation measure against unfair trade tactics and a way to boost the domestic economy and to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. Also, President Trump saw tariffs as a viable method of exerting pressure on competitors or influencing the policies of other countries.

To achieve this aim, the Trump administration has imposed a series of tariffs on imports of solar panels, washing machines (30-50%), steel (25%) and aluminium (10%) from various countries (including the EU), as well as on most goods from China (affecting more than USD 380 billion worth of trade at the time). The Biden administration has maintained most of the measures against China but has lifted or eased certain tariffs on imports from other countries. For example, it replaced tariffs on steel and aluminium with tariff-rate quotas on imports from the EU, the UK and Japan. With regards to China, however, the Biden administration even imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods, especially for electric vehicles (“EVs”) (100%), batteries (25%) and semiconductors (50%).

In summary, while the situation has eased for some regions and sectors under the Biden administration, operators with global businesses and supply chains are still experiencing adverse effects, especially due to the existing high U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. The situation could deteriorate further with an escalation under a second Trump administration.

Read the Full Insight Here

01/08/2025 | Ashurst

Tariffs and Economic Isolationism:

Four Principles for a Response

The incoming Trump administration promises a very large increase in tariffs, perhaps to levels last seen during the mid-1930s in the Depression. As national policy, this would abandon the liberalizing program developed during the New Deal and extended under presidents of both parties all the way through the Obama administration. In its place would come something like the high-tariff worlds of Harding/Hoover isolationism in the 1920s, or (in Mr. Trump’s apparently preferred formulation) the even more remote Gilded Age of the 1880s and 1890s.

Just a week before the inauguration, in the real world of 2025, what will actually happen — to borrow from lyrics from a slightly later era — still ain’t exactly clear. Mr. Trump has proposed at least five different policies, mostly incompatible. One is an overall 10% or 20% tariff — the most Hoover-like option, with tariffs as much as ten times their current rate. Another is the imposition of tariffs on particular countries as tools for particular issues such as migration, and a third is stopping trade with China, Canada, and Mexico in particular. Last year’s Republican platform added a “Rube Goldberg”-style scheme in which each U.S. tariff line is equal to or higher than every analogous tariff line in every other country, and the tariff schedule balloons out to millions of lines; another option is traditional, Hoover-era tariff legislation. The most recent, via press trial balloons, is tariffs on products administration officials decide are especially sensitive.

Tariffs are occasionally necessary, of course. Governments can use them appropriately to give industries struggling with import surges or subsidized competition space to recover (as the Biden administration did last year with respect to Chinese-produced electric vehicles), or to isolate aggressor governments as with the punitive tariffs imposed on Russia in 2022. But they always raise costs — a strange choice for Mr. Trump to make, after the advantages his campaign drew from the inflation burst of 2021-2023 — and, in general, tend to lower living standards and erode industrial competitiveness. Depending on the way the incoming administration tries to impose them, they can also harm the separation of powers and the Constitution. And looking ahead, the Biden administration’s experience demonstrates the error of trying to answer by blurring differences or proposing “lite” versions of the same thing.

This doesn’t mean critics need a very detailed response now. That isn’t necessary until the administration program becomes clear. But they do need to lay the intellectual foundation for it soon. Here, then, are four principles, meant to bridge the Constitutional, economic, strategic, and political issues the various Trump proposals raise:

Defend the Constitution and oppose attempts to rule by decrees.
Connect tariff policy, both as taxation and trade policy, to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards.
Stand by America’s neighbors and allies.
Offer a positive alternative.

Read the Full Publication Here

01/15/2025 | Ed Gresser | Progressive Policy Institute

Towards a UK Trade Strategy

The UK is facing a precarious and volatile period for global trade. The volume of global goods flows is back on the rise after a difficult 2023 caused by inflation and interest rate hikes. But with the return of President Trump to the White House, the outlook is deeply uncertain. Trade tensions are expected to escalate in the coming years, as economies become increasingly concerned over the risks of supply chain disruption. There has already been significant fragmentation in trade flows: the number of trade restrictions in 2022 was nearly 3,000, compared to under 300 a decade earlier, and from 2018 there has been a ‘decoupling’ of supply chains between the US and China.

The picture for UK trade has been lacklustre in recent years. The UK exercised its post-Brexit independent trade policy to rack up a series of roll-over deals and new trade agreements with countries such as Australia and New Zealand. But the new free trade agreements (FTAs) the government has negotiated have offered limited economic benefits, while larger deals with the US and India have proved elusive. At the same time, the change to the UK-EU relationship has reduced goods trade flows in both directions. The government’s approach has translated into a disappointing picture for goods trade with both the EU and the rest of the world: by the end of 2023, there was a 10 per cent fall in UK goods trade from 2019 levels, compared with an average 5 per cent rise for other G7 countries by the third quarter of 2023. However, services trade has performed much better: trade in services increased by 12 per cent by the end of 2023 compared to 2019 levels and the UK ranks only behind the US as the world’s largest services exporter.

The Department for Business and Trade is planning a new UK trade strategy. The trade strategy is integral to the government’s growth mission and complementary to its proposed industrial strategy, which intends to develop a proactive approach to driving forward economic growth. This is an important opportunity to revitalise the government’s approach to trade and adapt it to respond to the current geopolitical context.

The focus of the government’s trade strategy should be green, inclusive growth, while meeting the UK’s geopolitical objectives and securing economic resilience for critical sectors. Trade policy should be directed towards growth for all the UK’s regions and nations; growth which benefits living standards and working conditions; and growth which supports the green transition. At the same time, this must be delivered within a framework of economic resilience: that is, for certain industries critical for our economic and national security – including energy, defence, food, communications, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals – the government should take a proactive approach to safeguard supply chains against the risk of future disruption. At a time of growing global instability, trade policy must also align with the government’s agenda on foreign relations, security, migration, climate, development, and other geopolitical priorities.

Read the Full Report Here

01/16/2025 | Marley Morris | Institute for Public Policy Research

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