Once again, the world’s most powerful countries and business and political leaders converged for the Annual World Economic Forum Summit at Davos in January 2025. But what a changed environment it is, this time. With Trump inaugurated for his second non-consecutive term, the world is bracing itself for more chaos, disruption and uncertainty. The context… Continue reading The New Year, Trump Tariffs and the Davos World
At the start of the new year as we wait for corporate earnings season to begin again, I thought it might be worth spending some time thinking about where the Indian economy is headed in 2025 and beyond. We tend to focus on headline GDP growth of the economy all the time, but rarely look… Continue reading Challenges For the Indian Economy in 2025
The last time the world saw a tariff and trade war it was 2017, in Trump’s first term as President of the US when he took on the world’s second largest economy, China, in a tariff war. It ended with China too imposing retaliatory tariff increases on American imports and before we knew it, Europe… Continue reading The World Economy Bracing for Trump 2.0
It is a couple of years since the world said goodbye to the Covid-19 pandemic and made an attempt to get back to business and revive economic growth. Admittedly, from all the reporting on business and economic news, we are still in a tentative soft-landing phase, and monetary policy is still in a wait and… Continue reading Pivoting To the New Economy
The current semiconductor competition between US and China is fast threatening to morph into a larger Cold War of the 21st Century as I have written before on my blog. It is part of the continuation of the Trump-era tariff and trade wars that the two superpowers engaged in, in a tit-for-tat raising of tariffs… Continue reading Why the US-China Eco-Tech War is Dangerous for the Global Economy
Four decades after globalization of business began, I think we can all agree that it is widespread and well-entrenched. And while there is a lot of talk of deglobalisation, about which I wrote recently on my blog, I not only think that globalisation is here to stay, I think it has become much more complex… Continue reading Which Shoring Makes Best Sense for Globalised Business
It’s a year since the worst of the Covid-19 outbreaks, and with most people fully vaccinated in many countries, economies are getting back to work. The biggest concern, though, around the world is soaring inflation which is well-entrenched now and broadbased, so interest rate hikes to tame it are in full swing. The tightening of… Continue reading Recession, Recession, Why Such Confusion
In my second Owleye column on my blog, I had called the geopolitical tensions emanating out of Russia and China at the time a red herring. I had written that the world, especially the media, were busy talking up the threat of war by Russia and China over Ukraine and Taiwan respectively. I was wrong.… Continue reading Geopolitical Tensions Derailing Economic Recovery
Since the 1990s, the world economy has been so used to growing along with China, that it’s almost impossible to imagine a world without the Chinese growth engine. That’s because the Chinese economy liberalized in the 1980s and began to trade and do business freely with the rest of the world. They became a member… Continue reading Growth Pangs Sans China
In March 2018, President Trump said that “Trade wars are good and easy to win.” As economies and markets roil in the throes of the year-and-a-half long US-China trade war, it is perhaps time to ask who is a trade war good for and what impact it is having on business and ordinary people. By… Continue reading Just Who Is a Trade War “Good” For?
Peripatetic Perch 