The longer the coronavirus pandemic persists, the more it shakes our belief in linear progress. From 9/11 to the financial crisis to the current global pandemic, we have experienced a major global shock roughly every 10 years. And each time, there are unanimous cries that “everything will change.”
Fifteen years ago, while sitting in a windowless cubicle in a Washington, DC think-tank, I took out my writing pad and drew a long line down the middle.
America can’t become great again without Asia.
The historic Trump-Kim summit in Singapore was a mix of deja vu and historic milestone. Never had a sitting US president met the leader of North Korea face-to-face, but their meeting resulted in a declaration that at most vaguely restated agreements made by his late father Kim Jong Il—and we all know how honestly North Korea abided by those. Still, the millennial Kim Jong Un is a different man and clearly doesn’t want to spend the next half-century leading the world’s most destitute and despotic state. He has taken a calculated first step and gained the reputational coup his father failed to by meeting the US president eye-to-eye. Now he is opening North Korea to geopolitical forces beyond his immediate control.
Donald Trump appears to be on something of a roll. Despite the, shall we say, stormy start to the year, his back-to-back appearances at the World Economic Forum in Davos and his State of the Union address projected a man committed to a national reawakening without alienating the entire rest of humanity.
What a difference a year makes. After Britain’s Brexit vote in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as US president that November, many commentators were convinced that a populist wave was sure to sweep Europe in 2017 as well. But the French election this May and German election this weekend have proven cynics wrong. Of course, Angela Merkel would have preferred to repeat her stronger performances from past elections, but her CDU Party’s victory was nonetheless decisive, despite a surprise showing by the right-wing AFD Party.
In just one short decade, Facebook has evolved from a fast-growing platform for sharing classmates’ memories and pet photos to being blamed for Donald Trump’s election victory, promoting hate speech, and accelerating ISIS recruitment. Clearly, Facebook has outgrown its original mission.
A quarter century of global liberalization and integration appears to be on knife’s edge. Over the past two decades, global capital markets, technological connectivity and the growth of new consumer markets worldwide have given rise to massive corporate platforms in commodities, finance, information technology, retail and other sectors. The scale of entities such as Google, Facebook, Walmart, and GE have made them appear almost stateless as they operate on a global playground.
President Trump has taken over the Oval Office and signed a raft of executive orders to make good on his various “First 100 Days” campaign promises: pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, freezing federal hiring, rolling back Obamacare, curbing environmental regulations, and more. But like most things in American politics, the “First 100 Days” is just a gimmick, a grab-bag of bumper-sticker priorities that says little about how the new president will govern. Some traditions are best left to die.
The best candidate for the office of president of the United States wasn’t on the ballot last November. It was Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing engine. Watson would be a president of intelligence and integrity, temperament and dedication, working round the clock to devise solutions to our toughest domestic and international challenges. In stark contrast to any human leader, Watson is a not a political animal or stylish personality, rather he is a policy machine made of pure substance. For a brief flicker in early 2016, a private foundation not affiliated with IBM actually launched an online campaign advocating “Watson for President”—too bad it wasn’t taken seriously. America’s political system needs much less Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and much more Watson.
While president-elect Trump fills his cabinet and top ranks, he also has an opportunity to reorganize America’s most antiquated federal office. America’s CEO president could take a big step towards evolving the executive branch if he started running the White House like a corporate board. Instead of sitting alone in the oval office, he should be sitting at a round table with a half-dozen other members of America’s federal executive council.
The past decade will be remembered as the period when the global underclass revolt snowballed into a movement with political bite. From Occupy Wall Street to Brexit to Donald Trump’s election, these post-financial crisis years have featured many unsynchronized awakenings that are forcing a renegotiation of the terms of governance and globalization. Our politics needs to adjust to these demands. The reverse is impossible.
No matter how many books crowded my parents’ living room bookshelves in my childhood home in New York, two always sat at eye level right in the center: Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.
Britain’s vote to exit the European Union (EU) did not represent the will of the people. It represented the will of the provinces. The United Kingdom is a federation, and the “Brexit” decision was driven by voters in Eastern England, the Midlands and Northern England who feel detached from the benefits of integration. Meanwhile, the UK’s most prosperous and urbanized regions, London and Scotland, overwhelmingly supported staying in the EU. The Brexit vote was the British version of America’s red state-blue state divide.
Cities are mankind’s most enduring and stable mode of social organization, outlasting all empires and nations over which they have presided. Today cities have become the world’s dominant demographic and economic clusters.
Alibaba’s recent IPO and early market capitalization of $230 billion brought repeated reminders that its value has catapulted ahead of that of Amazon. and eBay combined. What has allowed the Chinese e-commerce giant to grow so massively is the confluence of urbanization, infrastructure investment and digital connectivity, together providing the foundation for an efficient network across hundreds of first-, second- and third-tier cities.
As Jim O’Neill steps down as head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the world may be looking for a new acronym to succeed his infamous coinage of BRICS, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Many have tried to fashion their own emerging market groupings. Adding or dropping various combinations including Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, or Argentina yields novelties such as VISTA or CIVETS. None have had the traction of BRICS, however, which has even become a regular diplomatic gathering that has mooted a joint development bank, investment fund, and currency swap agreements.
The news of baby formula rationing at British supermarkets due to ballooning Chinese demand for foreign-made formula underscores the murkiness of supply chains. Anonymous “bulk buyers” hoarded Danone-made brands such as Aptamil for “unofficial export” to China. This, in turn, has exposed the sudden tightness of supply in our just-in-time delivery models.
Each week brings new revelations in the scale of the European horse meat scandal and yesterday came news of faulty, too-sheer yoga pants, but there is a common theme: the complexity of untangling the supply chains of producers, distributors and vendors spanning a dozen countries. From Romanian abattoirs to IKEA in the Czech Republic to frozen lasagna meals in Britain’s Tesco grocery stores, the process of tracing the origins of the horse meat, conducting food safety tests, and enforcing standards has overwhelmed regulators, laboratories, consumers, and food vendors. When HSBC’s airport jet-way campaign featured a panel that read, “In the future, the food chain and supply chain will merge,” this is surely not what it had in mind.
Myanmar began and ended 2012 as the frontier market on everyone’s mind. As a large, populous and strategically located country, Myanmar naturally invites the imagination to marvel at its possibilities—and investment opportunities. The powers that be are keen to modernize but still cautious about how quickly they open up. When it comes to foreign investment, the powers that be are still cautious in supporting modernization. But that will increasingly give way to pent-up foreign capital as the government opens up markets. And just as the Burma Road made Myanmar the playground of exploitative colonial forces during World War II, inflows of overseas money could challenge the young country as it looks to follow a sustainable path of economic development.
At some point in the next 200 million years, according to Yale University scientists, the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates will collide at the North Pole. When they are eventually joined by Africa, the singular super-continent will re-emerge, reminiscent of the Pangea that existed hundreds of millions of years ago.
