A no-nonsense 2025

Saying out loud ‘2024’ has a certain ring to it. 2024 set out with the grand claim of being the year nearly half the world’s population would go to the polling booths. As we close in on the year, the events of the past eleven months have surely satiated the prophesiers. On July 13th, at a rally in Pennsylvania, we were witness to an attempt to assassinate Trump, a worn-out character then. Now here we are. Kopites at the Anfield (yes we are diverting) wept when Jurgen Klopp during that emotional (fawn-y) afternoon on May 20th bid farewell to Liverpool Football Club. The sentimental ones thought he was irreplaceable,  whose fist bumps thundered down the four stands of the Anfield. But here we are. It looks like the bald Dutch-nobody who was slotted into his place (pun intended) isn’t having a bad time after all. Nor is Mr. Trump. 

To call 2024 eventful in an abstract sense would be trite, for every year is a treasury of events. The four numerals on paper are defined and remembered by the events that make it; it would be a non-existential semantic nonsense without it. Asymmetry of information from different parts of the world and a fundamental distrust are the themes that stood out to me this year. A “mad-man” at the helm of the most powerful country on earth to top it all. And perhaps his tech-genius square-faced acolyte (also known as X-lord). That the electorate has moved to the right is what political observers would say — from the perspective of centrist political parties, there’s some “catching up” to do (Macron comes to mind). Hardcore leftists will say centrists are radical right-wingers disguised in the garb of neo-progressive-conservatism. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not. It is not productive to dwell on such political (nonsense-) semantics again. Practically, it hasn’t reaped much. In the academia, perhaps some fodder for closed-door theoretical debates in unreadable, unaccessible, lofty journals. 

The big predictions for 2025 have arrived. Did the predictions for 2024 age well? One thing is clear, while at the start of December last year Trump seemed like a remote possibility, the repercussions of such an incident being discussed in a jiffy as a non-negotiable ritual, now it’s become an indigestible reality. The entertainer has catapulted the masses to clinch a soaring victory. No more “didn’t win the popular vote” nonsense, he may have thought; he showed up at the heavy blue states, like his beloved New York for instance, to tilt the popular vote in his favour. Everything that has happened in 2024 appears hazy in comparison to the results on November 4th, for that has and will change the course of everything that is set to happen and gives everything that came before it a bittersweet flavour — on a lighter note, it is the feeling when kids who don’t quite know each other are thrust into the same room as a burly old man. They do not quite belong, yet history will sew them in the grand narrative of the events that preceded (and shaped) the biggest comeback in political history. 

We all agree on this: Trump is the mad-man in the room. The theory was hypothesised during the time of Richard Nixon to play up his supposed irrationality and volatility in making decisions so that the communist bloc would scamper to avoid a negative reaction from him by cobbling a mutually non-adversarial settlement. This could happen well again, albeit with his NATO or even Chinese counterparts. But make no mistake, because his close aides (who are now off his books) claim that he is pragmatic despite the occasional crankiness and volatility. He’s a supreme entertainer who speaks ‘truth’ the way masses want to hear it. There’s more to Trump than there is, and 2025 will be a testament to that, be it for the good or the bad. 

A politically suave deal-maker with an incorrigible belief in transactional alliances. Mr. Trump’s economic principles are clear: he wants to make America great again — harkening back to a non-existent mythical past — he’ll not let the trade partners who are apparently ‘cheating’ on America go scot-free, and his answer to any country that may pose a threat to the American economy? Tariffs. How about meeting America’s skyrocketing debt levels? Tariffs; making up for proposed tax cuts in revenue? Tariffs. As Tom Standage, the Economist’s deputy editor put it, Trump thinks Tariffs are some kind of magic money tree. The less exciting aspect of it is that it’s going to drive up prices for ordinary Americans. Legend has it that many of his supporters figured out what tariffs meant after the election. 

All in all, the US has become an overstretched power. The gap between what the US is capable of, and the demands placed on it — which is usually expected of it — will grow in 2025. A snarky White House establishment will have much reckoning to do with a non-quite-in-its-control world order. 

A big player, if not the big player, in that hitherto novel world order is China. To be fair, for all its autocracy and anti-western ideals, China does boast of some good ideas and achievements. That it may have gorged on coal is one thing, but it is at the forefront in the adoption of renewable energy technologies. It is host to the world’s biggest reserves of rare earth. Just how the US closed its doors to exports of semiconductor technology to Beijing, the latter is pepped up for a tit-for-tat. The imposition of tariffs next year could mark the intensification of an already fierce trading rivalry. Companies in the US can still boast of an edge in chip-making — they’re designed in America and manufactured in China’s estranged sibling, Taiwan — but this has only emboldened China to produce better (even less pricier) alternatives. Some of the best semiconductor models in the industry are Chinese. The US may no longer have a monopoly over, simply, chips. 

It has become trendy for world leaders to proclaim that they must decouple their economies. Often the villain is China. But Europe has also been quietly insisting on becoming independent from the big guy across the Atlantic too. The idealistic centrist Macron has been the most vociferous advocate of it. Alas, only if the efforts to realise it could compare to the grand pronouncements. Decoupling is hard; factories and industries are not lego blocks to be removed and propped up anywhere we please. We are talking about cars and electronics. There are costs, contracts, relations, and even livelihoods at stake. Companies can’t jet off to any country as soon as it shows prospects of a burgeoning, cheap labour force. 

Therefore, whether we like it or not, it is an interconnected world, with a few destructible walls erected here and there. Europe this year has been strikingly averse to tourism; Catalans with heads in their hands are storming the streets every month or so with anti-tourist protests. The main argument is that tourists are driving up local rental prices; more like rentiers want to lease rooms and apartments to once-in-a-lifetime visitors who are willing to pay more than local inhabitants. In this writer’s opinion, it should be a matter of regulative policies and incentives. The angst is misdirected. But this emotional disequilibrium has cleared the way for new entrants: enter the oil-giants of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has been promoting tourism in a bid to diversify its oil-dependent economy. Along with hosting football world cup, Usyk vs Fury, a 38-something Cristiano Ronaldo… choke, choke, did I mention LIV Golf? 

Global debts have swelled, in large part fuelled by pandemic-era spending. Many advanced economies have unsustainable deficits (honourable mention: USA) — could this entice a move to austerity? America under Trump will like to remain aloof, oblivious to the wars of the world — some of which it has had a tiny hand in — and as solipsists would have it, focus inwards. This will prompt many countries to jack up their spending on defence. Space is becoming militarised (and cluttered). This turn of events will not dent the US economy or the image of its strong economy however. Expect a capital influx into Uncle Sam’s economy; the dopamine shot of a MAGA homecoming has been irresistible for investors. 

The fate of Crypto is a little shaky. Artificial intelligence has not (yet) lived up to its hype. More than $1 trillion have been poured into AI infrastructure. The investors are becoming wary . But it could be precisely when the latter becomes disillusioned that the technology might pick up — the same was said of crypto, but again, here we are. It could make or break the future. The bottomline, as with domestic and geo-politics, is to expect the unbelievable. For one, who thought the sponge-bob-faced Elon Musk who starred in a sensible guest role in the mighty Big Bang Theory years ago would head a government department titled ‘DOGE’ with another square-faced (slightly smaller) pretentious eccentric (you-know-who)? 

Hardcore realism is the fad — why would the plebeian not fancy a bit of combative politics? — with its attendant unnerving social phenomena — hear ‘racismo’? A transactional world than an ideological world; differences in ideology does not necessarily beget a reset in trade ties unlike alignments in the cold war era. Putin doesn’t think the rules apply to him, much to the delight of his autocrat-admirers around the world. The BRICS truly are a motley of strange bedfellows; the only principle that holds them together is their shared suspicion of the West regardless of their internal skirmishes — China was sitting in India’s backyard until very recently a deescalation-agreement of sorts was cobbled up. 

And lastly, but certainly the irritant Democrats had at the top of their heads during the middle of the year— Biden’s age and his fragility and as with age, his adamance to step down from candidature. In a survey reported by The Economist, more rich/democratic/both countries around the world seem to favour younger leaders. A breath of fresh air, youth, dynamism is being preferred to the same-old-stock of politicians. The notable exception of course is America. Well, if Trump thinks he is as young as JD Vance, and his supporters chime in, who’s stopping him? Coming to the practical aspect of the issue, much of the rich world is ageing and China seeks to work around it by encouraging a silver economy — a market economy that caters to the old. The point is to shift the perception about them being a ‘burden’ on the economy by accommodating them in economically productive ways. Japan’s baby boomers, who’ll cross an average age of 75 next year, can look forward to something similar if the plan materialises as intended. 

There it is, fresh perspectives for an unrevealed, neatly packed 2025. Change, turbulence, technological optimism (and doomsaying) are expected to prevail, but what unites humans from across the political spectrum is hope. The hope for change. What may be progress for one lot, could be destruction for the other. But it’s hope in its positive connotation that dones different hats that’s the shared emotion. Every person has an ideology, for indifference is also an ideology. And for all that 2024 has given us, we can be certain (and if you’re into that sort of thing,’hope’) that 2025 will be no less interesting, if not more. We are humans and it doesn’t hurt to be incorrigible optimists—at least until you reach the last word of this muse— so here’s to a no-nonsense 2025!