Aengus Collins, Head of Economic Growth and Transformation at World Economic Forum spoke to CGTN Europe about WEF Chief Economists Outlook 2025.
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00:00Welcome back to Global Business Europe.
00:10What does the coming year have in store?
00:12The World Economic Forum has released its latest outlook for the global economy ahead of next week's annual meeting in Davos.
00:1936 of the world's leading chief economists were surveyed.
00:23Juliet Mann has been looking at all the results. What does it tell us then?
00:26Well, it doesn't look good. It doesn't look good, Jamie and Sally.
00:292025 is set to be a challenging year for the world economy, with 56% of chief economists expecting conditions to get worse,
00:36while only 17% think things will get better.
00:40Now, we all know Europe's economy is pretty wobbly, but you know what?
00:43Almost three in four analysts expect weak or very weak growth this year.
00:48And that's the continent's worst outlook for nearly three years.
00:51But things look a little better for the United States.
00:5444% see strong growth in the short term, but rising debt and inflation means that, well, they're still bugbears.
01:01So that's a longer term concern.
01:03Almost half of chief economists believe global trade volumes will rise in 2025.
01:09And that's despite the threat of all this tit-for-tat protectionist measures we're hearing about.
01:14Angus Collins is from the World Economic Forum and lead author of this report.
01:21I think overall the outlook is pretty gloomy at the moment, according to the chief economists.
01:28I think there are three main things that come out of the latest chief economists' outlook.
01:33I think one is a weak overall prospect for the global economy.
01:41I think obviously all eyes are on the U.S.
01:43And I think quite a lot of expectation of change within the U.S.
01:47And I think quite a lot of uncertainty over what those changes will mean for the rest of the world.
01:52And I think a third thing I'd highlight is, and this is a trend we've been seeing for quite a while, obviously,
01:58but I think much more attention being paid now to fragmentation across different parts of the global economy.
02:04And I think there's one overarching concern, I think, that underpins those three things
02:10and, again, has become a more pressing concern of the chief economists in recent years.
02:15And that's the relationship between politics and economics.
02:18You said it's all eyes on the U.S., but what about China?
02:23Where do you think the â or what are going to be the domestic and the international policy drivers?
02:30I think the relationship between the U.S. and China, both economically and politically, geopolitically,
02:38is clearly, I think, crucial in all sorts of ways.
02:43We are seeing a divergence across the chief economists' outlooks in the economic performance of the U.S. and China.
02:53I think that's a little bit more pronounced this time than previously.
02:57The proportion of our chief economists who are expecting strong growth in the U.S. over the short term has picked up in the latest edition.
03:09Meanwhile, the Chinese outlook remains a bit subdued, certainly compared to the kind of growth rates that had been usual.
03:19But it's â for three years now, it's actually Europe that is the weakest.
03:23Well, that's what I wanted to talk about, because Europe continues to rank as the weakest region for the third year in a row.
03:31What could shift the dial there?
03:34Honestly, I would like to say I have the answer to that question.
03:39I'm afraid I don't.
03:41I think Europe is very clearly an example of a situation where that relationship between politics and economics is playing a very big role.
03:50There are â obviously, over the last few months, there have been political difficulties in the two largest economies within the eurozone, Germany and France.
04:00I think some of those dynamics, I think, make it difficult to develop the kind of political and economic agenda that might help to drive European growth rates up.
04:15Angus, let's zone in on global trade.
04:18Volumes are expected to go up, but trade war dynamics are expected to intensify, aren't they?
04:25I think this is an interesting one.
04:27Overall, the chief economists this time have said, looking at the U.S. in particular, that they see this moment as a durable shift for the trajectory of the global economy.
04:41And one of the things that jumps out in that respect is this expectation of intensifying trade war dynamics between the major powers, but also more broadly.
04:54But I think it's important to note that these trade war dynamics have been in place for quite a while now.
05:02And global trade volumes, again, the activity has been sluggish in recent years, but there's a lot of resilience there.
05:10And I think it is important that despite the clear headwinds and the volatility, the uncertainty, the sense of not being quite sure what risks might come down the track, things are still moving from A to B.