The Daily View: Monday blues
Your latest edition of Lloyd’s List’s Daily View — the essential briefing on the stories shaping shipping
BLUE Monday is the name given to a day in January, typically the third Monday of the month, said to be the most depressing day of the year.
This year it is also, entirely coincidentally, the day that Donald Trump is inaugurated and government and business leaders rock up for their annual global economic gathering in Davos.
If the pre-reading for that meeting is any indication, they may want to have their therapists on standby because Blue Monday may just be the start of a really depressing few years.
The threat of misinformation and disinformation was ranked as the most severe global risk during the next two years, in the annual Davos outlook. But looking ahead over a 10-year horizon, things get even more jolly, with the experts getting really quite perturbed by the environmental threats that now dominate the risk ranking of corporate nightmares.
Nearly a quarter of the more than 900 experts surveyed across academia, business and policy making for the annual World Economic Forum outlook expect a US-China trade war, with the next 12 months marked by increasing tariffs and tensions.
In what is euphemistically forecast to be “an eventful year” for the global economy, the chief economists surveyed report themselves to be feeling “subdued” given their consensus expectations over a weakening global economy. Only 17% anticipate any improvement, but presumably that was largely dependent on where they were asked these questions.
The outlook for Europe remains gloomy (74% predict weak or very weak growth this year) and China’s growth is projected to slow gradually in the years ahead. But let’s try to look on the bright side; the US economy is expected to deliver robust growth in 2025, and South Asia, particularly India, is also expected to maintain strong growth.
And it’s not all doom and gloom. Sure, there is now a worrying consensus that protectionism will cause durable changes to trade patterns over the next three years, with conflict and national security concerns also highlighted as important drivers of change. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that trade volumes could yet increase overall, despite the trade wars and fragmenting geopolitical rivalries and the looming risk of hot conflicts at every turn.
And of course we have that inauguration party to look forward to…
Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List