Geoeconomic confrontation world’s top threat, global leaders say
World Economic Forum survey says economic tools used as geopolitical weapons the most pressing risk to global stability
“Geoeconomic confrontation” looms as the most pressing global threat facing the world in the short term, according to decision-makers surveyed in a World Economic Forum (WEF) report.
The organisation’s annual Global Risks Report, released on Wednesday, polled more than 1,300 experts worldwide about the greatest risks to global stability.
Eighteen percent of those surveyed identified “geoeconomic confrontation” – involving the use of trade, investment, sanctions and industrial policy as strategic weapons to constrain geopolitical rivals and consolidate spheres of influence – as the most likely trigger of a global crisis within the next two years.
Saadia Zahidi – managing director of the WEF annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, which is due to start next week – cited rising tariffs, checks on foreign investment and tighter supply controls on resources like critical minerals as examples of “geoeconomic confrontation”.
“[It is] when economic policy tools become essentially weaponry rather than a basis of cooperation,” she said at an online news conference.
While the report did not name specific countries, the category’s rise from ninth in last year’s report to the top spot reflects a year marked by renewed trade wars between rival powers sparked as the administration of President Donald Trump in the United States imposed aggressive tariffs on trading partners.
The report said the risk of geoeconomic confrontation is rising as the world enters a new “age of competition” with economic tools increasingly weaponised as extensions of geopolitical strategy amid a broader retreat from multilateralism.