Conflict

WHAT'S NEXT?: Rising tensions around are bringing new and regional geopolitical threats and the possibility of eventual global war. Keep abreast of the unfolding drama and know where the risks and opportunities are in the world.

• [New] Program has made terrorism risk insurance available and affordable in the United States, and the market for terrorism risk insurance has been relatively stable for the past decade.
• [New] CBO projects that the US national debt - already at its highest level since immediately after World War II - will climb from 79 percent of GDP today to 95 percent in 2029.
• [New] With China buying from elsewhere, US farmers should face an oversupply of soybeans and will likely see stocks more than double to record levels by the end of 2018-19.
• [New] AMR could lead to a prolonged economic contraction that is rare in Canada's post-war history, about equal to losing more than the combined GDPs of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia or one-quarter the GDP of the manufacturing sector each year if resistance were to reach 100% by 2050.
• The Air Force's armament directorate is planning more tests of the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon and Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon and expects to conduct system-level critical design reviews of the two Lockheed Martin platforms during the first half of calendar year 2020.
• Measures of trade and economic policy uncertainty have increased sharply during 2019 and surveys suggest that investors view a trade war as the top risk to the global outlook.
• The United States is expected to spend more on its military in 2020 than at any point since World War II, except for a handful of years at the height of the Iraq War.
• Though tensions between the US and Iran may mark the introduction of drones into more traditional state-to-state warfare, drone use may also render short-lived the twentieth century hope that war can be regulated.
• The trade war between the world's two biggest economies has slowed economic growth around the world and prompted analysts to lower forecasts for oil demand, raising concerns that a supply glut could develop in 2020.
• Recruiting trends next year will be impacted by uncertainty driven by several factors including: the potential for economic slowdown; the U.S.-China trade war and its effect on hiring for manufacturing jobs; and failed high-profile U.S. tech IPOs.
• North Korea's neighbors, including South Korea and Japan, will determine that they, too, need nuclear weapons given the North Korean threat and their diminished confidence in the reliability of the US and its guarantees to protect them with its nuclear forces.
• Trump will not impose new levies on vehicles from the European Union, Japan or elsewhere amid a trade war with China.
• By 2030, the combination of space technology and AI will have helped us deal with global challenges like deforestation, oil spills, farming, cross-border terrorism and migration flows, and will continue to provide insights that are meaningful at a local level for the economy.
• The world is facing an unprecedented threat from intolerance, violent extremism and terrorism that affects every country, exacerbating conflicts and destabilising entire regions.
• In a world where there was 100% resistance to first-line antimicrobials, by 2050 Canada would lose more than the equivalent of the combined GDPs of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, or one-quarter of the manufacturing sector GDP each and every year.
• Growth for MENAP oil exporters, excluding Iran and conflict countries, will soften to 1.3 percent this year on lower and more volatile global oil prices, geopolitical tensions, and the global slowdown.
• The World Economic Forum declared climate-related risks as the top of the most likely global risks for 2019 followed by data fraud and cyber-attacks, and the second greatest risk after weapons of mass destruction.
• China's outbound tourism industry is expected to suffer over the next five years if its trade war with the US continues.
• In the next 3-5 years, China will probably continue to be the largest PCB manufacturing country, as the overall network of the supply chain for the PCB ecosystem that has been built and improved over the last decades will not be gone overnight.
• The possible regional impacts of trade and geopolitical tension could have a compounding effect on the aviation industry, even as the global economic slowdown depresses the freight market.
• The 16-month trade war between the world's two biggest economies has slowed economic growth around the world and prompted analysts to lower forecasts for oil demand, raising concerns that a supply glut could develop in 2020.
• Two of the major threats facing the world in the 21st century are climate change and the possible use of nuclear weapons.

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Last updated: 10 December 2019