global economic system

New Report Charts Key Strategies and Trade-Offs for Long-Term Growth
The World Economic Forum report outlines key “no-regret” strategies and unresolved dilemmas shaping economic growth in the long-term.

The new economy will be shaped by accelerating AI adoption, geostrategic competition, high public and private debt, and environmental and demographic challenges. Energy costs and political instability currently prevent accelerating growth, while the expansion of IT services, advanced manufacturing, health and leisure will drive output in the future. Read more about the Future of Growth Initiative.

Geneva, Switzerland, April 2026 – As the growth strategies that powered the global economy over the past three decades lose relevance, a new World Economic Forum report calls for a renewed blueprint to navigate a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by AI, geostrategic competition, rising debt and inequality, and mounting environmental and demographic pressures. The report draws on two years of dialogue with nearly 200 global business leaders, policy-makers and experts, and a survey of more than 11,000 executives worldwide.

Four Areas Of Economic Policy

Across four major areas of economic policy, Growth in the New Economy: Towards a Blueprint identifies key “no-regret” strategies and open dilemmas for governments and businesses that will define economic policy in the coming decade:

Technology, productivity and human capital: Sustained growth in the new economy will depend on strengthening productivity and human capital as technology and knowledge become central to value creation. Governments and businesses must navigate between different approaches to translating innovation into new sources of growth and ensuring its benefits are widely shared, pursuing coordinated or competition-led approaches to harness technology and prioritize redistribution or mobility-based strategies for economic inclusion.

Global cooperation and domestic capacity: Leveraging comparative advantage and diversification remain “no-regret” strategies that may enable expansion of economic opportunity and resilience. Yet, governments and businesses will need to balance global engagement with stronger domestic capacity, navigating between self-reliance and global integration strategies.

Business environment and the role of government: In the new economy, reinforcing the fundamentals of economic policy – including credible institutions, high-quality infrastructure and macroeconomic stability – and strengthening multistakeholder alignment continue to be winning strategies. The role of government in economic transformation can range from minimal to more expansive, while policy-makers face hard choices to manage debt levels, shifting between greater fiscal prudence and forms of financial repression.

Sustainability and economic policy: Focusing on the economic and societal benefits of green transition strategies is essential to unlocking long-term prosperity and resilience. Critical dilemmas around how to manage the costs and trade-offs of greener growth persist, with decision-makers navigating a range of investment-led and cost-led strategies.”

The current context demands bold choices and trade-offs from government and businesses. Investing in productivity, talent and reinforcing the fundamentals of economic policy are clear winning strategies that hold across every country and income level,” said Attilio Di Battista, Head of Economic Growth and Transformation, World Economic Forum. “Yet, leaders will need to navigate complex dilemmas while managing record levels of debt and inequalities, rising geostrategic competition, a persisting climate crisis and the fastest technological shift in a generation.”

Shifting engines of global growth

Amid disruptions brought by the current conflict in the Middle East, the report points to long-term shifts in the composition and drivers of economic growth. Middle-income economies are expected to account for nearly two-thirds of global GDP growth through 2030. Regionally, Asia will continue to be the main driver of growth, accounting for more than 50% of global growth. Despite registering the fastest growth rates, low-income economies are projected to contribute just 1% of global growth over the same period.

Information technology services, advanced manufacturing, health and healthcare, and accommodation and leisure sectors are expected to drive growth over the next five years, with Asia, Europe and North America as key hotspots. Latin America and the Caribbean will see opportunities in the agriculture, mining and metals sectors.

Opportunities and challenges

Based on the results of the recent survey of 11,000 business leaders, the report highlights high energy costs and policy instability as the two barriers that are constraining an acceleration of economic growth across various geographies and income levels.

Other barriers vary by country income level. In high-income economies, skill shortages and rigid regulations are seen as the top barriers, while in low-income economies, limited access to finance and inadequate infrastructure were top concerns.

In the long-term, frontier technologies and the green and energy transition are identified as trends that will drive growth and investment, while high debt, societal polarization and climate change are seen as potential headwinds across regions and income levels.

Demographic shifts and geoeconomic fragmentation are expected to create divergent growth trajectories, with ageing populations slowing growth in Eastern Asia and Europe, and younger populations supporting growth in the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Geoeconomic fragmentation is seen as a drag on growth in most countries, though executives expect South-East Asia to benefit from shifting supply chains and trade patterns.

In addition, domestic corporate investment and foreign demand are seen as the main drivers of growth over the next five years. Domestic investment is especially important in low- and middle-income economies, while advanced economies look to foreign markets. Domestic consumption and public spending are expected to play a smaller role due to high public debt and stagnant real incomes.

About Growth in the New Economy: Towards a Blueprint
The report draws on two years of dialogues held as part of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Growth Initiative, with policy-makers, business leaders and economists convening in Davos-Klosters, Dubai, New York, Riyadh, Tianjin and Washington DC between 2024 and 2026, and integrates inputs from the Global Future Councils on the Future of Growth and the Business of Economic Growth. It also consolidates insights from more than 11,000 business leaders in 118 countries participating in the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2025. Read the full report here.

Throughout 2026, the Future of Growth Dialogue Series will continue exploring the emerging frontiers of the new economy, as well as new sources and pathways to growth, productivity and innovation. The Future of Growth Initiative is complemented by the World Economic Forum’s Scenarios for the Global Economy Dialogue Series, leveraging foresight to explore scenarios for the future of growth and their implications for strategy, investment decisions and resilience across industries.

For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.

Paul Jenkins – The West and a Workable New World Order?

From: Paul Jenkins

To: Global governance observers

Date: May 2, 2024

Re: The West and a Workable New World Order?

One can describe the so-called liberal world order as a set of ideas for organizing world democracies. While openness and trade, rules and institutions, and co-operative security have been the principles that have shaped the liberal order, it also required sovereign nation states to provide the foundation for the creation and development of a system of intergovernmental organizations, or system of global governance.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the system was designed primarily for the advancement, economically and politically, of Europe and the United States. Yet since 1945 the liberal world order has evolved, giving impetus to the steady increase in global economic integration to the benefit of many nations and people.

Advances in science and technology have been critical to the evolution of the liberal order, but there has also been a need for the structures of global governance to evolve and keep pace.

On the economic front, for example, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, following Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to abandon the dollar’s link to gold, gave rise to the creation of the G7. And the Asian Crisis of 1999 led to the creation of the G20.

Throughout the entire postwar period, however, tensions inherent between the sovereign authority of the nation-state and the need for collective global governance increasingly challenged the liberal order.

Indeed, the advent of the Cold War led to the liberal world order becoming hegemonic, organized around the economic and political strength of the United States with its dominance of global governance through the various institutions making up the global governance system.

But over the years, pushback took hold. As the benefits of global economic integration spread and the United States was no longer the singular engine of growth, both democratic and autocratic countries found voice and began to resist the principles that shaped the liberal order. Even core nations of the liberal order began to voice their concerns in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis as the market-based financial system failed to self-regulate (as had been advertised), and as the liberal order proved unable to provide social protection for those adversely affected by globalization.

Effectively, a new world order began to unfold, with the resulting slowing and even fragmentation [DS1] [PJ2] of global economic integration.

At the same time though, virtually all nations, regardless of regime or stage of development, are facing the same challenges: Financial instabilities, rising inequality, weak productivity growth, climate change, spread of infectious disease, AI, cyber security and on and on.

These vulnerabilities represent global risks that can only be tackled and minimized through collective action. This in turn requires a new world order that treats the world as it is, not how we wish it to be.

What does this mean for the West, and in particular the United States and Canada?

The unique advantages of the United States are its open society, fair and law-based market economy, and allure for talent from around the world. To sustain these advantages, maintaining its wealth and its position as the centre of the free world, it cannot close its doors to further global economic integration.

Geopolitically, what might this look like?

John Ikenberry argues that the answer can be found in the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-intervention of the Westphalian system, the 1648 treaties that ended the Thirty Years’ War and established the modern nation state. The key insight of the Westphalian system is that all countries are vulnerable to the same global risks. The leap forward in mindset that is required is the acceptance that states are the rightful political units of legitimate rule.

For the West, and the United States in particular, this implies the need to accept these new realities, and in so doing, the need to work together to build a new world order that preserves their liberal democratic values, and those of its allies, while at the same time recognizing that the economic challenges they face are not unique to them.

The unfolding relationship between the United States and China will define whether we achieve a workable new world order.

The economic incentives are there for this to happen.

For China, the incentive is further progress in closing both its internal income gap as well as the gap between itself and the developed world. The payoff would be setting in place the foundation for a sustained rise in living standards for all its citizens.

For the United States, the incentive is in preserving its strength as an open society and its vision of the world that has considered the interests of others. In many respects, it remains uniquely capable of playing the central role in sustaining the global economic system.

The challenge in re-imagining such a new world order is geopolitical. The task is to renew global governance with today’s realities in sharp focus.

Paul Jenkins. Mister Jenkins is a former senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada and a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.

The Silo

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World Economic Forum Report Outlines Long Term “No Regrets”