The Economist - The World in 2020

From the editor

| |

---

The World in 2020

The AI we consulted reckons Mr Trump will lose

TWENTY-TWENTY has a landmark ring to it. The start of a new decade prompts bigger-than-usual thoughts about the future. For the first time in 60 years the new decade coincides with a year of the rat, the start of the 12-year cycle in the Chinese zodiac. And, as the predictions in this volume describe, 2020 itself will not be short of drama. A dozen highlights give a sense of what lies ahead.

1. Its judgment time. That is doubly true for President Donald Trump: first in Congress with the Democrats drive to remove him from office (the Republican-controlled Senate will save him), then in a febrile election in November. It will be ugly; the artificial intelligence we consulted reckons Mr Trump will lose. Britains reckoning with Brexit will leave the country divided, damaged and diminished.

2. Economies wrestle with negativity. Banks, especially in Europe, will battle with negative interest rates. America will flirt with recessionbut dont be surprised if disaster fails to strike, and markets revive.

3. China highlights positivity. It will claim to have met its target of achieving moderate prosperity by 2020. Other countries will have to work out how to position themselves, in trade and technology, between a Chinese sphere of influence and an American one.

4. Sport has a jumbo year. The Tokyo Olympics will draw a huge global audience. The Euro 2020 football championship will be spread across 12 countries. Cricket hopes for a smashing success in Australia with the T20 World Cupand in England and Wales with a new, even shorter format called The Hundred.

5. Worries about nukes proliferate. The five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be a fraught affair, 75 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fears of a new arms race will grow as nuclear arms-control agreements fray.

6. Sustainability is all the rage. At least, talking about it is. In Kunming countries will discuss biodiversity. In Glasgow they will make pledges on carbon emissions. Business leaders will vow to support sustainable capitalismas long as shareholders let them.

7. The Gulf welcomes the world. Dubai hopes its World Expo will have a lasting impact. More awkwardly, Saudi Arabia hosts the g20 summit.

8. Multiple missions head to Mars. America, Europe, China and the UAE all send probes.

9. Tech has both highs and lows. The highs include flying taxis, electric supercars and personalised medicine; the lows involve tech giants bracing themselves for more regulation, taxation and critical scrutiny. Instagram will find itself in the spotlight of controversy in this American-election cycle.

10. Big anniversaries resonate, especially Beethovens 250th. Its also 500 years since Raphaels death, 400 since the Mayflower sailed to America, 300 since the South Sea Bubble burst, 200 since the birth of Florence Nightingale (the World Health Organisation has designated 2020 the Year of the Nurse), 100 since Prohibition, 75 since the founding of the un andwhile their fans gently weep50 years since the Beatles broke up.

11. A torrent of entertainment comes on stream. Televisions streaming wars intensify, and streaming opens new vistas for gamers, too. But James Bond fans will head to old-fashioned cinemas for the 25th film in the franchise. And a grand new national museum in Cairo will show that physical presence still matters.

12. Its the decade of the yold, or the young old, as sprightly baby-boomers hit 65. For the first time, the world will have more people aged over 30 than under. The 2020s promise to be a bad decade for African dynasties, a disruptive one for countries facing separatist pressures and an exciting one for plant geneticists, who in ten years time aim to be drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a global scale.

The new decade provides an excuse to look beyond the coming year. A special section, 2020 visions, reviews long-range predictions from the past and for the future, speculates on what the world is doing today that will appal our grandchildren, and includes ideas on techs evolution from the founders of DeepMind and Huawei. Elsewhere, guest contributors invite us to think afresh about the future of everything from Africa to Venezuela to the American Dream.

One thing about 2020 is sure: this annual will have a new editor. After 17 years, it is time to pass on the crystal ball. Under Tom Standage, a master at spotting trends and putting them in context, the future will be great.

Daniel Franklin
Editor, The World in 2020

---

| |

Leaders

| |

---

Leaders

The tenor of the 2020 campaign will be uglier than any in modern American history

Febrile politics, faltering economy

The year ahead will be dominated by Americas presidential election and a global slowdown, says Zanny Minton Beddoes

TWO SUBJECTS will hog headlines around the world in 2020: Americas presidential-election campaign and the weakness of the global economy. Both will induce anxiety and each will influence the other. It will be a volatile year, characterised by unstable, angry and polarised politics, and an enfeebled economic outlook for the world, regardless of who wins on November 3rd, when American voters go to the polls.

Many elements of the election remain uncertain, from the impact of the impeachment trial that is all but certain to precede the head-t0-head presidential battle, to who will be the Democratic nominee to challenge President Donald Trump. But there seems little doubt that the tenor of the 2020 campaign will be uglier than any in modern American history. In 2016, already a notably nasty contest, a Trump presidency was a pinch-me prospect that too many people discounted; in 2020 millions of voters, on both sides, will feel the very fabric of their countrys democracy to be at stake. Outside America many more millions will wonder if an extraordinary four-year interlude is about to end, and whether the country that has been the anchor of the post-war world order has been irrevocably transformed.

Thanks to the American presidents ability to make policy by executive action and the reach of his Twitter feed, Mr Trump will be the impresario of the election show, setting the terms on which the contest is fought and the tone with which it is conducted. He will brand whoever is his challenger as a dangerous socialist, bent on flooding America with immigrants and embarking on a radical far-left agenda that will enfeeble the country. The trope will seem more plausible if his opponent is Elizabeth Warren, the senator for Massachusetts and former law professor whose plan to remake American capitalism is genuinely radical. But the rhetoric will be similar even if the Democrats choose a more centrist candidate, such as the former vice-president, Joe Biden, or just possibly Pete Buttigieg, the newly prominent mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who did a tour of duty in Afghanistan and will turn 38 in January.

Unfortunately for Mr Trump, a noticeable cooling of the American economy will challenge his claim to have made America great again. Global growth has already slowed in 2019, as damage from the Sino-American trade war accumulates, hitting manufacturing and trade flows, and denting business confidence. America itself has hitherto been least affected. Buoyed by rising wages, a lingering boost from tax cuts Mr Trump introduced in 2017 and the lowest jobless rate in half a century, consumers will end 2019 still confident and keen to spend.

Next page