From Trump to Bitcoin, inflation and China: the big economic trends of 2024 | Business and Economy

2024 saw the global economy stabilize following the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, even as growth in many countries lagged behind pre-2020 levels.

With an incomplete recovery, more than two billion people are eligible to vote this year, and economic issues, especially rising costs of living, have been a major concern for voters around the world.

On the other hand, governments have grappled with how to regulate potentially transformative technology such as artificial intelligence, and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election heralded a sharp shift toward protectionist measures.

Here are seven of the biggest events shaping the global economy in 2024:

Trump signals new trade wars

Trump has signaled that he will pursue a more aggressive version of the protectionist “America First” policy that fueled his rise to power during his second term in the White House.

During his election campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs of 60% or more on Chinese goods and comprehensive tariffs of 20% on all other imports.

Trump has also put friendly countries in the crosshairs, recently threatening to impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, raising questions about the future of the trilateral free trade agreement between the two countries.

Economists say Trump’s sweeping tariff proposals would raise the cost of everyday materials in the United States and upend supply chains around the world.

More recently, Trump earlier this month threatened to impose 100% tariffs on the BRICS countries — China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — if they did not commit to launching an initiative. A new currency that competes with the US dollar.

Regulation of major technology companies

Governments around the world have spent 2024 trying to regulate big tech companies.

At the beginning of the year, the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act came into effect, introducing new rules for how social media and other online platforms operate while also giving users more control over their personal data.

In March, the European Parliament passed the groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence Law, which regulates the use of AI based on the level of perceived risk.

The regulations, which took effect in August, exclude models made for national security and military purposes, or pure scientific research.

Global efforts to regulate AI remain largely a patchwork heading into 2025, said Svea Windauer, associate director for EU policy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group.

“As we saw in the case of the UN Convention on Cybercrime, we are far from globally shared commitments to protect fundamental rights online, and a global approach to regulating AI seems distant at this point,” Windwehr told Al Jazeera.

Brazil went head-to-head with tech mogul Elon Musk — CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and owner of the X — and won, at least for now.

In August, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended X accounts and froze bank accounts belonging to the social media platform and SpaceX after Musk refused to remove X accounts accused of spreading misinformation.

Ultimately, Musk complied with the court’s demands, in addition to paying $2 million in fines.

In November, Australia passed a ban on social media use for children under 16 due to concerns about its negative impact on young people’s mental health.

Platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram have a year to decide how to comply with the legislation.

Critics, including the EFF and the Australian Human Rights Commission, have criticized the law for being rushed and violating freedom of expression.

From early next year, the UK’s controversial online safety law will come into force in several stages.

Among the most controversial aspects of the law is whether authorities will require messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal to undermine encryption to limit their use by extremist groups and child sex offenders.

Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election could delay popular video-sharing app TikTok, which faces a US ban from January unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells the platform.

During the campaign, the president-elect promised to “save” the app, though he did not provide details on how to circumvent the ban, which was implemented under legislation passed earlier this year with broad bipartisan support.

ByteDance has refused to sell the platform, instead launching a legal battle that could take years to resolve.

At the same time, social media in the United States has become more socially and politically isolated.

Since Musk bought the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, X has shifted sharply to the right.

According to a recent study conducted by the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, the platform’s algorithm appears to be boosting posts from Republicans and Musk himself to increase the importance of conservative viewpoints.

Trump’s Truth Social has also gained greater prominence as the president-elect’s preferred megaphone to express his views.

Alternative platforms like Instagram’s Threads have continued to grow their user bases with varying degrees of success.

Meanwhile, liberal social media users abandoned X in favor of Blue Sky.

In the week after Trump won the election, the platform reported adding more than a million users.

Penalizing occupants for the cost of living

The election has been painful for incumbents almost everywhere.

As voters in more than sixty countries cast their ballots, economic issues, and concerns about the cost of living, in particular, were high on the agenda from North America to Europe and Africa.

Voters in many countries, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Japan, and India, have either expelled ruling parties from office outright or severely restricted their mandate.

In the United States, Trump’s decisive victory is widely attributed to public dissatisfaction with the lingering effects of pandemic-related rising inflation under President Joe Biden.

Ireland was one of the few exceptions to the anti-establishment trend, where voters won enough seats for the incumbent Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to begin coalition negotiations with minor parties or independents.

The few are on the march

Business interests and government power have always been intertwined, but Trump’s return to the White House would dramatically increase the influence of some of America’s most powerful magnates.

Chief among them is Musk, one of Trump’s most ardent supporters during the election, who has been appointed to head the newly created Government Efficiency Administration alongside fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk has made no secret of his disdain for government bureaucracy, taking aim at allegedly wasteful agencies and initiatives ranging from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the Internal Revenue Service and the F-35 fighter.

Trump’s other top picks from his circle of wealthy friends and allies include billionaire hedge fund founder Scott Besent as Treasury Secretary; Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, as Secretary of Commerce; Hedge fund manager Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior; Chris Wright, CEO of the Oilfield Services Company, as Minister of Energy; and Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, as Secretary of Education.

Outside the United States, the influence of oligarchs was also evident in the indictment issued by the US Department of Justice against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, founder and chairman of the Adani Group, on charges of bribery and fraud.

Adani is widely considered a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose development goals align with the businessman’s portfolio that includes infrastructure, food production and clean energy.

Bitcoin is back

Bitcoin’s price has soared in the weeks following Trump’s victory, rising from about $68,000 on Election Day to more than $100,000 earlier this month.

While Trump was critical of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies during his first term in office, he emerged as a strong supporter of cryptocurrencies during his recent election campaign, pledging to make the United States “the cryptocurrency capital of the planet.”

The president-elect has promised to create a strategic bitcoin reserve and has selected several prominent cryptocurrency enthusiasts to join his next administration, including former PayPal COO David Sachs as crypto czar and Paul Atkins as SEC chairman. , which cracked down on the sector under the leadership of outgoing president Gary Gensler.

China is hesitant about stimulus

China watchers have waited all year to see what steps Beijing will take to help revive the world’s second-largest economy, amid challenges ranging from weak consumption, a declining population and a prolonged stagnation in the real estate market.

While China’s leadership has traditionally avoided major stimulus spending, some analysts had hoped Beijing would reconsider its cautious stance in order to revive growth.

Beijing announced a series of measures to boost growth, mostly on the monetary policy side, including lowering interest rates, reducing requirements for the amount of money banks need to hold in reserve, and freeing up 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) of credit.

But many economic analysts considered these measures insufficient to keep the economy on track, especially if Beijing wants to achieve its growth target of about 5% in 2024.