Seven Trends to Look Out For in 2025
As an end-of-year special feature, l'Opinion asked some well-known personalities to predict seven events, dates, ideas, or attitudes that we should look out for in 2025. This is the first instalment, published in L’Opinion on 23rd December 2024.
2022 was the year of disruption: the war in Ukraine and the 20th Communist Party Congress in China which slammed the door shut on an era that had lasted over 30 years, having begun in 1989. 2023 was the year of denial, banking on the imminent collapse of the Red Army and of the Chinese economy. 2024 was the year when people became aware of the real decline of the West, symbolised by Europe’s effacement and the re-election of Donald Trump.
2025 promises to be the year when we move more quickly into a war economy, and when a new world order will be sketched out. We should look out for seven main areas of disruption if we want a glimpse of the “New World”. Contrary to the predicitions of the Cassandras among us, 2025 will not bring the end of the world, just the end of a world that began to disappear in 2022.
1. Will “Chinamerica” be able to survive monetary pressures?
Scott Bessent, the future US Treasury Secretary, has already stated that the world order no longer adequately serves American interests. “Joyful globalisation” with a “non-friendly” nation like China now constitutes a threat to American security because of a growing dependency. Also, the lack of growth in Chinese domestic consumption is exacerbating global imbalances that have no hope of being readjusted. The Democrats’ “small yard, high fence” approach has not stopped China from making progress in many industries. Only if there is initially an “escalation” in customs duties, can there then be a “de-escalation” aimed at weakening China’s competitiveness by forcing the yuan or Chinese salaries to be revalued. A sort of remake of the 1985 Plaza Accord, which engendered Japan’s lost decades. After the technology war, then the trade war, comes the monetary war, to take advantage of the major slowdown of the Chinese economy. What will President Xi Jinping do about it, given that he is not the sort to be intimidated and firmly believes that time is on his side?
2. Will Europe bring in its “radical change”?
“Mario Draghi dreamed it, Friedrich Merz did it”? Europe’s survival in 2025 will be played out in Berlin from March onwards. Will the potential future German Chancellor develop his “Agenda 2030”? Will he side with Italy in economic reform, with Poland in the revival of defence, and with Scandinavia in productivity increases? Will Germany finally recognise Europe’s systemic rivalry with China, where there is no longer a promising domestic market? Will it convert its automobile industry to working for the defence sector and so avoid falling into the trap of a false “Ukraine peace”? Will it discover the advantages of using budget deficits to subsidise its energy? Will it be able to develop a transactional relationship with the USA under Donald Trump, relying on principles that last only until they are broken.? Is the only thing it can do now is reform the ineffective gouvernance by Brussels… with a touch of Radikal?
3. Will the “Global South” carry out a successful putsch in Belém?
What better occasion than the COP 30 for the “Global South” to take advantage of the friendly Brazilian location and finally assert its demographic power when compared to developed countries. The countries accounting for 85% of CO2 emissions will come to an understanding based on anti-American and anti-Western feelings, which will be particularly impactful since, in 2025, the USA will re-finance a quarter of their huge debt. The $7,000 billion needed will be a drain on the financing of emerging nations, the main collateral victims of Uncle Sam’s excessive lifestyle. It only remains for the “Global South” to organise a putsch under the benevolent eye of the BRICS countries. He who is absent is always in the wrong, so it will left up to the USA to finance the decarbonisation of the world… By taxing income from Artificial Intelligence? Or by making further requirement that payments be made in bitcoin rather than dollars?
4. Will generative AI have to face up to “Death Valley”?
“Underestimate the next 12 years, overestimate the next 12 months”. In 2025, will markets finally voice their concerns over the GenAi business model? When will we see an end to the illusions held about algorithms? What credence should be given to synthetic data about the future, which will be indispensable for creating models in two or three years time? What should we expect in terms of monetising increases in productivity? How can we conserve these and not waste them, by reallocating the new free time available to us to the latest inventions of Meta? What profit margin can we hope for in the long term if extremely high operational costs are not reduced a little? What new energy sources can we depend on if, according to Microsoft President Satya Nadella, the ultimate criterion for success becomes the “token per dollar per watt”? These are all questions that the five American superscalers, the GAFAM, will have to answer. Without answers, their annual investment figure of over $250 billion could appear to be a very high price to pay just to keep the existing oligopoly in place.
5. Will the “Chinese aftershock” play a nasty trick on the West?
Next year, fifty Chinese robotaxi firms will show how “the world’s workshop” has been transformed into “the world’s laboratory”. It is not the electric car but the self-driving car that will constitute the real break with the past for the automobile industry and will signify China’s triumph. The model of “innovation with low productivity” will amplify the “Chinese aftershock” by replacing private capital by state subsidies and replacing “common prosperity” by wage reductions. China will remain the empire of extremes: the increased “Japanisation” of the economy by the insoluble real estate crisis will not prevent the emergence of global dragons in vital industries that need a long-term approach. Will large-scale energy storage — combined with solar panels –be the next sector –following on from the automobile sector — in which the rest of the world becomes heavily dependent on China?
6. Will the democracies take back control of social media?
Will the cancellation of the Romanian presidential elections in December 2024 because of interference from the Chinese-owned TikTok mark the end of the reign of social media? In 2024, Australia attempted to put the first legal limitations on them by prohibiting anyone under 16 from accessing them. Indonesia banned TikTok’s e-commerce function, and the USA is trying to retain ownership of them for itself! Will the number of slavish trolls on social media — the greedy recruiter of homo cretinus — diminish, now that the peak of wokism has undoubtedly been reached with the resignation of Claudine Gay, President of Harvard, in early 2024? Will the proliferation of fake news heralded by the advent of generative AI leave democracies no alternative but to legislate on the content of social media? Alternatively, should we simply let emotion take control over the future “e-mocracy”.
7. Will we finally get someone to take on the leadership of the world?
“Desperately Seeking World Leader.” In 2025, lack of leadership will continue to be an issue, and not only in France or in political spheres. The re-election of Donald Trump has overridden the ethical concerns that used to earn worldwide respect for the USA. It now finds itself the victim of the decline of Protestantism and its ethic of accountability. Throughout the world, religion, however it is practised, is lacking a sense of direction. “Strong” regimes assert that only a weak country grants full powers to just one man, whilst democracies continue to lose ground as their leaders lie to their people. The world of mistrust flourishes: medical science has little weight in face of the pseudo-arguments of the anti-vaccine lobby; opaqueness, facilitated by the return of frontiers, fosters the increase in disinformation; all types of institutions are being defied by the younger generation. The latter continue to support the bitcoin, are eager to experience –often individually — a wide diversity of things and prefer teleworking to working in proximity to an inspirational boss. The 2025 vintage therefore promises to be anything but straightforward. It could be that this is just one more year when, with the prospect of a leader with all the attributes of Godot, we have to be our own leaders and take control of our own destiny.
