Epilogue: A Look Ahead
| Author | David A. Steiger |
| Pages | 383-414 |
383
Predicting the future rarely ends well for the would-be oracle. I lay no
claim to prophetic gifts or any means of time travel that would allow me
some sort of special insight into what the world will look like in 2015
and beyond. One only has to cast back to September 10, 2001, and think
about how many futurists at that time could have accurately imagined the
events of the following 13-plus years. The truth is that, as I type this text
sitting in the exit row of a Southwest ight from Buffalo to Chicago, totally
unexpected events halfway around the world may once again be coalesc-
ing in such a way as to fundamentally transform the global economy and
our individual places in it. And as history has shown us repeatedly, those
events can change everything in a New York minute.
With that very signicant caveat set forth, it occurs to me that one of
the principle messages of this book is the need to project forward what we
know about the world now in order to game out future events and thereby
better understand both the risks and opportunities that a business faces
in the future. In reality, that is a lot more easily accomplished for an indi-
vidual business than for the world writ large. Still, I would argue that as
we progress through 2014 and beyond, there are a number of trends that
we can project out at least a few years into the future that should provide
some guidance to you about risk and opportunity, at least in the short term.
So with that, I give you some musings on what a few current trends might
mean for global business in the coming years.
Increased Overseas Political Risk
for U.S.-Based Businesses
Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of International Monetary
Fund (IMF), gave a speech on the future of the Global Economy and her
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organization in Washington, D.C., on October 11, 2013. In that speech,
she highlighted projections that over next decade, the share of emerging
and developing economies in global gross domestic product (GDP) will
increase from about one-half to nearly two-thirds; this will set the stage
for a future in which “economic power will be far less concentrated in
the advanced economies—and more vastly dispersed across all regions.”1
Explicitly, Ms. Lagarde spoke in terms of this economic shift leading to a
“more multipolar world.”2
Americans who haven’t already gotten their minds around the practical
consequences of these megatrends would be well disposed to start now. To
put it simply, the rise of emerging economies, and the relative economic
weakness of the United States and European Union (EU) member nations
suggest a world in which traditionally less empowered trading partners of
the West feel more and more at liberty to take political action against west-
ern businesses within their territorial ambit. Anti-American feelings that in
some quarters had been muted have of late increasingly been seen and heard
out in the open. For example, during the October 2013 Washington dispute
over funding the federal government and raising the U.S. debt ceiling, the
Chinese news agency Xinhua garnered signicant international attention
by openly calling for a “de-Americanized world”:
Under what is known as the Pax-Americana, we fail to see a world
where the United States is helping to defuse violence and conicts,
reduce poor and displaced population, and bring about real, lasting
peace.
Moreover, instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading
power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status
and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting nancial
risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes,
and ghting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.
As a result, the world is still crawling its way out of an economic
disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites, while bombings
1. Christine Lagarde, The Future Global Economy and the Future Fund, I’ M
F (Oct. 11, 2013), http:// www .imf .org /external /np /speeches /2013 /101113 .htm.
2. Id.
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and killings have become virtually daily routines in Iraq years after
Washington claimed it has liberated its people from tyrannical rule.
Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable
bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising
debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in
jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.
Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands
of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order
should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small,
poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on
an equal footing.3
Whether such feelings are broadly held throughout China, Asia, and the
rest of the world, and moreover whether they will be increasingly acted
upon in coming years, history will judge. In terms of China however, there
are growing warning signs of antiforeign enforcement activities. A recent
Wall Street Journal article, while acknowledging China’s overall openness
to foreign investment, also noted the following:
What concerns many Western business executives is not just that price-
xing investigations have concentrated on foreign companies—often
accompanied by shrill denunciations of their corporate targets in state
media. Individuals within companies and their networks are also being
singled out. And, say lawyers and others, there are disturbing Mao-
era echoes in the tactics employed.
One Western lawyer describes what he calls “inquisitions” of
several of his multinational dairy and pharmaceutical clients by
regulators . . . as the economy has slowed, the risk of domestic pro-
tectionism has grown. China is shifting its export and investment-led
growth model toward consumption, a process that will produce both
winners and losers. Foreign consumer companies with strong brands
and a reputation for quality ought to be the winners. But expect
3. Liu Chang, Commentary: U.S. scal failure warrants a de-Americanized world, X
(Oct. 13, 2013), http:// news .xinhuanet .com /english /indepth /2013 -10 /13 /c _132794246 .htm .
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