Project Syndicate

The G7 summit must recognize that extreme disparities in income, wealth, opportunity, and political influence are not only a defining feature of the global economy but also a major factor in many other shared challenges. For too long, the issue has been treated as a symptom rather than a cause.

Slowly but surely, the European Union is taking steps to reduce its current-account surplus and direct more of its substantial savings into domestic investment and growth. Unfortunately, at the G7 Summit in France this month, the United States will refuse to address global imbalances, including its own.

Under the guise of routine voter-roll maintenance, India’s Election Commission has purged tens of millions of voters, disproportionately affecting opposition strongholds, the poor, and Muslim minorities. The result is an electoral system increasingly designed to favor the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

As the postwar multilateral order gives way to a multipolar and more contested world, global governance must adapt or risk irrelevance. The upcoming G7 summit offers a unique opportunity to champion a coalition-based approach that translates shared interests into collective action.

AI is doing what no previous technology could, turning tacit human knowledge into a product that can be extracted, priced, and distributed at scale. Yet the same technology that democratizes cognitive labor may also weaken the human capacities on which complex societies depend.

Recent stock-market gyrations are a reminder of just how dependent the United States and global economies have become on investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for tech stocks. Even if a major correction is in the offing, however, it will not happen before SpaceX’s massive initial public offering draws in yet more leveraged investment, nor will it destroy the market power of the other tech giants that have spent years perfecting anti-competitive tactics that largely escape regulators’ purview.

Whereas Donald Trump has offered voters a clear and compelling narrative, Democrats have provided only vague aspirations and long lists of policies. To win over voters—rather than scrounging protest votes—they must articulate a compelling economic vision, with wage-led growth as its foundation.

The European Green Deal runs on data, from corporate disclosures to climate-risk analyses and decarbonization pathways. But much of this data feeds platforms and tools developed outside the European Union, which could threaten the bloc’s climate agenda and even its foundational values.

Monetary tightening in Africa would not only fail to rein in inflation; it would raise the cost of productive investment, suppress growth, and hamper the continent's much-needed structural transformation. A better strategy would focus on accelerating this transformation by channeling finance into productive industries.

Amid the disruptions caused by the US/Israeli-Iran war, countries have begun adapting to life with less oil. What started as a supply shock has become a demand story, forcing the energy sector to reconsider one of its most important assumptions: continued growth of global oil demand.

Developing countries have made enormous progress in many of the factors behind growth, reflected in stronger institutions, rising education levels, higher life expectancy, and increased investment rates. Yet income convergence with advanced economies has been painfully slow—and in most cases absent.

With China and India having grown so fast as to compensate for the underperformance of their fellow BRICS (Brazil, Russia, and South Africa), the center of gravity in the global economy continues to shift eastward. The question now is whether—and when—equity valuations will reflect this underlying reality.

A government that abandons structural agendas whenever sentiment turns negative will still be managing sentiment four years later—with nothing to show for it. Brazil’s “vibecession” is a real problem for the current government; but winning the news cycle is not a real solution.

Apocalyptic thinking is seeping into the political discourse, with figures like Peter Thiel, Pete Hegseth, and Aleksandr Dugin portraying political differences as struggles between good and evil. When rivals become mortal enemies, the instruments of politics and diplomacy cannot work.

For much of the postwar era, European policymakers have prioritized stability and predictability over fostering breakthrough innovation. Today, as the United States and China compete for AI dominance, a stagnant Europe is struggling to regain its place at the technological frontier.

Big Tech firms are amassing market power through strategies that bypass current rules for oversight, investigation, and intervention. Unless and until regulators account for the full scope and scale of these strategies, Silicon Valley’s dominance will remain unchallenged.

The need for massive upfront investments and the likelihood of significant job displacement imply remarkable parallels between the AI buildout and the green transition. In both cases, the state has an important role to play in guiding market forces on behalf of the public good.

Whereas China’s trade surplus used to be absorbed largely by the central bank and channeled into official reserves, it is now being redeployed by private actors in search of yield. This indicates China’s progress on financial deepening and underscores markets' increasingly central role in shaping the economy.

Multilateral development banks have not kept pace with changes to the global financial environment. For middle-income countries like India, accessing knowledge and technology is now a bigger challenge than raising capital, which suggests that these institutions must rethink their operating model.