The FT’s forecasters did get one big thing right last year: Donald Trump’s return as US president has made the world even more unpredictable. Usually we are wrong on a couple of the 20 predictions (OK, sometimes four or five). Last year, we got seven wrong, our worst tally ever. There was no Ukraine-Russia peace deal — though talks have gone to the wire; US interest rates did fall; Elon Musk and Trump did fall out (though have since made up somewhat); Britain’s Labour government did produce another big tax-raising Budget. We were lightheartedly over-optimistic on bitcoin’s prospects of topping $200,000, and too pessimistic on electric vehicles reaching a quarter of all global auto sales.
Undaunted, our writers are sticking their necks out again on topics ranging from the US midterms to China’s renminbi, the artificial intelligence bubble, private credit, and whether we will have humanoid robots in our homes and a functioning commercial quantum computer. Read on to find out more.
Will Trump’s tariffs on average end the year higher than now?