Deeper uncertainty in 2026?

A reordering of the rules of trade, set on top of transformational change in technology, demographics and climate, is remaking jobs, politics and lives, writes Patricia Cohen from London

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A furniture factory in Vietnam, Chinese exports are surging not just into Europe but even more sharply into Southeast Asia. With its economy suffering from property market collapse, China has ramped up its exports, running a trade surplus this year of over $1 trillion.

(PHOTOS BY NYT)

Despite being swatted about like a tetherball by ever-shifting trade wars, shortages of critical minerals and tense standoffs between the United States and China, the global economy has turned out to be more resilient than predicted.

But don’t think that it’s time to take a breath. The whirligig shows no sign of stopping.

“We are living through a singularly turbulent time,” said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT who won the Nobel in economic science last year.

Transformational changes continue to rattle the global economy, including the revolution in artificial intelligence, rapidly aging populations, climate change, and a worldwide turn against liberal democracy and a rules-based international order.

All of which are poised to remake jobs, politics and lives.

The transition has been complicated by chaotic economic policymaking around the world this year.

In the United States, contradictory pronouncements are regularly issued from the Oval Office, as tariffs are enacted and retracted without warning. Last month, for instance, President Donald Trump lifted tariffs on beef, tomatoes, bananas, coffee and other groceries, while last week, he threatened to raise them on rice from India and China.

Delayed price increases from tariffs are still working their way through the American economy like a mouse being digested by a snake.

At the same time, the future of a large chunk of the president's tariff policies remains unclear until the Supreme Court rules on their constitutionality.