Examine turbulence under Trump with The Economist’s geopolitics editor

To ensure the course remains relevant to business leaders, we have updated it to capture the possible impacts of Trump’s actions. The new material includes an interview with David Rennie, who writes The Economist’s Telegram column on geopolitics, about the US’ changing role. 

In the video, available in full to course participants, Rennie says Trump’s second term “promises to be so much more disruptive and so much more consequential than his first four years in office”. He considers whether the US-led global order can survive and what an unpredictable world means for business.

• On international alliances, Rennie discusses the world fracturing into American and Chinese blocs, adding: “the challenge for Donald Trump is how many…countries stay in his camp if he tries to divide the world in that way?”

• On economic instability, he says the model of globalisation from the 1980s to the 2000s is “essentially over”, adding that “Political risk [and] geopolitical calculations are now weighing on every single board of directors of every multinational.”

• On tensions between states, he says: “A major concern is that Donald Trump overestimates his leverage over some of the world’s most dangerous countries.” These countries “don’t have much to lose”, making confrontation with the US more likely. 

Rennie, who was previously based in Beijing, Washington and Brussels, is a former co-host of The Economist’s weekly podcast on China, “Drum Tower”, and has featured on “The Prince”, its podcast about China’s leader, Xi Jinping. Other expert contributors to our course include Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google, and Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia. Their insights are complemented by contributions from journalists at The Economist with extensive experience of reporting on global affairs.