Peter Frankopan: The Global Challenges to Navigate in 2025



Peter Frankopan, professor of global history at Oxford University, explains the trends he’s watching as we enter a new year for finance and markets.
It might not have felt like it, but 2024 was a “super year.” It was a year in which more people than at any time in history were able to make choices about the future. In 72 countries around the world, almost four billion voters had the chance to vote for their leaders. One striking feature of the way that results turned out in the U.S., the UK, Japan, India, Austria, Poland, New Zealand and other countries was that ruling parties were either thrown out of office or had sharply reduced mandates. No one in the democratic world seems to be happy with the way the world is going.
“All happy families are alike,” wrote Tolstoy at the start of Anna Karenina; “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In the case of these countries, all share similar concerns – around economic growth, of course, but also about immigration and minorities. One of the mantras of the last decade has been the urging by populist leaders – as well as by autocrats – about turning back time to reawaken great times from the past.
It is no coincidence, for example, that Donald Trump’s call to arms has not been “Make America Great” but rather “Make America Great Again.” That finds echoes in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. As a historian, it can feel like every day is Christmas because understanding which part of a mythical or semi-mythical past is being evoked matters in a time of change.
We are living in an age of revolutions. Deciding which is the most important and has the widest-reaching implications and consequences is, of course, the difference between investment decisions that bear fruit and those that yield only disappointment. So there is a premium in making sense of the world.
Much will depend on the choices made by the returning Trump, if only because the U.S. is the world’s true superpower: China’s growth has been astonishing over the last two decades; but per capita GDP is around seven times less than in the United States. When President Xi said at the G20 meeting in Brazil in November 2024 that “China will always be a member of the Global South,” he may not have been trying to win hearts and minds – not least since the meeting was organized and attended by wealthy countries. This may rather be a reflection of a reality that Xi has been talking about for some time, namely that China “is now, and will forever be a member of the developing world.” China’s economy will grow; whether it catches up is another matter.
Renewed trade tensions between Washington and Beijing will likely occur in 2025, with the new U.S. administration widely trailing the likelihood of a blanket imposition of 60 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports. There are silver linings to trade wars – including in China, where Trump is sometimes satirically referred to as “Comrade Trump, Builder of the nation” thanks to his perceived role in encouraging innovation in China itself.
What Trump means for Ukraine is less clear, though the scenario might not be quite as gloomy as most commentators make out. Ironically, U.S. defence companies have done well from the dispatch of weapons to Kyiv, and my best guess would be that despite the assurances to bring about peace within 24 hours, Trump and his team may well push the Russians, rather than the Ukrainians, to the negotiating table.
“We are living in an age of revolutions. Deciding which is the most important and has the widest-reaching implications and consequences is, of course, the difference between investment decisions that bear fruit and those that yield only disappointment.”
Other things to watch in the next 12 months are emerging infectious diseases. Those who had hoped that we had put pandemics behind us should read about the H5N1 avian influenza that is rife and spreading quickly across livestock herds in the U.S. – with early stage evidence of zoonotic jumps to infect humans.
The joys and wonders of AI are also something to keep an eye on. The eye-watering energy demands may be easier to deal with in the coming decade than the water required to cool servers. If that’s one area of concern, then so too are the effects on both blue- and white-collar workers. If immigration was the key theme of elections in 2024, expect employment and jobs to be central next time the world votes in such numbers. It is probably worth having a few baseline positions ready for the wheels falling off. The concerns in Chinese computer science circles are a lot higher than they are in Silicon Valley – and perhaps with good reason.
Finally, there is the question of climate change. Despite the damage caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton, by catastrophic flooding in Spain and Central Europe, and astonishingly severe heatwaves in Japan, South and Southeast Asia, the associated risks of a major climatological reorganization are poorly integrated into the way we think about the world of today and tomorrow. One key topic is food price and availability; another is that extreme weather events centralize decision-making and closely correlate to rising levels of autocracy.
Much to think about, in other words, for the 12 months ahead. And it always helps to bear in mind that necessity is the mother of all invention. There’s nothing like a crisis to focus the mind. Those who come up with good answers stand to do well. That, after all, is one of the first lessons of history.
The views expressed in this publication are the personal views of Peter Frankopan and do not necessarily reflect the views of the EQT AB group ("EQT") itself or any investment professional at EQT.

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College. His books include “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World”, “The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World” and “The Earth Transformed: An Untold History”.
ThinQ is the must-bookmark publication for the thinking investor.