US: Executives Highlight Geopolitical Instability As Primary Concern For 2025

A new Wall Street Journal report has found that nearly two-thirds of about 900 executives surveyed by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. “flagged geopolitical instability as a top risk to global growth. Forty-nine percent said changes in trade policy were a major risk.”

• The Journal noted that “The U.S.-China relationship dominates corporate concerns, in part because toughness on China is a rare area of bipartisan consensus in Washington.”
• Reema Bhattacharya, Verisk Maplecroft’s head of Asia research, said: “In recent years, businesses have been blindsided by a cascade of disruptions—the pandemic, renewed conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, surging populism, intense competition for green minerals and escalating protectionism—which have forced a fundamental reset of longstanding strategies… The old playbook, focused on market size, costs and efficiency, has been upended. Now, geopolitics is the driving force.”
• David K. Young, president of the Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center of the Conference Board, said: “I don’t think anyone has a playbook at this point in time. Nothing happens in isolation. Everything’s interconnected…We’re living in a heightened geopolitical environment.”

Figure 1: Executives’ Top Worries, % of 192 Respondents who Cited the Following as their Top Worry