The Boom Was a Blip - Gateway House

The global recovery from the Great Recession of 2009 has just entered its eighth year and shows few signs of fading. That should be cause for celebration. But this recovery has been an underwhelming one. Throughout this period, the global economy has grown at an average annual pace of just 2.5 percent—a record low when compared with economic rebounds that took place in the decades after World War II. Rather than rejoicing, then, many experts are now anxiously searching for a way to push the world economy out of its low-growth trap. Some economists and investors have placed their hopes on populists such as U.S. President Donald Trump, figuring that if they can make their countries’ economies grow quickly again, the rest of the world might follow along.

Given how long the global economy has been in the doldrums, however, it’s worth asking whether the forces slowing growth are merely temporary. Although economists and business leaders complain that a 2.5 percent global growth rate is painfully slow, prior to the 1800s, the world’s economy never grew that fast for long; in fact, it never topped one percent for a sustained period. Even after the Industrial Revolution began in the late eighteenth century, the average global growth rate rarely exceeded 2.5 percent. It was only with the massive baby boom following World War II that the global economy grew at an average pace close to four percent for several decades. That period was an anomaly, however—and should be recognized as such.

RUCHIR SHARMA is Chief Global Strategist and Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan
Stanley Investment Management and the author of The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of
Change in the Post-Crisis World.

This article appeared in the Foreign Affairs 2017 May/June edition. It is republished here with permission.

This article was originally published by Foreign Affairs. You can read the rest of the article here.

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