The Next Global Economy: AI, Fragmentation, and Development to 2045
Last revised 9/29/2026

The Next Global Economy: AI, Fragmentation, and Development to 2045

How AI, trade fragmentation, aging, and debt are rewiring the world economy

For thirty years the default story of the world economy was hyper-globalization: cheaper trade, longer supply chains, and poorer countries climbing by exporting manufactured goods. Since 2008 that story has been under strain, and now a general-purpose technology, AI, is arriving in the middle of the reconfiguration. Across ten modules and 40 sessions, this collection builds a working model of the global economy for the next ten years, with a twenty-year outlook: AI and productivity, trade and tariffs, industrial policy and sanctions, China's changing growth model, demographics and distribution, energy and critical minerals, food and water, debt and the dollar, and the development paths still open to the Global South. It treats "deglobalization" as a hypothesis to test against the data, sets out the competing views in each module, and names the signals worth watching, so a headline about tariffs, chip controls, a debt crisis, or an AI productivity claim can be placed inside one coherent picture.

Field GuideOutlook
Earn6CreditsinEconomicsPolitics
10Modules40Sessions442Cards80Quizzes

Modules in this Collection’s System

The Starting Line: The World Economy in 2026

What the shocks of the early 2020s left behind, and the frame for everything that follows.

4Sessions

AI as a General-Purpose Technology

Why the AI payoff may arrive late, unevenly, and in a few places first.

4Sessions

Globalization Rewired, Not Reversed

Testing the deglobalization story against the trade data.

4Sessions

The State Returns: Industrial Policy and Geoeconomics

Subsidies, sanctions, and screening as ordinary tools of economic policy.

4Sessions

China's Next Model

The end of the property engine and the bet on new productive forces.

4Sessions

People and Payoffs: Demographics, Work, and Distribution

Who will do the work of the next two decades, and who will keep the gains.

4Sessions

Energy, Minerals, Food, and Water

The physical economy beneath the transition, the data center, and the harvest.

4Sessions

Debt, Dollars, and the Money System

Who owes, who lends, and why the dollar still sits at the center.

4Sessions

Development Paths for the Global South

Which ladders remain open when factories need fewer workers.

4Sessions

Scenarios for 2035 and 2045

Four plausible worlds, the signals that reveal which one is arriving, and a model that holds across them.

4Sessions

What You'll Walk Away With

  • 5structural forces — technology, fragmentation, demographics, resources, and debt — for placing any economic headline in context.
  • 4scenario worlds built on two uncertainties, AI productivity speed and fragmentation depth, for stress-testing plans to 2045.
  • 5country archetypes — technology leaders, connector economies, commodity exporters, aging manufacturers, and young low-income economies — for judging who gains under each scenario.
  • 1signal dashboard of indicators, from productivity data to dollar share, for telling which future is actually unfolding.
  • 3development paths — manufacturing, services, and resources — for assessing which ladders remain open to the Global South.

You'll Have Answers To

  • ?If trade barriers keep rising, why hasn't world trade actually collapsed?
  • ?Will AI raise productivity fast enough to offset aging workforces and heavy public debt?
  • ?When a factory leaves China for Vietnam or Mexico, how much of the supply chain really moves?
  • ?Can a young country still grow rich by making things when factories need fewer workers?
  • ?Why does the dollar stay central even as more governments work to reduce their dependence on it?

Critical Concepts Explored

SlowbalizationConnector EconomiesPositive Real RatesProductivity J-CurveEconomic StatecraftNew Productive ForcesDemographic DividendProcessing ChokepointPremature DeindustrializationScenario Matrix
Editor's Note
“A disciplined, data-first model of the world economy for the next two decades.”

Rather than choosing between globalization triumphant and globalization dead, this collection tests each story against the evidence. It joins AI, trade, industrial policy, China, demographics, resources, and debt into one frame, sets out the competing views, and ends with scenarios and signals readers can keep using.

Editor's Brief
Who it's for
Professionals, investors, founders, policy staff, graduate students, and curious readers who follow economic news but lack a single framework connecting AI, trade, geopolitics, and development.
What stands out
It treats the popular deglobalization story as a hypothesis to test against the data, and it adds the layers the headline debate usually leaves out — demographics, energy and critical minerals, food and water, debt and the dollar, China's changing model, and the Global South's development paths — before closing with scenarios and signals to 2045.
Read if
Read it if you want to place the next headline about tariffs, chip controls, a debt crisis, or AI productivity inside one coherent picture of where the world economy is heading.
Gold Quotes
The world economy is not retreating; it is being rewired, and AI is arriving in the middle of the rewiring.

Goods trade as a share of world GDP stopped rising around 2008 and has moved sideways since — a pattern often called slowbalization rather than a collapse. Supply chains, investment, and technology have been rerouted by tariffs, sanctions, and industrial policy. AI now adds a general-purpose technology to that reconfiguration, able to shift productivity, labor markets, and comparative advantage at the same time.

About the Curator
EEcon Beyond

Econ Beyond publishes collections on the forces that shape our economic lives, from prices and work to money, cities and nations. Big ideas and real evidence, told plainly, so readers can see the economics in their own decisions at work, at home and at the ballot box.