From Trump to Bitcoin, inflation and China: the big economic trends of 2024 | Business and Economy

The year 2024 saw the global economy stabilise following the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as growth in many countries lagged pre-2020 levels.

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Amid a patchy recovery, more than 2 billion people were eligible to vote this year, and economic issues, particularly rising living costs, were a top concern for voters around the world.

Meanwhile, governments grappled with how to regulate potentially transformational technology such as artificial intelligence, and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election heralded a sharp turn towards protectionism.

Here are seven of the biggest events that shaped the global economy in 2024:

Trump signals new trade wars

Trump has indicated that he will pursue an even more aggressive version of the “America First” protectionism that fuelled his rise to power during his second stint in the White House.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to impose tariffs of 60 percent or higher on Chinese goods and a blanket 20 percent tariff on all other imports.

Trump has also put friendly nations in the crosshairs, recently threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, in the process raising questions about the future of the three-way free trade agreement between the countries.

Economists say Trump’s proposals for sweeping tariffs would raise the cost of everyday items in the US and upend supply chains across the globe.

Most recently, Trump earlier this month threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on the BRICS countries – China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates – if they did not commit to not launching a new currency to rival the US dollar.

Regulating Big Tech

Governments around the world spent 2024 trying to regulate Big Tech.

At the start of the year, the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act went into effect, introducing new rules for how social media and other online platforms operate while also giving users more control over their personal data.

In March, the European Parliament passed the groundbreaking AI Act, which regulates the use of artificial intelligence based on its level of perceived risk.

The regulations, which came into force in August, exempt models made for national security and military purposes, or purely scientific research.

Svea Windwehr, assistant director of EU Policy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group, said global efforts to regulate AI remain largely a patchwork heading into 2025.

“As we have seen with the case of the UN Cybercrime Convention, we are far away from globally shared commitments to protect fundamental rights online, and a global approach to regulating AI seems distant at this point,” Windwehr told Al Jazeera.

Brazil went head-to-head with tech mogul Elon Musk – the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and owner of X – and won, at least for now.

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In August, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended X and froze bank accounts belonging to the social media platform and SpaceX after Musk refused to take down X accounts accused of spreading misinformation.

Musk eventually complied with the court’s demands, in addition to paying $2m in fines.

In November, Australia passed a ban on social media for children under 16 over concerns about its adverse effect on young people’s mental health.

Platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram have a year to work out how to comply with the legislation.

Critics, including the EFF and Australian Human Rights Commission, criticised the law for being rushed and infringing on freedom of speech.

From early next year, the UK’s controversial Online Safety Act will go into effect in several phases.

Among the most contentious aspects of the law is whether authorities will require messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal to undermine encryption to limit their use by extremist groups and child sex offenders.

Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election could spell a reprieve for the popular video-sharing app TikTok, which is facing a US ban from January unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells the platform.

On the campaign trail, the president-elect promised to “save” the app, although he did not provide details on how he would circumvent the ban, which was set in motion by legislation passed earlier this year with broad bipartisan support.

ByteDance has declined to sell the platform, instead launching a legal battle that could take years to resolve.

Meanwhile, US social media became even more socially and politically segregated.

Since Musk’s purchase of the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, X has shifted sharply to the right.

According to a recent study by Australia’s Queensland University of Technology, the platform’s algorithm appears to boost posts by Republicans and Musk himself to increase the prominence of conservative perspectives.

Trump’s Truth Social also gained greater prominence as the president-elect’s favoured megaphone for expressing his views.

Alternative platforms such as Instagram’s Threads continued to grow their user bases to varying degrees of success.

Meanwhile, liberal social users ditched X for Blue Sky.

In the week following Trump’s election win, the platform reported adding more than 1 million users.

Incumbents punished over the cost of living

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Elections were bruising affairs for incumbents almost everywhere.

With voters in more than 60 countries casting ballots, economic issues, and cost of living concerns, in particular, were high on the agenda from North America to Europe and Africa.

Voters in numerous countries, including the UK, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Japan and India, either ejected governing parties from office outright or severely constrained their mandate.

In the US, Trump’s decisive victory was widely attributed to the public’s discontent with the lingering effects of the pandemic-related spike in inflation under President Joe Biden.

Ireland was one of the few exceptions in the anti-establishment trend, with voters delivering the incumbent Fine Gael and Fianna Fail parties enough seats to begin negotiations on forming a coalition with minor parties or independents.

Oligarchs on the march

Business interests and government power have always been intertwined, but Trump’s return to the White House is set to dramatically elevate the influence of some of the US’s most powerful moguls.

Chief among them is Musk, one of Trump’s most fervent backers during the election, who has been tapped to head the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency” along with fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk has made no secret of his disdain for government bureaucracy, taking aim at allegedly wasteful agencies and initiatives ranging from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the Internal Revenue Service and the F-35 fighter.

Trump’s other top picks from within his circle of ultra-wealthy friends and allies include billionaire hedge fund founder Scott Bessent as secretary of the treasury; Howard Lutnick, the CEO of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, as secretary of commerce; hedge fund manager Doug Burgum as secretary of the interior; Chris Wright, the CEO of an oilfield services firm, as secretary of energy; and Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, as secretary of education.

Outside the US, the influence of oligarchs was also on display in the US Justice Department’s indictment of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, the founder and chairman of Adani Group, on bribery and fraud charges.

Adani is widely considered to be a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose development goals align with the tycoon’s portfolio spanning infrastructure, food production and clean energy.

Bitcoin roars back

The price of Bitcoin rallied in the weeks after Trump’s victory, surging from about $68,000 on election day to above $100,000 earlier this month.

While Trump was critical of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies during his first term in office, he emerged as a vocal supporter of digital currencies during his recent election campaign, pledging to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.

The president-elect has promised to create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin and has picked several high-profile crypto enthusiasts to join his incoming administration, including former PayPal Chief Operating Officer David Sacks as crypto tsar and Paul Atkins as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which cracked down on the sector under outgoing head Gary Gensler.

China wavers on stimulus

China watchers waited all year to see what steps Beijing would take to help revive the world’s second-largest economy, amid challenges ranging from weak consumption to a falling population and a prolonged property market slump.

While China’s leadership has traditionally avoided big stimulus spending, some analysts had hoped that Beijing would reconsider its cautious attitude in order to revive growth.

Beijing announced a series of measures to boost growth, mostly on the monetary policy side, including lowering interest rates and reducing the requirement for how much money banks need to keep on reserve, freeing up 1 trillion yuan ($140bn) in credit.

But many economic analysts viewed the measures as insufficient to keep the economy on track, especially if Beijing is to hit its growth target of about 5 percent in 2024.