Looking back at 2024 and ahead to 2025

Dear friends and colleagues, 

If it is true that societies need common guiding principles, 2024 was not a good year. Or at least it is not ending well. And this despite the fact that much of what counts as progress of knowledge in modern economics seems to have recently become a leitmotif in real politics, even in Germany. The realization that we need industrial policy if we want to remain sovereign. Or guidelines so that the car industry knows where it is going. Or that minimum wages help prevent abuse of power.

Now Donald Trump has been elected in the USA – and we are in the middle of an election campaign after the end of the traffic light coalition. And already a bizarre retro waveseems to have started: paying homage to an Argentinian president who pretends that the religion of market omnipotence has never failed. Or to say once again that the Germans just need to work more – as if that would do anything to combat climate change or aggressive Chinese policies. And to pretend once again that things would be better if only the state wasn’t there. Donald Trump himself doesn’t believe that. Who else would set the tariffs?

Above all, people don’t seem to believe this either, as the second wave of a survey shows, the results of which we will publish in January. According to the results, Germans’ aversion to public debt has long since subsided – and made way for a more differentiated view. When it comes to investing in the future, a clear majority is in favour of the state also taking on debt.

What good are market-based promises of salvation against Chinese competition, US protectionism or climate change? What the Chinese and Americans are doing is precisely the opposite: industrial policy in turbo mode. In this situation it doesn’t help to reduce bureaucracy here and there. It won’t help the Argentinians if they soon no longer have the civil servants who ensure that the economy and people have the conditions they need to develop. What happens when you cut too much can currently be observed in Germany.

At our Berlin Summit in May, dozens of the world’s leading experts put together what modern economic policy should consist of – in the Berlin Declaration. This includes an industrial policy that ensures, for example, that the country does not become too dependent on others. It also includes a climate policy that radically focuses on positive incentives instead of absurd penalties and ever higher costs for consumers. To name just two examples. You can find the seven-minute video on the Declaration – here.

The question is not whether it would be good to return to a market-liberal dogma. The question is rather what the new economic policy should look like and how it should function. And whether what has been proposed so far is sufficient. Whether a climate policy should not start much more radically by providing people with positive incentives. Whether a completely new logic of globalization for all is needed – a cooperative version for the post-Trump era. Whether the reduction of wealth disparities should not be much more about starting capital for everyone. And what a better debt rule than the current debt brake could look like for Germany.

All of this is on the agenda for the new year – and for the second Berlin Summit, which we are planning for mid-June 2025. After everything that happened towards the end of 2024, there is more evidence than ever that populists will only disappear again if we succeed in offering a new and convincing guiding principle that holds society together.

Many thanks to all of you – and to those who contributed their ideas.

We wish you a happy holiday season and a good start to an important new year!

Thomas Fricke and the Forum Team

Anne Zweynert de Cadena, Xhulia Likaj, Maren Buchholtz, Valerie Kiel, Isabella Wedl, David Kläffling and all those who support us.

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