We cannot afford any complacency: Even a new year free of shake-ups would test our resolve
John Lennon wrote and recorded a song in 1975 with these evocative lyrics: So this is Christmas/ What have you done?/ Another year over/ And a new one just begun. This song was part of his anti-war activism, but the words could apply to various causes.As the sun sets on 2025 and the calendar gets reset for 2026, it might be worthwhile to take a moment to reflect upon what whizzed past as a means of getting a better handle on what awaits us.
Two big-picture events and one big technology trend monopolized headlines over the past year.The sharpest dissonance was caused by US President Donald Trump’s illogical and unilateral tariff impositions against a host of countries that disrupted global trade flows and dampened growth impulses. This came on top of existing geopolitical frictions that had erupted into armed conflicts: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, among others.But capital markets shrugged all this off in their zest for artificial intelligence (AI), a productivity tool that bullish traders expect will reshape the economy—like how electricity and the internet did—and enable significantly faster growth in the near future.The jury is still out on the scale of any such AI boost, however.It must be said that India has shown remarkable resilience amid global turbulence.
The economy managed to not only notch up impressive growth, but also meet its tariff challenge head-on.India’s merchandise plus services export receipts went up by over 5% during April-November 2025, marginally higher than import growth over the same period. This is reflective of how the government leveraged the trade crisis to overhaul its export strategy, both in terms of products and markets.Over the past year, the commerce ministry sealed trade deals
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