麦肯锡-在关税的时刻，世界能否找到平衡和信任来蓬勃发展？（英）

May 2025Geopolitics Practice, McKinsey Global Institute, and Strategy & Corporate Finance PracticeIn a moment of tariffs, can the world find balance and trust to thrive?Amid tariff uncertainty and a possible recession, the world needs a new base of balance and trust to create a thriving economy. Business has a vital role to play.This article is a collaborative effort by Sven Smit, Shubham Singhal, Olivia White, Ezra Greenberg, Jan Mischke, Matt Watters, Cindy Levy, and Rebecca J. Anderson, representing views from McKinsey’s Geopolitics and Strategy & Corporate Finance Practices and the McKinsey Global Institute.A global system of full economic integration—the aspiration of decades of negotiations and the worldwide underpinning of corporate strategy—has never been fully realized. The latest round of global trade talks sputtered to an inconclusive end in the early 2010s. But even as views on the benefits and fairness of the system diverged among countries, there was no overt challenge to the framework of global trade. That changed on April 2, 2025, when US tariff announcements revealed in stark fashion some of the underlying discontent with this construct.In the weeks since the announcements, share prices and the US Treasury market have gyrated. Expectations of US inflation have spiked. Consumer confidence has plummeted back to lows last seen in 2022, as inflation surged after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first quarter, the US economy shrank by 0.3 percent, as companies pulled forward imports and inventories grew. Many analysts have raised their estimates of the probability of a global recession. After two years of nearly 3 percent real GDP growth, is the momentum in the US economy strong enough to work through these headwinds?In our view, the history that led to this volatile moment is important but not as important as what comes next. Many will agree that global and local economies need to find a new balance: a United States that produces more of what it consumes, a China that consumes more of what it produces, a Europe that is competitive and can grow, and a “global south” that connects with advanced economies and finds its path to prosperity. To achieve these outcomes, leaders of business, government, and society can extend their attention beyond today’s trade and budget deficit debates to ask what they can do to get the global economy on the path to achieve this goal.In that sense, the question now isn’t whether the current path of escalating tariffs and trade tensions is the right one. More critically, the question is whether the path that leaders choose next will further erode trust among countries and within societies, or will the path begin to rebuild that trust? Will leaders choose to continue down a seemingly unsustainable path? Or will they choose to balance economic resilience and national security needs? Economies need stable and secure investment environments to grow and prosper. They also need reliable partners. Economies