Michael Every
1 Apr 2025
Michael Every from Rabobank explains that the current geopolitical situation poses a major systemic shock threatening international trade, comparable but opposite to the end of the Cold War. Companies can either ignore these changes or adapt, but options are limited and often conflicting, as national security interests increasingly outweigh economic ones, with banks and businesses being increasingly directed by government policies focused on national security.
For our fourth conversation about Geopolitics in 2025, we spoke to Michael Every, Global Strategist in Rabobank’s Global Economics and Markets Division.
As you will read, he doesn’t beat around the bush, drawing on his 25+ years of experience working in “cross-asset, cross-geography, cross-disciplinary” matters of strategy and market analysis to give straight answers to our straight questions.
How does the current state of global geopolitics affect international trade?
To answer most concisely: it threatens to be as large a systemic shock as what we experienced at the end of the Cold War, but in reverse.
How can internationally operating companies react to the present situation?
There are just a few choices. The first is to ignore it: don’t admit the world is changing. I can assure you that many CEOs fall squarely into the bracket of ‘don’t take any risks, don’t rock any boats, and don’t offend the shareholders’. Maybe they are thinking that everything will be as right as rain in six months. Good luck with that. The second more consequential option is to change: to try and read what’s actually happening and then act on that. However, available actions are largely a binary choice, or involve a very limited set of options which can contradict sharply with each other. To be blunt: for most companies, things are not as good as they were before.
Surely it can’t all be bad. Someone must be gaining from this increased fragmentation and protectionism?
The most obvious winner of the last two and a half months is European defence stocks which have gone through the roof. However, for various reasons, I don’t know how long that’s actually sustainable. In a de-globalising or re-globalising world most of the winners are now losers. The global economy risks becoming a bifurcated trading system with protectionist blocs with fractured payment systems; the euro used by one group of countries, the dollar by another, and Bitcoin used somewhere else, etc. Just because no-one has lived through this recently doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before. The 1930s is a past example. And we have seen snippets of this recently. How many people lost money on Russia after they invaded Ukraine? How many people are suddenly freaked out about owning American assets? These are just warning shots of the kind of tectonic shift that is happening.
How does the current state of global geopolitics affect international trade?
It means something: in the short term, obviously, they’re still powerful. But once you start getting back to the nuts and bolts of geopolitics and geoeconomics – to where we are now – business is told to do what national security wants it to do. And, to be clear, America didn’t start this; this was happening before Trump. America is actually echoing things that happened earlier in other countries. It’s just that we didn’t recognise it. To be blunt, the emerging thinkers who are setting the pace in the White House and many other economies see the concept of the International Chamber of Commerce as anathema. I don’t see any argument that the International or any Chamber of Commerce can bring to the White House to make them pivot. They only want to hear: How can we help you make this transition happen faster? What can we do to make this work better?
Can the banking community play a role in bringing stability?
No. Because what we’re seeing unfold most graphically in America is a shift from economic policy, where businesses and banks have a say, to economic statecraft, where they largely don’t. Such statecraft concerns itself in the grand strategy of national security rather than rising stocks. In that environment, banks and businesses will be first politely, and then more and more forcibly, be told ‘here’s how you can help. Here’s what we want you to be doing’.