The Political Flashpoints to Watch in 2019

The world is changing fast and 2019 promises to be another bewildering and chaotic year. The rise of China in the East and populists in the West means that, by mid-2018, economies run by mainstream democratic parties accounted for just a third of the combined gross domestic product of the Group of 20 nations, down from 83 percent in 2007, according to Bloomberg Economics. And that was before the election of two more populist presidents, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

“In 20 years I haven’t operated in an environment like this, ever, because there were always safe havens before. Countries we thought easy to predict are becoming harder to read now,” says Claire Simpson, global claims director at Willis Tower Watson Plc, a global risk advisory and insurance company.