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Speaking on the sidelines of the Indiaspora Forum 2026 in Bengaluru on Monday, Harvard economics professor and former IMF first deputy managing director Gita Gopinath warned that geopolitics is now a permanent, transformative force in global policy. Gopinath noted that the world is shifting away from the post-Cold War era toward a landscape defined by ‘de-risking’ and defence.“Countries are increasingly building up defence capacities and securing supply chains to insource essential inputs like semiconductors and rare earths,” Gopinath explained, citing the Iran conflict as a primary catalyst. “This is a transformational change; it is no longer the world we were used to.”
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Gopinath, who is a leading global voice on trade and investment, feels that some of change was going to happen and there will be no going back. “There has been some dissatisfaction with the global trading system for a little while now. There is dissatisfaction with what happened during the pandemic with countries that couldn’t get supplies when they were relying on imports. All of that has naturally led us to where we are,” she said. And now she feels that it is important to take a hard look at international organisations and see what changes need to be made in the context of global trade. “There are people who complain about job losses at home because of trade, and also the fact that it’s not a level playing field. It’s time to see what could a better rules-based order look like,” she said. But whether that will happen or is up in the air, in her opinion.
