Billionaire Ray Dalio, assessing the impact of President Donald Trump’s surprise election, warned that global populism will be an economic force more powerful than monetary and fiscal policies over the next year. We have seen similar forces at play in India’s recent election as well. In an 81-page paper published Wednesday that details the history of populists in 10 countries from Franklin Roosevelt to Hugo Chavez, Dalio analyzed the phenomenon to make sense of today’s current political environment. “We believe that populism’s role in shaping economic conditions will probably be more powerful than classic monetary and fiscal policies. “We will learn a lot more over the next year or so as those populists now in office will signal how classically populist they will be and a number of elections will determine how many more populists enter office.”Populism today is at its highest level since the late 1930s, said Dalio, 67. Bridgewater notes that populism is commonly brought about by gaps in wealth and opportunity, as well as xenophobia and frustration with government inefficiencies. Those factors lead to the emergence of a strong leader to serve the common man, as well as protectionism, nationalism, militarism, conflict and greater attempts to influence and control the media. Populism has been a key focus of Dalio’s in recent months, as it’s emerged in countries including the U.S., U.K., Italy and the Philippines. In mid-January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said that the rise of populism threatens multinational corporations and is the biggest force in the world today.
