A decade ago, economic diplomacy meant trade missions, investment forums, memoranda of understanding, and polite references to globalization’s unstoppable logic. That world is gone. Today, economic diplomacy sits inside a harder frame: economic security. Trade is no longer just about growth — it is about resilience. Investment is not just about capital — it is about control, technology transfer, and supply-chain leverage. Diplomacy is no longer separate from industrial policy, critical minerals, export controls, or cybersecurity.
The numbers confirm what executives already feel. In the 2025 CEO Agenda survey by Oliver Wyman Forum, 89% of CEOs rated geopolitics, trade policies, tariffs, and industrial policy as a risk to their company — up 20 percentage points from the year before, the single biggest jump of any risk category. McKinsey’s most recent chief economists survey found that geopolitical instability now outranks macroeconomic volatility, cybersecurity, and even technological disruption as the chief risk to growth. We are living through a structural upgrade in how states use economics as power. The best performers — states and companies alike — have already adapted. The question is whether your organization has.
