Filippo Gaddo, SPE Councillor, held a discussion with Agathe Demarais, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Demarais is the author of “Backfire”, a book on the global ripple effects of sanctions and export controls and is a regular columnist for Foreign Policy and a frequent commentator for the media.

Geopolitics has risen to prominence in the news for a while and it is now influencing the way we look at international economics. Filippo and Agathe discuss what 'Geo-economics' is and what are the geopolitical trends that will affect the global economy in 2025 and beyond.

Agathe outline three pillars to understand Geoeconomics: the landscape - what are the big geopolitical trends around ‘fragmentation’ and the intersection of geopolitics and the macroeconomy; the strategy – what are the policies and the strategies implemented by countries to manage their relationship; and finally, the tools of economic statecraft, sanctions, tariffs, export controls. In particular – building on the work outlined in her book ‘Backfire’ – Agathe looks at the success or failure of previous episodes when sanctions and export controls where used and what we can learn from them.

The conversation also touches on the politics of the recently installed Trump administration and how Europe could and should respond to it. As Agathe mentioned, Geoeconomics will remain a buzzword throughout the year and so it is great to bring a framework to interpret it to the SPE audience.

Agathe Demarais is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Her areas of interest include the global economy, geopolitics, and sanctions. She heads ECFR’s geoeconomics initiative and co-leads ECFR’s Re-Order project, exploring emerging visions of the global order, as well as the interplay between economic might and geopolitical influence.

Before joining ECFR, Demarais was the global forecasting director of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of The Economist. She led the EIU’s global economic and geopolitical analysis, with a particular focus on trade developments, emerging markets, and economic statecraft. Her essays have appeared in The Economist, The Times, Foreign Affairs, Politico, Le Grand Continent, the Journal of Democracy, and World Politics Review. Demarais holds master’s degrees from Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright scholar.