Countries need to stop viewing global trade as a zero-sum game where they can benefit by undermining their partners, the president of the World Economic Forum told CGTN.

Borge Brende, a former foreign minister of Norway, said that the world appeared to have failed to learn the lessons of the past three decades when increasing cooperation underpinned an economic boom.

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"We are in a win-win world and a not a zero sum game and we should not have this 'beggar thy neighbor' approach," he said. "We have an approach that has worked so well during three decades: it's 'prosper thy neighbor.' That should be the recipe."

Brende said opening up of economies and lifting of trade barriers had quadrupled the value of global commerce; that, in turn, has doubled the world's GDP and reduced poverty from 40% of the population to 10%.

One crucial area of concern as the world faces the challenges of surging inflation, conflict in Ukraine and the ongoing impact of the pandemic, is relations between China and the U.S., which together account for half of the global economy.

"We do hope that there can be increased trade again between China and the U.S. and that there will not be a decoupling between these two economies," Brende said. 

Geopolitics and business

Speaking in a separate interview with CGTN, Brende's colleague Saadia Zahidi said the impact of political alliances on business decision-making was already creating threats to the world by weakening supply chains. That has contributed to the looming food crisis facing many nations, she indicated.

"What we found is that clearly multinationals are now starting to think very differently about how they're going to take decisions, and they're starting to make those decisions based on geopolitical alliances rather than simply based on efficiency and resilience," she said, adding: "It is absolutely critical for leaders to cooperate, to collaborate."