Staying principled in a complex world
Published 28 January 2025
The Hinrich Foundation hosted Singapore’s Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Secretary for Law Luke Goh to a closed-door roundtable on navigating an increasingly complex world, co-organized with the Singapore Business Circle last week. It explored the many policy tradeoffs between pragmatism and principle in an age of geopolitical uncertainty.
The Hinrich Foundation and the Singapore Business Circle (SBC) co-organized a roundtable discussion on 24 January, 2025, headlined by Singapore’s Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Secretary for Law Luke Goh. The roundtable explored how Singapore should navigate an increasingly complex world in a principled way. Bill Foo, Chairman of SBC, and Chuin Wei Yap, the Foundation’s research director, co-moderated the discussion.
Mr. Goh’s keynote remarks highlighted the greater challenges Singapore faces amid segmented supply chains, a reversal of global emphasis on comparative advantage, a tendency toward higher inflation, and less global capacity to absorb disruptions. There is a greater need for Singapore to stay principled, build partnerships, and uphold the international rule of law, especially in advancing multilateral institutions and the need for workable international dispute settlement mechanisms, he said.
The roundtable exchanged perspectives and ideas on current developments in global tariffs, the new Trump administration, the World Trade Organization, data centers and technology, Great Power relations, and global geopolitics.
Our distinguished guests included senior executives from Nvidia, Kenon Holdings, Granite Asia, the Singapore Business Federation, and others.
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