In the global race for trade dominance over the next decade, legendary American investor Ray Dalio believes the U.S. and China will battle head-to-head in technology but India could quietly become the world's fastest-growing economy.
Speaking on Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath's podcast, Dalio broke down how each of the world's three major economies, America, China, and India, might shape the future of global trade. His answer came not in GDP forecasts or stock picks, but in geopolitical strategy and infrastructure readiness.
Dalio placed the technology war at the center of future power shifts, saying, “Whoever wins the technology war will win almost everything.” The rivalry between Washington and Beijing, he said, has pushed both nations to rethink supply chains and dependencies both in capital and trade.
“We're now in a period of time of eliminate or reduce interdependencies,” Dalio noted. “Everybody's now going to kind of this independence...because I will be squeezed if I can be squeezed, it'll be used against me.”
That decoupling strategy, he explained, is reshaping how both nations operate, focusing on strategic autonomy and maximizing power. “They're both doing that. And technology will be important,” he added.
Dalio outlined a nuanced view of the current tech landscape: the U.S. leads in chip innovation, but China may be ahead in applying those technologies across society. “The inventiveness of new chips... the United States is a bit ahead,” he said. “But... to be able to integrate [AI] into life... China's ahead.”
Then came India, a wildcard with momentum. Dalio compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese reformist leader credited with launching China's economic boom in the late 20th century.
“I think that India is at a wonderful arc... and President Modi is very much like Deng Xiaoping for China,” Dalio said. He praised India's low debt, infrastructure push, and a large, talented population. “India's going to have... the best fundamentals to have the best growth rate,” he projected.
However, he cautioned that India's current global power is “more akin to where China was 30 years ago” than a peer to the U.S. or China today. Growth, he stressed, doesn't equal global clout overnight.
Still, in Dalio's long-term view, India may not dominate world trade just yet but it has the foundation to emerge as a powerhouse in the decades ahead.
