Ray Dalio takes the rise of populism very, very seriously.

The phenomenon, which has emerged in countries including the U.K., U.S., Italy and the Philippines, will be an economic force more powerful than monetary and fiscal policies, at least for the next year, Dalio said in an 81-page paper issued Wednesday.

“We believe that populism’s role in shaping economic conditions will probably be more powerful than classic monetary and fiscal policies,” Dalio and three Bridgewater Associates colleagues wrote in a “Daily Observations” report. “We will learn a lot more over the next year or so as those populists now in office will signal how classically populist they will be and a number of elections will determine how many more populists enter office.”

Populism today is at its highest level since the late 1930’s, based on a weighted index of the share of votes received by anti-establishment parties or candidates in national elections for major developed countries, Dalio said. The report also includes an analysis of 14 populist leaders from the past, from Adolf Hitler to Hugo Chavez, without detailing those currently in office “because the stories of ones in power or possibly coming to power are still being written.”

Populism has been a key focus of Dalio’s since the surprise election of Donald Trump. On the U.S. president, Dalio said today that “while we consider Donald Trump to be a populist, we have more questions than answers about him and are using these other cases to assess him against by seeing if he follows a more archetypical path or if he deviates from it significantly."   In mid-January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dalio said it remained to be seen whether Trump was aggressive and thoughtful, or aggressive and reckless. He said then that the rise of populism threatens multinational corporations and is the biggest force in the world today.

The report today was written with Bridgewater’s Steven Kryger, Jason Rogers and Gardner Davis.

Bridgewater, based in Westport, Connecticut, oversees about $160 billion in assets. It returned 1.2 percent in its Pure Alpha II fund through February, after rising 2.4 percent last year.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.