Ever
since US presidential candidates railed against free trade, and
anti-immigrant parties made sweeping gains in Europe, the question has
been asked: are we witnessing the demise of globalisation?
A trend that has dominated economics and trade for decades appears to
be coming to an end. As a percentage of global GDP, world exports, which
have been on a slow steady decline in the past two years, have peaked. Fines on multinationals have reached record levels.
China’s breakneck industrialisation is probably over. Britain, a nation
famous for building its empire on trade, will exit the world’s biggest
free-trade area – Europe – by the end of this decade.
Donald Trump, an
opponent of free-trade deals all his public life, is about to become
president of the United States. These signs point to the slow death of the form of globalisation
that the rich world has invented, refined and patrolled since the end
of the second world war. For many, the period from 1980 to 2008 marks
the high-water mark of such policies – a period that came to an end with
global financial crisis. There is a worry that these years resemble the
previously most integrated period of world history: the Gilded Age
between 1870 and 1914. This ended bloodily with the first world war.
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