Is It A Wrap For Globalization

 Growing up in the 1990s, all we heard about were the benefits of globalization: it eliminated the inefficiencies of locally produced goods, boosted economic output, increased consumer choice, and improved general welfare of the populace; in other words, it was the cure-all for international trade.

In retrospect, it seems perfectly logical given the current global situation: there was a renewed joy at the fall of communism, and for a while, it appeared that neoliberal policies would govern the world unopposed. There was no reason for capital to stay stuck inside the borders of any one country and not seek higher returns elsewhere in the world because all economies were convergent to comparable structures as more and more economies deregulated, making international trade ever more straightforward.

However, today's discussions about the benefits of globalization are likely to be much more contentious. Even while low-wage earners in the first world had long been disgruntled about the claimed export of their jobs, the topic didn't become a political rallying cry until the 2016 US presidential election, and even then, it was dismissed as rightist propaganda and scare tactics. However, following a pandemic and the start of a war in Europe, opposition to the current system of international commerce is growing in popularity, and President Biden's Trans-Pacific Partnership framework is evidence of this shift in perspective.

In an effort to meet its rapidly increasing domestic demand for such products, China, the factory of the world, banned the export of personal protective equipment at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. Understandably, the nations who mainly relied on imports of such paraphernalia were angry and rushed to support local production.



However, the PPE shortages were only a harbinger of what was to come for global trade as many more shortages were to emerge as the supply chains clogged under the weight of lock-down procedures. Semiconductor chips are likely the most well-known; there is a tone of research and reporting on their aftereffects in a variety of industries, particularly in the automobile industry.

The pandemic's consequences are still being felt, but the war in Europe dealt the world's commerce another devastating blow. Food and fuel are the in question commodities this time: Pakistan itself imported grain from both Russia and Ukraine, but given the ongoing conflict, it's possible that exporting grain to other nations isn't as high on each of these nations' concerns as one might think. Again, to eliminate any possibility of internal food shortages, many nations resorted to outright outlawing the export of food products. A request to wean Western European countries off of Russian petroleum, which in the pre-war era would have sounded xenophobic but under current circumstances has become a moral imperative, is coming under increasing criticism.

Is it a transient phase for these changes in global trade patterns, or will they permanently change how the global economy is structured? Would we see the emergence of a more segmented than uniform global trading regime?



The dual threat of sickness and war may cause trade relations between nations to be handled with much greater prudence, and the ideologies of your trading partners may start to matter more and more. However, this heightened vigilance would likely fade as the generation that has personally experienced these outbreaks begins to age out of the working class, in 2 or 3 decades from now, and the following generations would hopefully write their rules anew, unencumbered by the fatigue of our memories.


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