Should-Read: Martin Sandbu: Globalisation Will Survive

Should-Read: Martin Sandbu: Globalisation Will Survive: “The emerging world has both a deep interest in keeping globalisation going and greater power to defend it than ever before…

…Erecting trade barriers between the US and Mexico is like building a wall in the middle of a factory floor. it would not make domestic industry more competitive. The same goes for the UK leaving the single market…. Anti-globalism cannot deliver: globalisation bears little of the blame for the west’s economic problems…. Just as agriculture feeds entire populations while employing only a tiny fraction of its workers, so manufacturing work will keep shrinking. The remaining jobs will be high-skilled, managing advanced machinery…. Blue-collar jobs… are not coming back…

On Globalization and Trade

Emerging Markets Want Globalization:

• Globalisation has boosted emerging economies.
  • Trade helped lift more than 1bn people out of extreme poverty.
• The emerging world has:
  • a deep interest in keeping globalisation going
  • greater power to defend it
  • will fiercely contest a return to protectionism.

International Trade Today:

• Driven by knowledge flows.
• Consists of cross-border supply chains.
• Richard Baldwin: “erecting trade barriers between the US and Mexico is like building a wall in the middle of a factory floor”.
  • It would not make domestic industry more competitive.

Anti-Globalism:

• Cannot deliver
• The shrivelling need for manufacturing workers is the price of success at boosting manufacturing productivity.
• Anti-globalists who promise to bring back factories are selling snake oil