How is globalization coming along? This used to be a common topic of conversation, but ever since the COVID pandemic you might think globalization was nothing but a naive dream of 20th century economists that faded away and was then smashed to bits by Donald Trump and his tariffs.
But no. The KOF Swiss Economic Institute has been tracking globalization for years, and they report that outside of the US it's doing fine:
Since 2017 the KOF trade globalization index has fallen 5% in the US but has continued to grow 3% in the rest of the developed world.
And it's not just narrow trade globalization that's getting stronger. Here's their assessment of economic globalization more generally:
Note that the US isn't even among the top 20 countries. We're laggards, and you can't judge the success of globalization solely through the lens of American politics.
KOF also gauges things like social globalization and political globalization. The story there is the same: strong continuing growth but without the US in the lead. This might come as a surprise to an American public that long ago revolted against trade treaties and imports from China, but that's a purely parochial view. Globalization ticked down very slightly and very briefly during the pandemic, but that's it. It's still a big story of the 21st century.
Shorter KD: the nativist rhetoric on US participation in globalization does not match the data; to the contrary, we're one of the least open countries to global trade.
I'd like to know how that index is created. Looking at the country's with high levels of "globalisation", they have one thing in common - with the interesting exception of the UK, they are small (at least in population), and many are in Europe (so part of a free trade area). This doesn't seem surprising to me at all. If you make trade an inverse function of distance, then the likelihood that trade is international rather than domestic is much greater for smaller countries. I think this is just another example of trying to measure something that is inherently difficult to measure, and giving too much credence to the metric. Changes of course may be more meaningful, but may still have measurement issues.
Yep. See my comment below.
Any discussion of globalization should consider the size of the domestic US market.
Edited to add: similar to what Jim B 55 says above.
This is probably more a story of the rise of formerly backward countries than any triumph of economic globalization theory or politics. A lot of countries which were devastated in WW II recovered and joined the world economy and the end of isolation of China was a major event. The former "Republics" of the USSR also joined the world economy.
Some of the smaller countries had no choice but to participate in world markets if they wanted to grow. The US has always been one of the more self-sufficient countries, and its reliance on world trade will always be less than that of those smaller countries.
Globalization hasn't really been as advertised. War all over despite it all.
Israel doing genocide today... attacking a hospital full of wounded HAMAS terrorists. Or just people. Thanks genocide Joe!
Russians shot down another airliner. Hilarious.
Russians cutting sea floor cables in the Baltic again.
Russians bombing Ukraine daily.
North Koreans helping Russians in Ukraine and, hopefully, getting slaughtered in the process.
Nigerian women enslaved in Iraq! Go figure.
War and famine in Sudan... again.
More bombing in Yemen just now after a round yesterday.
Dec 27 - Hackers have compromised several different companies' Chrome browser extensions in a series of intrusions dating back to mid-December, according to one of the victims and experts who have examined the campaign.
Globalization is hard at work bringing violence and hatred with all those refugees and immigrants!
The world is an extremely imperfect place. However, I don't see the connection between globalization and violence and hatred. We've had violence and hatred as long as humanity has existed.
A simple measure of globalization would be value of all international trade divided by gross world product. Rising globalization should see that fraction growing; falling globalization should see that fraction shrinking