Globalization isn’t a choice. It’s a reality-Thomas Friedman
About a decade ago, the author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a book called The World Is Flat in which he argued that globalization was upon us, driven by technology, and was not even something that we could choose any longer. Although Friedman was correct in that globalization is here to stay in the same way that indoor plumbing and electricity are here to stay (i.e. the technology that makes globalization possible isn’t going anywhere), he is likely incorrect in his implication that people won’t have anything to say about it.
In the last decades, trade has become freer and goods have flowed across borders raising living standards around the world (just as economic theory predicted). The rise in living standards had, for a time, muted concerns about the disruptive effects of globalization. While there were always losers in globalization (think manufacturing workers whose jobs were outsourced, or low skill labor that saw immigrants (legal and illegal) driving down wages), those losers were dwarfed by the number of people who saw their living standards increase. Consequently, societies in the West were willing to go along with the elites whose views were that what is good business (free trade & globalization) is good for society as a whole. That was the case that was being made, and for most Western societies, their rise in living standards seemed to confirm that.
However, since the financial crisis, the case that free trade and globalization is good for everyone doesn’t seem as obvious as it used to. Economic growth is sluggish, and unemployment, while falling, doesn’t seem to be falling fast enough for people to believe that we really are out of a recession. And given that it has been 5 years since the recession officially ended, the likelihood that we will see another one before too long is increasing. In Europe, the thing that European voters were promised when they signed on the EU, namely that it wouldn’t simply be a mechanism for Northern Europeans to subsidize Southern Europeans, appears not to have been the case. In elections, populist parties of the right and left are gaining ground as the ranks of those marginalized by globalization grows. At some point, the pressure for the elites to embrace policies that reverse some of the free trade and engage in some form of economic nationalism will become too great, and some of the economic gains that have been achieved will likely be given up.
This is not to say that we won’t still live in a globalized world when compared to say, the 1950’s & 60’s. However, many of the policies that have been adopted have disrupted the lives of ordinary people. Whether the National Front in France, Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, The UK Independence Party in England, or the Tea Party in America, people who feel marginalized by globalization are finding their voice and impacting their societies in ways that will in some way change the trajectories of those societies. While they likely won’t reverse the general economic direction of their societies, they will insure that the globalization of the future will be a modified sort relative to what we have seen up until now. The “Golden Age” of globalization may be coming to an end.