It’s not easy to keep track of the times. By which I mean to really understand how observable trends wrestle against or fortify observable constraints. The difficulty is only compounded as time goes on, since long experience embeds in you assumptions you no longer question.
So I need to understand and critique those long-standing articles of faith which have served so well up to now. This piece is about one of them. The conclusion it reaches is very simple, but very powerful: we no longer live in a world of endlessly globalizing trade flows. There are many reasons for this, some overtly political, but other reasons are wrapped up in institutional and bureaucractic practice bending to long-evolving demographic certainties.
The change towards decelerating globalization is historically rare. But it poses challenges for investment strategies, and for economic policymakers everywhere. My guess is that there will be plenty of people, like me, who grew up in a rapidly globalizing world, and who operate on that assumption. After that comes the even harder work of figuring out ‘what next’.
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