Dnow they are afraid. Gathered in mid-January in Davos, some big bosses displayed, behind the optimism of the facade, an anxious mine in front of what some now call the “end of globalization”. Fear, too, on the side of the editorial writers of The Economist. In its edition of January 13, the weekly, founded in 1843 precisely to defend the cause of free trade, warns the United States: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), this great plan aimed at beefing up their green industry , will trigger a “zero-sum game” that is to say a race for protectionism from which all countries will come out the losers.
It’s an observation: 1990s-style globalization – which is far from having produced only winners – is over. The one where multinationals split their value chains to the extreme to manufacture in the cheapest country, without much regard for the social and environmental conditions of production. That where liberal economists praised the specialization of States, underestimating the damage to neglected territories, forgetting that the free and perfect movement of workers does not exist – including between regions of the same country.
Is it really the end of this model that the gratin of Davos regrets? Some maybe. But many are rather trembling before the rise in geopolitical tensions that partly underlie these changes. The United States has declared technological war on China by drastically limiting its exports of electronic chips to the Middle Kingdom. It is investing heavily to develop its own semiconductor industry. Caught between these two political regimes that everything opposes, Europe wants to strengthen its autonomy by relocating certain strategic industries to its soil.
Value chains are “reregionalizing”. The economic decoupling between the United States and China, according to the idea according to which the trade pacifies mores, intensifies the risks of conflicts. But globalization alone has never prevented confrontations – witness the first world war, before which globalization was in full swing, then the second. Maintaining free trade, even by correcting its excesses, will not be enough to avoid the outbreak of hostilities between Washington and Beijing.
insoluble contradictions
In truth, it is above all doubt that worries the economic elite today. A model is dying. The next one has yet to emerge, and the transition – the one that involves rebuilding factories at home, funding adaptation to climate disorder and supporting the most vulnerable households – will be costly. Doubt, too, in the face of the partly insoluble contradictions in which we are entangled, both individually and collectively.
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