Globalisation through the years

Today we further explore how credible is the argument that globalisation is at an end? The re-emergence of a more assertive and nationalist xenophobic racism in Anglo- America seem to suggest there is an ideological change to post-war globalisation.

Brexit threatens the European Union, the standard of regional integration and supranationalism that complemented globalisation.

However, any consideration that globalisation is at an end is premature. We need to make a distinction between globalisation as a process, and globalisation as a condition.

As a process, it involves the deepening and widening of societal interconnection through flows of trade, capital, and labour; it seems that globalization, as a process, has hit a wall. In a previous time, protectionist language, growing nationalism and flat line growth seemed to indicate that the unfolding of globalising processes has slowed.

However, as a condition, globalisation remains just as prescient as ever. Not even the most ardent nationalist or protectionist could practically unravel a major capitalist state from the web of globalised interdependencies. At least not without causing enormous shortterm costs to their society.

Maybe the process of globalisation has slowed, certainly it is not dead, nor is there any potential ‘de-globalisation’.

Globalisation has a long history, with radical interruptions, reversals, and recalibrations.

After the interruption of fascism and World War II, liberalism and globalisation resurfaced, but now under the patronage of American leadership.

This new chapter of ‘embedded liberalism’, enshrined at Bretton Woods, joined the international openness of classical liberalism with an assurance to insulate domestic societies from the full force of international economic pressures. This was a concession to balance the need for international trade and economic growth with the maintenance of welfare provision and full employment.

A ‘neoliberal’ form of globalising development of the last 40 years, has experienced the domestic welfarist’s chains of embedded liberalism removed. Public service provision was reduced, free trade was deepened through the World Trade Organisation, and there was the imposition of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on the developing world. Global capital flows quickly increased as constricting regulations were liberalised.

The common refrain that underpins all of the historical periods of globalisation is sovereignty and the state.

However, globalisation has changed. It has a proclivity to encourage recurrences of sovereignty to convey it towards popular or elite rudiments.

Globalisation always faces obstacles and setbacks, breaks and the contradictory cohabitation of alternative types and principles of social organisation.

We are not experiencing the end of globalisation, but its recalibration and redefinition brought on by different types of national sovereignty.

We are seeing the advent of a toxic ‘national liberalism’, a type that delivers a sustained pledge to globalisation, with a progressively racist, exclusionary and xenophobic conversation. It has originated from the conditions associated with social alienation, spatialised inequality, intensified global competition and carved out of popular sovereignty. It endangers respect for other human beings and the pledge to maintain the broad integrity of democratic rights and freedoms.

Nascent national liberalism mainly keeps a promise to free trade and free capital flows.

It differs in its progressively more racist and xenophobic approach to controlling migratory flows – another key feature of globalisation. In both Britain and the US, national liberalism attempts to repair and placate national sovereignty by focusing on migrants as a deviant element of modern globalization, making it necessary for sovereign control.

Globalisation’s incipient, toxic, national liberalism, is no less complex or contradictory than its previous forms.

Xenophobia and other types of bigotry were always there, but they have now taken on a more conspicuous role.

Where does all of this leave us? Whether Globalisation is not going anywhere is left to be seen. We in this country have to prepare for any eventuality. At best, free trade is not disturbed.

It is the alternative scenario that requires preparation for, in which we have not done a good job in the past. This alternative sees a world in which protectionism and tariffs play a much bigger role than in the last two decades. It appears that countries will be prepared to use a variety of strategies to secure an advantageous position.

We need to prepare our trade data; getting the Central Statistical Office operating efficiently is critical here. Most important are the various types of models and analyses that must be prepared to allow us to present affirmative positions.

Models such as gravity, Computable General Equilibrium (“CGE”) or macro econometric models require time and resources to build and to get results. The universities, Ministry of Trade, Central Bank and other agencies must coordinate their resources and effort to assist in developing country positions. Questions such as our position on trade in services including financial services must be developed.

Developing a negotiating grouping with resources is critical, perhaps a review of the use of the regional negotiating machine at the time when former Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, and Sir Alister Mcintyre, former Caricom Secretary General, were involved, may be useful.