Tariffs: Is the world watching globalization fall apart?

'Slowbalization' today echoes the reversal of a century ago and its survival may depend on the internet now

- ATANU BISWAS

In response to US tariffs, in early April, the UK prime minister's office declared, "The world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era." But are US President Donald Trump's trade war and immigration policies the only reasons for the collapse of globalization, if at all? French economist Thomas Piketty argues that Trumpism is "a reaction to the failure of Reaganism." Republicans, he holds, have realized that globalization and economic liberalism haven't benefitted the middle class.

But today's anti-global moment didn't start in 2024. As perceived by Tara Zahra, a history professor at the University of Chicago, when thousands of protestors marched in Seattle in 1999 to oppose the World Trade Organization summit, it was an early sign of a backlash against globalization.

The 2008 global economic crisis didn't trigger another Great Depression, but it destroyed livelihoods, undermined people's trust in the stability and justice of global capitalism and aided anti-global populists in winning elections across the globe. Indeed, a 2023 International Monetary Fund paper revealed that in the 15 years since the 2008 global financial crisis, globalization plateaued. Its modest growth is frequently referred to as 'slowbalization'.