Braw offers an insightful and current account of the rise and fall of economic globalisation of the last 30-40 years. Her narrative combines a mix of research stemming from anecdotal stories, from interviews she conducted with politicians, CEOs, and students, from investigative news articles, and statistical analysis. There is a sense that the personal opinion of the interviewees weighs heavily in how the story of globalisation unfolds. However, entirely disregarding their role and contribution would miss a big part of the picture Braw successfully attempts to portray. Some of these actors were at the forefront of globalisation in the early 1990s and grasped the immense potential of bringing together markets as diverse and heterogeneous as China, Russia, and the Western world. Goodbye Globalization is not a eulogy to a dying world, but an anatomy of its faults that offers instructive lessons of how the current recalibration of geopolitical realities can, to a certain degree, fix its weak spots.
Those of us born in the last 40 years in middle to high income countries are only familiar with goods and products predominantly made in China. This is such a perverse fact of life, barely questioned, that has its foundations on our hype-integrated world. When the Chinese communist party decided to open to the world in the 1990s, it did it in its terms. US and European companies jumped on the opportunity to penetrate a huge market where basic goods could be manufactured at very low cost and then sold domestically and worldwide. The Chinese commercial laws did not favour outsiders and Intellectual Property (IP) misappropriations against Western companies were rampant. But this was a small price to pay for the benefits and the profits accumulated by accessing such a huge market. When the low skill labour products, such as clothing, became more elaborate in nature, such as electronics (especially mobile phone infrastructure and 5G Internet), IP became a forefront of collision and governments were alert to the potential risks to national security. China played a successful game of importing and exploiting the know-how of Western companies and then creating its own cheaper versions of the same products. These could then be sold in countries struggling to pay the premium applied for superior Western products and technology. The economic rise of China with its subsidised sectors of batteries, solar panels, and aluminium, has alarmed the US who is seeing its dominance diminishing. The loss of relative power puts things into perspective and brings the penultimate geopolitical power struggle into fashion.
Similarly, Russia's post-Soviet potential for a vast market to be explored and exploited was materialised only in circumstances of weak governance. Vladimir Putin's reign and domestic political consolidation that resulted in disregard (or favourable adjustment) to the rule of law rang alarm bells in many Western companies with operations in Russia. But it wasn't until the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Moscow that ruptured the honeymoon between US and European companies on the one hand, and the Russian market on the other.
Globalisation seems to be in crisis. Companies whose supply chains, logistical set up, and customer distribution markets were based on open and accessible borders found themselves in risk of either being evicted from certain countries, their operations halted, or liable for sanctions contravention or laws based on geopolitical calculations. The current imposition of tariffs and counter-tariffs has created a hostile environment for companies to navigate, not least the wars and hot spots for global commercial shipping lines. To add to this backlash from domestic markets and their consumers who are conscious about the environmental and human rights credentials of the companies and their supply chains, it seems that globalisation is undergoing a self assessment and adjustment to current realities. Regionalism and friendshoring is gaining ground in an attempt for Western countries and their companies to protect their economic dominance. Introducing new commercial and financial structures away from unfriendly countries and regimes will take time and will redefine the interconnectedness of global markets.