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The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World
A Financial Times Book of the Year
'Simultaneously panoramic and telescopic' Daniel Markovitz
'A penetrating analysis from the world’s foremost authority on economic inequality’ Peter Turchin
'More than anyone alive, Branko Milanovic was likely to propound a grand theory of our perplexing global moment... With brilliance, panache, and reliability, he has done it' Samuel Moyn
Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake?
Drawing on original research, leading economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point. In The Great Global Transformation, Milanovic provides an invaluable guide to the new 21st century.
'A must read for anyone concerned about the future of the world order' Gordon Brown
'Everyone who wants to understand these titanic changes must read this book' Martin Jacques
'Simultaneously panoramic and telescopic' Daniel Markovitz
'A penetrating analysis from the world’s foremost authority on economic inequality’ Peter Turchin
'More than anyone alive, Branko Milanovic was likely to propound a grand theory of our perplexing global moment... With brilliance, panache, and reliability, he has done it' Samuel Moyn
Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake?
Drawing on original research, leading economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point. In The Great Global Transformation, Milanovic provides an invaluable guide to the new 21st century.
'A must read for anyone concerned about the future of the world order' Gordon Brown
'Everyone who wants to understand these titanic changes must read this book' Martin Jacques
269 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 6, 2025
22 people are currently reading
505 people want to read
About the author
Branko Milanović
25 books258 followersBranko Milanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Бранко Милановић, IPA: [brǎːŋko mǐlanoʋitɕ; milǎːn-]) is a Serbian-American economist. He is most known for his work on income distribution and inequality. Since January 2014, he is a visiting presidential professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and an affiliated senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). He also teaches at the London School of Economics and the Barcelona Institute for International Studies. In 2019 he has been appointed the honorary Maddison Chair at the University of Groningen.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 13, 2025
*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
The Great Global Transformation details the fall of global neoliberalism with economic sanctions, tariff wars, anti-immigration, nationalism and the far right becoming the new normal. This book explains how the rising power of Asia particularly China is creating a new ‘middle class’ which has displaced the jobs of the ‘middle class’ in America. This book discusses national market liberalism, international trade and the elites focusing on America and China with some really interesting information about the Communist Party of China.
I found this book to be very informative and generally interesting. It did require me to be focused because a lot of this was complex information. This had original research from the author and had graphs and tables to illustrate points. I really enjoyed learning about the situation with America and China especially the information on the CPC. I would recommend this for any people interested in this topic and I actually think this is a good book to read after reading Capitalism and it’s Critics by John Cassidy.
The Great Global Transformation details the fall of global neoliberalism with economic sanctions, tariff wars, anti-immigration, nationalism and the far right becoming the new normal. This book explains how the rising power of Asia particularly China is creating a new ‘middle class’ which has displaced the jobs of the ‘middle class’ in America. This book discusses national market liberalism, international trade and the elites focusing on America and China with some really interesting information about the Communist Party of China.
I found this book to be very informative and generally interesting. It did require me to be focused because a lot of this was complex information. This had original research from the author and had graphs and tables to illustrate points. I really enjoyed learning about the situation with America and China especially the information on the CPC. I would recommend this for any people interested in this topic and I actually think this is a good book to read after reading Capitalism and it’s Critics by John Cassidy.
January 7, 2026
This book by Serbian-American economist Brank Milanovic is the best analysis I have read on the vaccuum in the global political economy we face with the end of the global neoliberal era and the unipolar world under a once benign American hegemon.
Milanovic's title 'The Great Global Transformation' echoes that of a similar epochal book, 'The Great Transformation', by Hungarian political economist Karl Polayni which appeared just towards the end of World War II in 1944, the same year that Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' was published.
Directly contradicting the highly influential Hayek (Thatcher's inspiration), Polanyi's book was prescient in its warning of the destructive nature of the self-regulating market economy, which he saw as a state-imposed transformation that would have devastating social and environmental costs.
Writing 80 years onward, Milanovic looks at the wreckage wrought by neoliberalism and what might come next, a glimpse of which we are already seeing in the second Trump administration's return to 19th century power politics and a multipolar world.
Milanovic cites two factors as bringing to an end the US-led post-Cold War neoliberal era - firstly, China's entry to the World Trade Organisation in 1999, which challenged Western supremacy, and, secondly, the 2008 global financial crisis which delegitimised the elites created by globalisation.
In the inevitable backlash, epitomised by Trump and a global trend toward populism and nationalism, we see a new politics - not of leftist revolt or the reintroduction of highly successful post World War II social democracy - but of national market liberalism in a multipolar world.
"The rise of China has created geopolitical tensions because the global neoliberal order is hierarchically structured and cannot easily accept a country as big and potentially powerful as China," Milanovic writes. "This has led to the reversal of globalization."
"But the rise of Asia has also displaced many people in the ‘political West’ from their global income positions, reinforced the gap between the educated well-to-do and the rest of the population within Western countries, and created a state of incipient political unrest."
Traditional media does not really get how big a transformation China on its own has made to the world we lived in during the 1980s and 1990s. Back in 1974, China produced just 2% of global output. By 2022, this had exploded to 22%. As a result, China is now the world's biggest economy, adjusted for exchange rates, and is continuing to outpace a rapidly deteriorating US economy on just about every measure, including AI and the energy transition.
In the meantime, the Western middle classes, who enjoyed all the benefits of industrialisation for more than a century and a half, are now in rapid relative decline. And this convergence between the old West and the rest is why we are seeing populist parties of the right so ascendant.
Quoting the work of the great work of early 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter (the man who invented the term 'creative destruction'), Milanovic questions the the standard claim in economics that 'free trade' necessarily lowers the possibility of global conflict.
The Adam Smith view in which small traders compete in a crowded market has been replaced by a world of monopoly capital. Here, the Googles, Amazons and Apples export capital to other countries and try to control cheap labour and resources there. But in doing so they run into conflict with other monopolised national capitalism (like China's state-owned enterprises).
The result is intense imperialist competition, a grab for land and resources (Putin in Ukraine, Xi in Taiwan, Trump in Venezuela), a breakdown of international law and the rising possibility of geopolitical military conflict. In the meantime, western elites have soured on globalisation.
This explains Trump's Liberation Day tariffs and the 'Make America Great Again' movement. It explains why the US is going it alone and leaving its European allies to themselves to deal with Putin's aggression in Ukraine. And it explains why the populist revolt against 'the elites' has been confined to a backlash against globalisation and cosmopolitanism. The rich aren't ready to give up their bounty just yet, so are using culture wars and nationalism to suck the state dry.
"There were two possible responses to the ‘China challenge’ to the Western middle classes," Milanovic writes. "One was to change the rules of globalisation so that it no longer hollows out Western middle classes; the other was to improve the income position of the middle by taxing more the domestic rich and redistributing income from the top to the middle. "
But Trump decided on the first. A trade war with China was the easier option because this kept the rich donors on his team, while giving the disgruntled MAGA lower middle class the illusory carrot of getting back their old rustbelt jobs "stolen" by China.
The result of all this is that 'liberal democracies' no longer believe in the Rawlsian definition of liberalism. Respect for social justice or the rule of law or freedom of expression and identify have been abandoned, as have free trade and migration. The 'end of history' theory, propounded by theorist Francis Fukyama in 1989, has been shown to be hopelessly naive and simplistic. Instead we see a range of successful systems such as Hungary's illiberal democracy or China's authoritarian capitalist state. As Milanovic observes, we have entered the period of the struggle for multipolarity.
As to what replaces the old concept of neoliberalism in a unipolar world, Milanovic cites 'national market liberalism' for a multipolar world. Trump, Putin and Xi each benefited from the old system but now they use the rebellion against the elites that globalism created to cement their own power in their own hemipsheres, while the US and Europe will focus on neoliberalism at home.
"Global neoliberal hegemony may be terminally weakened, but the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, especially in the economic sphere domestically, may be preserved," he writes.
What is gone in the new multipolar world is the hegemony of the 'Washington Consensus' of free trade, an absence of government deficits, outsourcing, deregulation and privatisation. In its place are traiff wars, sanctions, trade blocs, governments 'investing' in companies like Intel, immigration curbs, and nationalist and chauvinist culture wars.
What remains in national market liberalism is low taxation of high incomes and inheritances, tax preferences given to income from capital over income from labour, more deregulation, more limits on state spending and increasing attacks on areas like affirmative action and gender fluidity.
It is a deeply cynical, selfish and retrograde development in world history, one that if one reads Milanovic's arguments closely, is likely to end very badly indeed.
Milanovic's title 'The Great Global Transformation' echoes that of a similar epochal book, 'The Great Transformation', by Hungarian political economist Karl Polayni which appeared just towards the end of World War II in 1944, the same year that Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' was published.
Directly contradicting the highly influential Hayek (Thatcher's inspiration), Polanyi's book was prescient in its warning of the destructive nature of the self-regulating market economy, which he saw as a state-imposed transformation that would have devastating social and environmental costs.
Writing 80 years onward, Milanovic looks at the wreckage wrought by neoliberalism and what might come next, a glimpse of which we are already seeing in the second Trump administration's return to 19th century power politics and a multipolar world.
Milanovic cites two factors as bringing to an end the US-led post-Cold War neoliberal era - firstly, China's entry to the World Trade Organisation in 1999, which challenged Western supremacy, and, secondly, the 2008 global financial crisis which delegitimised the elites created by globalisation.
In the inevitable backlash, epitomised by Trump and a global trend toward populism and nationalism, we see a new politics - not of leftist revolt or the reintroduction of highly successful post World War II social democracy - but of national market liberalism in a multipolar world.
"The rise of China has created geopolitical tensions because the global neoliberal order is hierarchically structured and cannot easily accept a country as big and potentially powerful as China," Milanovic writes. "This has led to the reversal of globalization."
"But the rise of Asia has also displaced many people in the ‘political West’ from their global income positions, reinforced the gap between the educated well-to-do and the rest of the population within Western countries, and created a state of incipient political unrest."
Traditional media does not really get how big a transformation China on its own has made to the world we lived in during the 1980s and 1990s. Back in 1974, China produced just 2% of global output. By 2022, this had exploded to 22%. As a result, China is now the world's biggest economy, adjusted for exchange rates, and is continuing to outpace a rapidly deteriorating US economy on just about every measure, including AI and the energy transition.
In the meantime, the Western middle classes, who enjoyed all the benefits of industrialisation for more than a century and a half, are now in rapid relative decline. And this convergence between the old West and the rest is why we are seeing populist parties of the right so ascendant.
Quoting the work of the great work of early 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter (the man who invented the term 'creative destruction'), Milanovic questions the the standard claim in economics that 'free trade' necessarily lowers the possibility of global conflict.
The Adam Smith view in which small traders compete in a crowded market has been replaced by a world of monopoly capital. Here, the Googles, Amazons and Apples export capital to other countries and try to control cheap labour and resources there. But in doing so they run into conflict with other monopolised national capitalism (like China's state-owned enterprises).
The result is intense imperialist competition, a grab for land and resources (Putin in Ukraine, Xi in Taiwan, Trump in Venezuela), a breakdown of international law and the rising possibility of geopolitical military conflict. In the meantime, western elites have soured on globalisation.
This explains Trump's Liberation Day tariffs and the 'Make America Great Again' movement. It explains why the US is going it alone and leaving its European allies to themselves to deal with Putin's aggression in Ukraine. And it explains why the populist revolt against 'the elites' has been confined to a backlash against globalisation and cosmopolitanism. The rich aren't ready to give up their bounty just yet, so are using culture wars and nationalism to suck the state dry.
"There were two possible responses to the ‘China challenge’ to the Western middle classes," Milanovic writes. "One was to change the rules of globalisation so that it no longer hollows out Western middle classes; the other was to improve the income position of the middle by taxing more the domestic rich and redistributing income from the top to the middle. "
But Trump decided on the first. A trade war with China was the easier option because this kept the rich donors on his team, while giving the disgruntled MAGA lower middle class the illusory carrot of getting back their old rustbelt jobs "stolen" by China.
The result of all this is that 'liberal democracies' no longer believe in the Rawlsian definition of liberalism. Respect for social justice or the rule of law or freedom of expression and identify have been abandoned, as have free trade and migration. The 'end of history' theory, propounded by theorist Francis Fukyama in 1989, has been shown to be hopelessly naive and simplistic. Instead we see a range of successful systems such as Hungary's illiberal democracy or China's authoritarian capitalist state. As Milanovic observes, we have entered the period of the struggle for multipolarity.
As to what replaces the old concept of neoliberalism in a unipolar world, Milanovic cites 'national market liberalism' for a multipolar world. Trump, Putin and Xi each benefited from the old system but now they use the rebellion against the elites that globalism created to cement their own power in their own hemipsheres, while the US and Europe will focus on neoliberalism at home.
"Global neoliberal hegemony may be terminally weakened, but the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, especially in the economic sphere domestically, may be preserved," he writes.
What is gone in the new multipolar world is the hegemony of the 'Washington Consensus' of free trade, an absence of government deficits, outsourcing, deregulation and privatisation. In its place are traiff wars, sanctions, trade blocs, governments 'investing' in companies like Intel, immigration curbs, and nationalist and chauvinist culture wars.
What remains in national market liberalism is low taxation of high incomes and inheritances, tax preferences given to income from capital over income from labour, more deregulation, more limits on state spending and increasing attacks on areas like affirmative action and gender fluidity.
It is a deeply cynical, selfish and retrograde development in world history, one that if one reads Milanovic's arguments closely, is likely to end very badly indeed.
December 5, 2025
Readable for a non-economist and extremely thought-provoking. Way beyond the simplistic
December 29, 2025
Very insightful and more importantly, readable. The observation of the homoploutic elite is interesting, as well as the analysis of the role of China, Trump, and the eponymous move towards national market liberalism and what that means.
Listened to Branko Milanovic’s Downstream interview with Novara before reading which was very interesting.
Listened to Branko Milanovic’s Downstream interview with Novara before reading which was very interesting.
December 10, 2025
This book is so good and important, if I could give 10 stars, I would. The way he explains and makes the connections between events/developments using language that is perfectly chosen. Our world is complex and Branko Milanovic never simplify at a cost of truth but manages to transmit complex connections to non economists. I got very hooked by the explanation of homoploutia.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews