In short, critics of globalization argue, we were promised the “end of history” but instead got empty store shelves, authoritarian invasions, and Donald Trump—problems that the critics say only deglobalization can fix.
This clear, simple anti-globalization narrative, however, is also mostly wrong—typically taking a nugget of truth and then wildly extrapolating a goldmine underneath. Consider the following examples:
- Tariffs have surely declined around the world, but we hardly live in an age of unfettered trade, migration, and capital flows—as anyone even passingly familiar with the Jones Act, the antidumping law, or U.S. green card obstacles can attest.
- Manufacturing jobs have fallen in the United States, but they’ve followed a similar path in almost every industrialized nation in the world—including ones with active industrial and labor policies and persistent trade surpluses—and have steadily occurred despite myriad U.S. government efforts to reverse the long-term trend.
- New foreign competition (imports, immigrants, etc.) surely has disrupted certain companies and workers once protected by their governments, but it’s also boosted living standards, fostered innovation, and supported tens of millions of good jobs, including in manufacturing.
- Certain older industrial cities do indeed remain depressed following decades of trade liberalization, but far more of them—for example, former textile town Greenville, South Carolina—moved on, embraced the 21st-century global economy, and are today thriving.
- Economic interdependence raises resiliency and security issues when global or overseas shocks occur, but it also mitigates domestic shocks, discourages armed conflict, and speeds adjustment.
- And the world has surely witnessed a resurgent populism in recent years, but globalization is at most only one of this trend’s drivers and at least only an excuse for what are actually cultural, noneconomic motivations.
Critics of globalization also fail to grasp at least two core and undeniable truths about it. First, government action—tariffs, trade agreements, capital controls, visas, etc.—is only part of globalization’s story, several chapters of which were written thanks to new technologies like the shipping container or before today’s governments and political borders even existed. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “man is an animal that bargains,” as humans are unique in our ability to peacefully exchange goods and services to meet our needs and improve our lives. Globalization, therefore, is primarily a story about humanity, not soulless multinational corporations or faceless political regimes.
Second, anti-globalization champions revel in the mess and disruption that open trade and migration can produce yet ignore the only alternative to our modern globalized world—a more fragmented and static system that has been repeatedly shown to have more conflict, less freedom, and more poverty, even for those in the developed world supposedly left behind by today’s economy and especially for the developing world’s most vulnerable people.
Indeed, despite all of global capitalism’s foibles and missteps, its long-term direction and effects are undeniably positive for the human race. Since the famous 1999 anti-globalization protests in Seattle, in fact, the world has seen more than a billion people escape extreme poverty (see Figure 1), thanks in no small part to what those protesters sought to dismantle. And we’ve enjoyed similarly breathtaking improvements in child labor, inequality, and other important metrics—all as wages and employment in the United States have continued to rise.
