The world has seen several phases of globalisation, starting with the first migration of homo sapiens from Africa some 70,000 years ago. The last bout of globalisation began in 1870, when there was a burst of trade and human migration; that ended with World War I in 1914. In language that was a foretaste of recent years, people talked at the time of 'the annihilation of distance', before the trade and other barriers went up.
The current phase of globalisation acquired momentum in the 1980s. Trade grew twice as fast as global GDP between 1990 and 2005, reaching 30 per cent of the latter. In the same period, the stock of global foreign direct investment grew almost five times as fast as world GDP. Private, cross-border capital flows two years ago reached a stratospheric $929 billion. And people talked once again of the "death of distance".
The question today is whether this latest bout of globalisation too has ended. Certainly, one participant at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting at Davos came back this year with the clear message that the world is now a de-globalisation phase. The numbers coming out support his thesis.
The International Monetary Fund says that global trade is expected to shrink 3 per cent this year, for perhaps the first time in 60 years. The Institute of International Finance forecasts that global private capital flows will collapse by as much as 80 per cent, to $165 billion, as capital is sucked in by the big economies. American and European banks will need to re-capitalise by half a trillion dollars, just to maintain their present rate of capital adequacy, low to begin with.
Fewer people will cross national boundaries. When it comes to migrants looking for work, the US stimulus law has put curbs on the employment of people under the H1-B programme, which already has one-third of the cap that it used to. Britain has tightened its immigration rules for foreign workers, with inflows expected to drop 10 per cent; low-skilled workers from outside Europe have been banned. As for tourist traffic, Thailand as a bellwether destination expects a 20 per cent drop this year.
With less trade, reduced capital mobility and fewer people crossing borders, three key elements of globalisation have been reversed; the only one that remains is the mobility of technology - which no one has measured yet to see what is happening.
This reversal could be a passing phase, of course. After all, the structure that brought in trade globalisation is still in place - large companies have integrated production globally, tariffs in the developing countries have dropped by two-thirds since 1983, transport costs are low, and innovation continues to create the scope for new trade.
But the incipient signs of protectionism are everywhere (including in India, which has moved against Chinese toys and aluminium). The existing structures could conceivably begin to give way if the downturn gets long and deep enough.
The US economy is expected to shrink 1.6 per cent this year, and the eurozone's by 2 per cent. Japan's is shrinking at the astonishing annual rate of 12.7 per cent. These trends will result in the loss of 51 million jobs this year (says the International Labour Organisation); imagine millions of migrant Indian workers in the Gulf returning home.
Countries like China which have enjoyed export-led growth will be hit hard. States like Singapore, which built their prosperity on the back of the global movement of goods, money and people, are in shock. And so, once more, India might benefit from not having globalised as much as the others. As the old company ad line said, "the best means of growth come from within".
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