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The future of globalization
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to get us kicked off this Monday morning. I thought I'd go a little macro today and talk about the future of globalization, because I hear so many people talking about the last 30 years of being this unprecedented period of goods and services and people and ideas and capital moving faster and faster across borders all over the world. And now, not anymore. Now, it's all about my country first and it's nationalists and it's insourcing and it's decoupling. And so we've hit this tipping point. Or have we? I don't quite buy this narrative that globalization is over. Rather, I think it's not being driven. I think people are angry about it and it's being fought over, but that's very different from saying that spikes are being put into it.
And let me explain what I mean. I do think that the era of globalization, where the United States as a singular country with its allies was driving, actively leading, and driving a system where tariffs were being reduced and institutions were being created to ensure freer and more efficient trade. That was unique. It was something that we experienced in the world, basically from the seventies, picking up momentum through the nineties, with the Chinese particularly getting much, much bigger, with the Soviets then collapsing and most of those economies getting integrated into a more global order.
Right up through the last, say, 10 years, that let's say almost half a century if you look at global human development indicators like expansion of lifespan or reduction of infant mortality or education rates or average income levels, just an unprecedented improvement across the world. And most importantly, if you were an alien looking down on the planet, what you'd see is the emergence of a global middle class. And you'd see immense reduction in human poverty.
Now, the fact that a lot of that within the United States and other countries driving it was also accompanied with policy failures, with a lack of change of institutional reforms inside the countries, with social safety nets that were eroding meant that there was much greater levels of inequality, of outcome and of opportunity inside those countries and a lot of people got angry and angrier with globalization. At the same time, over the last few years, post the 2008 financial crisis, post the pandemic, with increasing impact globally of climate change and now with the Russia-Ukraine war, all of those things are driving much greater instability and inequality, not just in the advanced industrial economies, but in the developing world as well. And that's creating a lot more anger and pushback against the process of globalization.
Where I want to be clear is that's not suddenly making the Americans turn against globalization. Rather, it's making the Americans not sure where they want to go. It means that the United States aren't leading further globalization going forward, and no one really is. So you had 30 to 50 years where the Americans and increasingly everyone on that boat were saying, "Yes, let's push hard to have more and more open markets." And now you have governments all over the world saying, "We're not really sure what we want, where we want to go." That's very different from the idea of deglobalization.
Deglobalization would be the United States stands up and says, "We're going to tear down these institutions. We actually don't want to be as engaged in international trade. We're going to pull out of existing trade agreements." That's not what's happening. Not under Trump, not under Biden. I mean, in fact, you'd say the record is mixed. Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that was a new multilateral trade organization the US would've joined to increase globalization, to increase integration. But actually, the overall record under Trump with the US-Mexico-Canada agreement, with the US-South Korea agreement, with a first phase US-China trade deal, but then no second deal, not full implementation, increased tariffs, on balance, you'd say under four years of Trump, the US globalized a little bit more, but not much more, and certainly wasn't driving or leading globalization anymore.
And you'd say the same thing under Biden. You could point to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which has marginal increase in economic integration on rules and standards. For example, you can talk about "Build Back Better", which isn't really funded, but provides more outreach of the United States towards international investment together with allies around the world, some reduction in tariffs between the United States and Europe. Not yet between the United States and China, though it's fairly likely. Again, the US isn't leading globalization anymore, but it's not unwinding globalization either. And "Make America Great Again", as well as a new foreign policy for the American foreign middle class, which is sort of the Trump headline and the Biden headline. If you say, "Well, what are the takeaways?" The takeaways are not a lot of policy that's actually really moving towards insourcing production. A little bit of a shift away from the promotion of more globalization, and on balance, a little more globalized than before now.
The big hit, of course, in the last two years has been the pandemic, which stopped people from traveling, and which really shut down a lot of international supply chain for a period of time that largely has gone away in most of the world. China's the big exception because of zero-COVID, but even there, they're working hard to try to get through zero-COVID relatively quickly. And I expect they will be mostly there by the end of 2023, because it's such a drag on Chinese growth, but it's a blip. It's a blip from a longer term environment where what we see between the United States, China and the Europeans and the Japanese and the developing world is kind of a bit of a drift.
In the same way that NATO has been adrift over the last 20 years without much of a mission, now we're seeing globalization is drifting. It's not falling apart, but no one's driving the bus. And there is some decoupling that's going on, most notably between the G7 and Russia. So Russian's being forcibly cut off from the advanced industrial economies. And of course, some of that is sticky, like gas between Russia and Europe. And that diversification is taking time and the Russians are threatening to shut it down.
Then you have some decoupling happening at the national security level between the United States and China, but it's limited. It doesn't affect most US-Chinese trade. TikTok. It's what all the young kids are on. That's Chinese, by the way, right? No one's about to shut that down. And other countries around the world don't want a cold war between the US and China, and they're ramping up their investment in exposure to the US and to China. And then you also have some level of growing protectionism in countries around the world saying, "We want more support for our workers," but it's halting, it's stagger step. And it's also in fights inside these countries with business interests and financial interests that want more exposure to global markets.
So the point here is not the end of globalization. The point is that globalization is at drift. The point is that globalization is now being fought over. It's become a political football. And where that's going to go? The answer is, it's messy. It's complicated. Maybe that's not the easy headline answer that people want, but maybe that's why my Quick Takes take 10 minutes as opposed to two.
Anyway, that's it for me at the start of this week. Something to chew over for a few days. Hope everyone's doing well. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
Biden administration's COVID response likely to impact midterms
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the Biden administration's response to the omicron variant:
How is the Biden administration's response to omicron?
Well, it hasn't been great. It started with the travel ban from affected countries that was already probably behind the curve given how widespread the variant was and the administration admitted they did not see this new variant coming. They were caught flat-footed on the surge in demand for testing over the holidays. And while they first promised to make tests reimbursable by insurance, which is, of course, a real pleasure for Americans who love to deal with their insurance companies, they then said they were going to make 500 million tests available for free, but this isn't even enough to have two tests for every American. And news came out that they were instead of investing in increased manufacturing capacity, what they were doing was going to purchase surplus tests, which could exacerbate private sector shortages. But probably, more importantly, it means that the new free tests were going to arrive probably after the current surge in cases is over.
The CDC changed its guidance last month to say that instead of isolating for 10 days, people should isolate for only five. And this was done in order to minimize economic disruptions instead of for public health reasons, which led to criticisms of the administration that they were no longer following the "science" as they promised to at the beginning of the administration.
The administration's top infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, this week made headlines for sparring with Republican Senators at a congressional hearing and not for his public health advice. And the CDC Director seems to only get attention for her missteps and misstatements at this point. The administration's strategy seems to boil down to hope that this thing goes away quickly. Their vaccine mandate looks like it could be overturned by the courts any day now and it's unclear if the mandate's even worth doing given how many vaccinated people are catching the omicron variant and then being forced to isolate anyway. The US is probably running up against its natural limit of who's willing to get vaccinated at this point and it's unclear how many more people are going to get their first shot.
Now, at the same time, the fiscal response is starting to slow as some of the extraordinary pandemic measures start to run off and it doesn't look like the Biden administration's going to be able to push a lot of new spending through Congress with the Build Back Better agenda stalled. Biden's approval has dragged all year because of COVID and right now he's in the low 40s and high 30s, which is right around where President Trump was, even though he started last year at about 55% approval. So this has been a real problem for him but at this point the pandemic response comes down to individual caution and states, who have been doing a much better job getting out free tests to individuals but are saying they are not going to impose any new lockdown measures because of the political unpopularity of this. Rough time for President Biden, probably going to affect the Democrats in the midterm elections.
United States Senator Joe Manchin III (Democrat of West Virginia), Chairman, US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, listens to the panel during a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on domestic and international energy price trends, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, Tuesday, November 16, 2021.
What We're Watching: Joe Manchin tanks Biden's agenda
Joe sinks Joe. It looks like US President Joe Biden has come to the end of the road with his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Plan, now that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has announced flatly he’ll vote “no.” With the Senate split 50-50, Biden needs every Democrat vote in the chamber. The White House haggled with Manchin for months — “dancin’ for Manchin”, you might say. Biden even cut the proposed spending in half. But the moderate Manchin said he still “couldn’t get there” because of concerns about the deficit, and further stoking already high inflation. Republicans, of course, are ecstatic, because passing BBB is Biden's key pitch for Americans to vote for Democrats in next year's midterms and re-elect him (or another Democrat in his place) in 2024. It's not too late to reach a fresh compromise on the bill, but the longer the Dems keep squabbling, the longer their odds of retaining control of Congress next November.
Chile's President-elect Gabriel Boric celebrates with supporters after winning the presidential election in Santiago, Chile, December 19, 2021.
What We’re Watching: Chile’s new prez, Manchin sinks Biden’s agenda, Russian NATO wishlist, Australia vs China, Afghan trust fund
Boric wins in Chile. In the end, it wasn’t even close. Faced with two diametrically opposed choices for president in Sunday’s presidential runoff, more than 55 percent of Chilean voters went with leftwinger Gabriel Boric instead of his far-right opponent José Antonio Kast. The ten-point gap was so wide that Kast conceded before the count was even done. Boric, 35, now becomes the youngest president of any major nation in the world. Elected just two years after mass protests over inequality shook what was one of Latin America’s most reliably boring and prosperous countries, Boric has promised to raise taxes in order to boost social spending, nationalize the pension system, and expand the rights of indigenous Chileans. But with the country’s legislature evenly split between parties of the left and the center-right, the new president will likely have to compromise on his sweeping pledge to make Chile the land where neoliberalism “goes to its grave.”
Joe sinks Joe. It looks like US President Joe Biden has come to the end of the road with his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Plan, now that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has announced flatly he’ll vote “no.” With the Senate split 50-50, Biden needs every Democrat vote in the chamber. The White House haggled with Manchin for months — “dancin’ for Manchin”, you might say. Biden even cut the proposed spending in half. But the moderate Manchin said he still “couldn’t get there” because of concerns about the deficit, and further stoking already high inflation. Republicans, of course, are ecstatic, because passing BBB is Biden's key pitch for Americans to vote for Democrats in next year's midterms and re-elect him (or another Democrat in his place) in 2024. It's not too late to reach a fresh compromise on the bill, but the longer the Dems keep squabbling, the longer their odds of retaining control of Congress next November.
Russia makes its demands. With 100,000 Russian troops at the Ukrainian border, Moscow released a bombshell list of demands for the “West” on Friday. Among other things, NATO must relinquish any right ever to expand further eastward, and must stop sending its troops or ships anywhere that could conceivably threaten Russia. What’s more, the Russians are impatient: they want the US to discuss these proposals right now. The US is happy to talk, but won’t give the Kremlin a veto over the choices that sovereign nations want to make about their own security alliances. The Ukrainians, naturally, agree, and on Monday President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet with his counterparts from Poland and Lithuania to emphasize the point. We’re watching to see what the US comes back with — one version of a maximalist response would look like this — and what, precisely, Russia is prepared to do if it doesn't like what it sees.
For Beijing, there is thunder Down Under. Tensions between Australia and China just keep rising. After China responded to Aussie requests for a COVID investigation by imposing devastating tariffs and unofficial bans on Australian exports in 2020, Oz is pushing back hard now. Canberra on Friday accused China of “economic coercion,” while cybersecurity officials publicly confirmed malicious attacks against Australia by Chinese spy services working with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The Aussies also say Chinese intelligence vessels are snooping around in Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. These accompany several clearly pro-American moves this year: the Aussies have signed on to AUKUS, an exclusive military club with Washington and London that gives them access to unprecedented weapons tech, are allowing the buildup of US military infrastructure (read, bases) on its soil, and joined America in a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. But the Australians are taking the tensions directly to China’s neighborhood, too. Canberra just signed a $770 million weapons deal with South Korea, including tech to build Howitzers — really, really big artillery guns. And even though the spat between the two continues, there is evidence that Australia, while heavily dependent on trade with China, is successfully pushing for diversity in trade partnerships.
An Islamic trust fund for Afghanistan. They didn’t officially recognize the Taliban government. They didn’t even allow the Taliban’s foreign minister to appear in the official group photograph. But foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the UN, met in Islamabad on Sunday and pledged to set up a trust fund to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Neither the exact amount of the fund nor the contributions by member countries was released, but may not match the $4.5 billion that the UN has appealed for aid to Afghanistan amid warnings that the Afghan economy is in a free-fall, with 23 million facing starvation. The lead organization of the fund will be the Islamic Development Bank, the OIC’s in-house global lender.
Think buying American will help ease inflation? Larry Summers says it won’t
Many Americans believe the best way to fight rising prices is to purchase US-made goods, in theory, less affected by COVID-fueled disruptions to global supply chains.
For former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, they're wrong.
"I think the right thing to do is to buy cheap and buy inexpensive."
When Americans decide to buy more expensive US-made products, he says that contributes to driving up prices even more, and to what he calls an "inflationary psychology" that only makes the problem worse.
Tariffs from the trade war with China, Summers clarifies, are indeed costing American jobs, but at the end of the day it's a negotiation — and playing hardball with the Chinese has definitely not helped with inflation.
Watch this clip from his interview with Ian Bremmer on the upcoming episode of GZERO World.
Subscribe to GZERO on YouTube to be the first to see new episodes of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: https://bit.ly/2TxCVnY
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- Podcast: Inflation nation: How Larry Summers predicted skyrocketing prices in the US - GZERO Media ›
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- Larry Summers: Rising inflation makes society feel "out of control” - GZERO Media ›
- Larry Summers' view: What caused US inflation and how to slow it down - GZERO Media ›
What's next for infrastructure and Biden's Build Back Better plan?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares insights on US politics:
Now that President Biden has signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, what's next for infrastructure?
The President this week signed a significant new investment in infrastructure, about $550 billion beyond the money that's already being spent in the baseline levels for the US infrastructure, and this is a big investment. It about doubles how much money the US spends on infrastructure over the next five years, and the money's going to go to all kinds of places, roads, bridges, tunnels, water projects, broadband deployment for Americans, climate resiliency, electric vehicles. There's a lot of different things that are going to be funded by this pot of cash.
A lot of the projects won't be seen for quite some time however. Much of the money that gets spent on infrastructure in the US goes through the Department of Transportation and then gets sent out through the states. You have to find contractors to do the job. You've got to identify the projects you want to spend money on. So the bulk of this money probably won't be spent until 2023, 2024, or 2025, and maybe even beyond that. But over time, Americans are going to start to see a lot of new projects going on in their communities.
However, the thing that's going to have an even bigger impact on Americans' lives is the next phase of President Biden's spending plans, which is the much larger, probably about $1.5 trillion Build Back Better bill. And this includes a whole lot of subsidies for health care, potentially for housing and education. Certainly a lot of money's going to go towards green energy. And there's also going to be money that extends for funds that were passed in the American Rescue Plan earlier this year to directly subsidize households with children and households below certain income thresholds. So some of these households will see as much as $3,600, additional cash in their pockets as a result of the child tax credit that's proposed by President Biden. Timing on this is much more uncertain. Given the holidays are approaching, it may not end up passing until next year, so many Americans won't see any benefit from this until probably the closer to the summertime of 2022.
Will Biden be the Grinch this year?
The minutiae of supply chains makes for boring dinner table talk, but it's increasingly becoming a hot topic of conversation now that packages are taking much longer to arrive in the consumer-oriented US, while prices of goods soar.
With the issue unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, right-wing media have dubbed President Biden the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, conjuring images of sad Christmas trees surrounded by distraught children whose holiday gifts are stuck somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
It hasn't been a good run for Uncle Joe in recent months. What issues are tripping him up?
Global shipping systems are in complete disarray. Many shipping containers are caught in traffic jams at the entrance to US ports, and even when they unload, truck driver shortages have meant massive delays in transporting goods to stores and warehouses.
The underlying condition is the pandemic, which has upended consumption patterns. Consider that older people, who are usually tech averse, started shopping online, while the laptop cohort has gone crazy gobbling up office supplies. This combined with panic buying – where manufacturers and retailers are now over-ordering across the board – has sent global supply chains into a tizzy. Scarcity of staples like diapers, coffee and toilet paper has also worsened the pandemic-fueled inflation problem.
Supply chains are now the most acute crisis facing the Biden administration. As a result, the White House recently stepped in to help boost capacity at the Port of Los Angeles – the busiest one in the Western Hemisphere, which is now operating 24/7. Backlogs there are crucial to the health of the US economy, but since the entire world is feeling the supply chain crunch, Biden has limited options to fix the multi-layered problem.
Congress: not the family you choose. For weeks, the White House has been embroiled in political wrangling with Congress to ensure the passage of Biden's signature Build Back Better plan – a two-part bill that includes investment in traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges, and yes, ports, as well as funding for child care and climate-change mitigation schemes.
But infighting between progressive and moderate Democrats on the price tag has led to a weeks-long stalemate, and will ultimately result in Biden significantly watering down things like his clean electricity agenda and free community college. While Republicans oppose many of the bill's provisions, recent surveys found that voters blame divisiveness within the Democrats for the legislative impasse, and the president's abrupt popular decline.
COVID: the messy house guest that won't leave. Biden's perceived successes – and failures – were always going to be linked to his ability to get the pandemic in check. While in the spring Biden saw a boost in the polls linked to a speedy vaccine rollout, that honeymoon period is now over, with half the American electorate disapproving of the president's handling of the pandemic.
A big part of the problem comes from the politicization of COVID and polarization in America more broadly, which means that pandemic containment means vastly different things to different people.
For many, pandemic success means having kids back in schools and bodies in offices without further disruption. It also means the power to choose whether to get vaccinated or to mask up. For others, it means minimizing the number of COVID cases nationwide at all costs, and boosting vaccination rates – including through mandates. Reconciling these world-views would be almost impossible for any president, both Republican and Democrat, in the post-Trump era.
Virginia: a sign of what's to come? Democrats and Republicans will be closely watching the November 2 race for governor in Virginia – a purple state where Democrats have an advantage. But the race, broadly seen as a temperature check for President Biden one year into the job, is very close. It's also seen as a bellwether one year out from midterm elections, when Republicans will contend to take control of the US Congress. Though it's still early days for Biden, the outcome in Virginia will illuminate the national mood at a crucial point in time.
Looking ahead: Biden's approval rating has dropped 10 points since June, including among Democratic voters and independents. But he could save face if he manages to save Christmas.
Democrats need to be united to pass $3.5 trillion budget plan
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
What are the details of the Democrats' proposed $3.5 trillion budget blueprint?
Well, the Democrats this week in the Senate Budget Committee agreed to move forward with the plan to spend $3.5 trillion spread out over about 10 years on a huge portion of President Biden's Build Back Better Plan. This comes on top of a bipartisan agreement, at least in principle, on another $600 billion in physical infrastructure, which is roads, bridges, tunnels, repair, broadband deployment and a whole bunch of other physical infrastructure spending that Republicans and Democrats agree they want to do but aren't clear on how they want to pay for. But on the $3.5 trillion in spending, this is a lot of new social services, it's extending a number of tax subsidies that are going to low-income families and families with kids as part of the American Rescue Plan, which was the Biden stimulus bill that passed earlier in the year. It also includes money for two years of community college, universal preschool, and expands Medicare to cover things like dental benefits and other things that Medicare currently doesn't pay for.
So, this is a really big, ambitious plan. Democrats are excited about it because they think it's going to reshape, eliminate poverty for millions of Americans and reshape the role of the federal government and a lot of people's lives. However, the road to get there is long and challenging. And this next, in this part of the process is just one baby step forward. The next part of the process will be to pass a budget. And the budget process requires only 50 votes in the Senate and the simple majority in the House. But with Democrats slim margins in both, they can't really afford to lose even a single member. So, Democrats have to be totally unified to get this thing through. They can't expect a lot of support from Republicans. And the tension in the party is between progressives who want to spend a lot of money, Senator Bernie Sanders said he was looking to do over $6 trillion, and more moderate members, which is a sizable but silent group led by the very vocal senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, who says, this whole thing has to be paid for, there can be no deficit financing. Which means the Democrats can really only afford to spend the money they can raise. And while Biden has put forward $3.6 trillion in tax increases, a lot of those tax increases are politically untenable. And most analysts see there's a realistic range of about one to two trillion dollars in tax increases that are possible. If you combine that with some budget gimmicks and some fake spending cuts that have been floated in the bipartisan framework, plus, you give yourself a longer time frame for how you count the revenues that will finance some of the short-term spending, you can probably get there. But the Senate and the House are probably months away from resolution of this process. And the challenging part right now is going to be keeping everybody on board until the very end.