In a recent speech, US Vice President JD Vance explained the failure of globalization in these terms: “The idea of ​​globalization was that rich countries would move up the value chain, while poor countries would manufacture the simplest things.” This order has not held. China and many countries, particularly in Asia, have developed, competing with rich countries. This is why, according to Vance, globalization, which has not maintained the established order, is a failure.

This vision is not necessarily that of economists.
Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp in “Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it Matters” identify the six different visions of globalization.
How then to position Vance?
(I use the authors’ titles to characterize the interpretations.)

1- The vision of large institutions. Resource allocation is efficient on a global scale, and there is always a way to catch up with the pack. This is the miracle of creative destruction.
2- A left-wing populist interpretation: globalization has created inequalities in the distribution of income: globalization favorable to the 1% and to the owners of capital.
3- In another left-wing vision, the big winners are the multinational companies that have redefined the rules of trade and tax rules to become even more powerful.
4- The right-wing populist vision deplores the impoverishment of workers in Western countries in favor of workers in emerging economies.
5- Geoeconomics: Globalization creates challenges that cause us to lose our sovereignty. China has used trade liberalization and investment flows to catch up with, or even threaten, Western nations. The solution is to focus on technology to maintain a standoff with China.
6- Globalization is creating an unsustainable trajectory. A new framework must be redefined.

Before returning to Vance, it should be noted that Donald Trump’s position during his first term was more that of right-wing populists. He implicitly used Branco Milanovic’s elephant diagram, showing that incomes in emerging countries had grown much faster than those of low-skilled workers in developed countries.

Today, geoeconomics fits better with Vance and Trump’s vision. Except that, for Roberts and Lamp, globalization has had positive effects on everyone’s income. For Trump and Vance, America has lost out in this globalization. They go beyond economic analysis to add a political dimension.

The economy is merely a means to convey a political message. If the United States has lost on the economic front, its revival can only come through political action and therefore through a large-scale power struggle.

To be continued…