Our new special report, produced in collaboration with DB Research, identifies three key challenges for globalisation: managing interdependence, handling technology and ensuring sustainability. These challenges do not mean the end of globalisation, but the recent buzz-phrase of the “great decoupling” (of supply chains and other economic links) seems close to the mark.
The three challenges for globalisation:
- Managing interdependence. Increasingly complex economic and financial links between countries must be managed against a changing global political landscape. U.S./China bipolar tensions may threaten established multilateral governance systems.
- Handling technology. This is both a driver of change and now a source of real-time vulnerability. The high-tech supply chain remains heavily dependent on free, cross-border trade with some obvious geographic choke points and raw material production concentrations.
- Ensuring sustainability. Climate change and other factors are exacerbating worries about supply insecurity, import dependence and a lack of local control. Food supply is one focus here, with energy also of great importance for the “just transition” to a more sustainable global economy.
