Please note: this article is more than one year old. The views of our CIO team may have changed since it was published, and the data on which it was based may have been revised.
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.
