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Globalization | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #77

Globalization

Be it resolved, the Ukraine War has accelerated the rollback of globalization.

Guests
Adam Posen
Harold James
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About this episode

The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new, interdependent world. Growing global consensus around trade rules, technology transfers, mass migration and investment ushered in a wave of globalization that was championed as the most effective means of bringing prosperity and stability to big and small countries. Yet lately, a slew of anti-globalization movements have led to a marked decrease in world trade. Some economists predict that the war between Russia and Ukraine will only accelerate the decline of globalization. With supply chains already fractured due to the pandemic and climate change, the war will remind many developed nations that they cannot rely on foreign countries for badly needed resources like wheat or natural gas. China, one of the world’s biggest exporters of goods, will likewise see the economic isolation of Russia as a reason to become more independent and protect itself from being vulnerable to similar economic sanctions in the future.

Others take a more optimistic view about the future of globalization; with all the comparisons to the 1970’s and sustained inflation, many forget that it was a decade that paved the way for a sustained expansion of trade and international migration. And the best way to deal with inflation, these experts argue, is to open economies and increase the flow of goods. The future will see more, not less, economic interdependence, cooperation, and globalization.

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Guests

Adam Posen

"We are moving to a world where division is going to be more evident, and where values in national security are going to determine more of our economic decisions."

Adam Posen

"We are moving to a world where division is going to be more evident, and where values in national security are going to determine more of our economic decisions."

Adam S. Posen is president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Under his leadership, since January 2013, the Institute has grown to 42 world-renowned fellows and won global recognition–including being named North American Economics Think Tank of the Year by Prospect five years in a row (2016 thru 2020). From 2009 to2012, Posen served as an external voting member of the Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). Posen served seven terms on the Panel of Economic Advisers to the US Congressional Budget Office (2005-19), and co-authored Inflation Targeting with Bernanke,Laubach, and Mishkin while at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1994-97). In April 2021, Foreign Affairs published his article, “The Price of Nostalgia: America’s Self-DefeatingEconomic Retreat,” where he provides an analysis of the US retreat from globalization.
 

Harold James

“The globalization that's going to follow in the 21st century is about the globalization of services and the use of information technology. It's a very exciting prospect.”

Harold James

“The globalization that's going to follow in the 21st century is about the globalization of services and the use of information technology. It's a very exciting prospect.”

Harold James, the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies at Princeton University, is Professor of History and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, and an associate at the Bendheim Center for Finance. His books include a study of the interwar depression in Germany, The German Slump (1986); an analysis of the changing character of national identity in Germany, A German Identity 1770-1990 (1989); International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (1996), and The End of Globalization (2001). He was also coauthor of a history of Deutsche Bank (1995), which won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996, and he wrote The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews (2001). His most recent books include Family Capitalism, Harvard University Press, 2006; The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Harvard University Press, 2009; Making the European Monetary Union, Harvard University Press, 2012; The Euro and the Battle of Economic Ideas (with Markus K. Brunnermeier and Jean-Pierre Landau), Princeton University Press, 2016; Making A Modern Central Bank: The Bank of England 1979-2003, Cambridge University Press 2020; The War of Words: A Glossary of Globalization, Yale University Press 2021. In 2004 he was awarded the Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History, and in 2005 the Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate.

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