The changing face of global trade
Posted: July 15th, 2018, 4:52 pm
This book's over two years old, but is a stunning read, and for those who read it should stop them posting silly failing US/EU comments I've read on here recently. The US and EU economies *are* growing, you just need to know where to look. Here's a review from The Economist:
TRADE has changed a lot in the last 25 years. Indeed, we are still struggling to understand why trade growth was so rapid before the 2008 crisis, and has been relatively sluggish since. Richard Baldwin's new book "The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization" was reviewed in last week's issue (and here are the thoughts of the FT's Martin Wolf). But the book is so important that it is worth looking again at some of its insights.
The first is that we tend to think of competitiveness of individual states (particularly in an era of populist nationalism) - the US is competing against China and Germany. But goods are no longer assembled entirely within the bounds of one factory in one country. Instead, many goods are assembled in "global value chains" in which products are designed in one country, but made from parts built in several countries and assembled in another country.
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-n ... obal-trade
TRADE has changed a lot in the last 25 years. Indeed, we are still struggling to understand why trade growth was so rapid before the 2008 crisis, and has been relatively sluggish since. Richard Baldwin's new book "The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization" was reviewed in last week's issue (and here are the thoughts of the FT's Martin Wolf). But the book is so important that it is worth looking again at some of its insights.
The first is that we tend to think of competitiveness of individual states (particularly in an era of populist nationalism) - the US is competing against China and Germany. But goods are no longer assembled entirely within the bounds of one factory in one country. Instead, many goods are assembled in "global value chains" in which products are designed in one country, but made from parts built in several countries and assembled in another country.
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-n ... obal-trade