For decades, governments across the world have operated on the assumption that globalisation is an unstoppable force. Whatever their ideological disagreements, countries as diverse as the US and China, Russia and Britain, embraced similar policies, based around expanding global trade and investment flows.
But the increasing rivalry between the US and China, allied to the outbreak of a global trade war, has put this process into reverse. The buzzword of the day is no longer globalisation but “decoupling”. The underlying idea is that, for a mix of economic and strategic reasons, national governments will seek to decrease their dependence on certain foreign markets and technology.
This process is now being led by the Trump administration in the US. One clear goal of the US trade sanctions imposed on China is to encourage the repatriation of some industrial production and supply chains. The US is also cracking down on technological imports and exports that are deemed a security threat — most notably by banning the Chinese telecoms company, Huawei, from buying American components and chips. This tech decoupling is also more and more likely to extend to people, with Chinese researchers finding it harder to get jobs and academic placements in the US.