What is the future of globalisation? This is among the biggest questions of our time. In June, I argued that, contrary to increasingly widespread opinion, “Globalisation is not dead. It may not even be dying. But it is changing.” Among the most important ways in which it is changing is via the growth of services provided at a distance.
Since the industrial revolution, we have, argues Richard Baldwin in his book The Great Convergence, seen three waves of opportunities to trade. First, industrialisation and the revolution in transport generated opportunities for trade in goods. More recently, new information technologies allowed “trade in factories”: it became profitable to move entire factories to where labour was cheap. Today, however, the broadband internet allows “trade in offices”: if one can work for one’s employer from home, someone in India can do so, too.
Moreover, an important difference between the first and second waves, which need movement of objects, and the third, which moves information virtually, is that obstacles to physical trade are far easier to impose than those to virtual trade. It is not impossible to impose the latter, as China shows. But it requires great effort.