Three ways to read the ‘deglobalisation’ debate

 As 2023 unfolds, the world of economic analysis and commentary is marked by a disjuncture between discourse and data. On the one hand, you have feverish talk of deglobalisation and decoupling. While on the other, the statistics show an inertial continuity in trade and investment patterns.

There are at least three ways to reconcile this tension.

Option one: you can cleave to the old religion that economics always wins. In which case you dismiss the talk of deglobalisation as journalistic hype. This debunking posture has the air of empiricism and common sense about it. But to hold this view you have, in fact, to believe many things, chief among them being that the Biden administration does not mean what it says.

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