Could deglobalisation be a good thing?

Trump's tariffs are hurting. But there are better visions for a world beyond neoliberal globalisation

With economic democracy, we could all be happy mermaids! Photo of my daughter’s toiletry bag. Made in the UK by Eleanor Bowmer.

Trump’s tariffs have put the nail in the coffin of neoliberal globalisation, also known as the Washington Consensus. Since the 1980s, this world economic order has preached privatisation, cuts to public spending, slashing labour and environmental protections, and ‘free trade’ (which was only ever ‘free’ when it suited the most powerful players).

It’s certainly true that Trump’s form of deglobalisation is unlikely to result in things like more equality, a healthier planet, peace, happiness and general joy, since that was never the intention. But as

Grace Blakeley

has pointed out, defending the status quo is not the solution.

Neoliberal globalisation has made bank for multinational corporations but has caused suffering for almost everyone else. This is the case for the working classes of the rich world and even more so for those of the Global South. In fact, this world order has been tantamount to a new form of imperialism, with corporations based in rich countries sucking value from the rest of the world.

For example, Trump spent much of his first term banging on about how NAFTA was the worst trade deal the US had ever done, but it was worse for those on the other side of it. After signing the agreement in the 1990s, Mexico’s minimum wage plummeted by 40%.

Meanwhile, current ‘free trade’ and investment deals being done involve powerful players such as the EU, China, and the US, scrambling for control over ‘critical minerals’ located across much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Critical minerals are key resources such as copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt, needed for renewable energy technologies like wind turbines and electric cars. Many climate justice advocates describe this geopolitics as ‘green colonialism’.

The agencies enforcing this economic system, including the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, are loathed around the world. The ‘structural adjustment’ policies that these bodies have forced onto developing countries have been shown to significantly increase income inequality, lead to higher suicide rates, reduce human rights including higher incidence of torture and extra-judicial killings, and block the recruitment of millions of nurses, teachers and other essential workers, undermining healthcare, education and gender equality. Not great.

We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Trump’s attempts to maintain US hegemony by stamping on globalisation are clearly not something to celebrate, but the harms of the neoliberal status quo are what landed us with the Trumps of the world in the first place. Luckily we don’t have to choose between these two rubbish options.

Deglobalisation, the happy way

When I was a teenager and student in the late 1990s and early 2000s — just discovering Urban Outfitters and hair straighteners — the global justice movement was demanding an end to the neoliberal form of globalisation, calling instead for economic democracy and autonomy. The Zapatistas had a famous catchphrase for the kind of arrangement they envisaged: ‘a world where many worlds fit’ — rather than a global hierarchical system forced upon us all.

Walden Bello was part of this movement. Bello is a Filipino academic, former member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, and co-founder of the policy institute Focus on the Global South. He developed a vision for a form of deglobalisation that was centred on the needs of the Global South and emphasised economic democracy and ecological and social justice. He published a book on the subject in 2008.

Image from the Zapatista Solidarity Network. Just noticed the mermaid theme!

Bello wanted vibrant local economies and advocated using trade and industrial policy — yes including tariffs as well as subsidies and quotas — to protect local markets from being eaten by giant corporations. He also supported land redistribution and local sources of finance.

Despite what the name might suggest, Bello wasn’t arguing for isolationism. Rather, it was about achieving a healthy relationship between the local and the global.

His concept of deglobalisation draws inspiration from the economic historian Karl Polayni, who argued that, instead of us all being slaves to the economy, the economy should be embedded in society so that it serves the needs of communities. To this end, it demands different forms of ownership to create mixed economies, including community cooperatives, private businesses and state enterprises, but not multinationals.

Crucially, this vision is ecologically aware, channeling investment into ‘environmentally congenial’ technology. It also moves away from the obsession with economic growth, instead prioritising quality of life. This idea of degrowth is now gaining popularity, including

Jason Hickel

’s book, Less is More.

How would this new system be governed? For a start, Bello would scrap the despised IMF, World Bank and WTO. He would replace these agencies with regional institutions with a mandate to promote cooperation instead of domination and extraction.

The emphasis is on genuine democracy, which by definition has to include economic democracy. This means that people get to decide things like which industries to develop or phase out, rather than these choices being made by technocrats or corporations whose number one priority isn’t exactly people’s lives or the health of planet Earth. Institutions would also be put in place to enable civil society to constantly monitor the state and the private sector.

An important principle that Bello highlights is ‘subsidiarity’. This means that decisions are made by the smallest political unit capable of carrying them out. This empowers people at a local level, meaning that democracy is more direct, rather than those in power dictating people’s lives from afar.

Another world is possible

Bello’s isn’t the only vision for a world beyond both corporate globalisation and Trump’s lurching attempts to maintain US imperialism. There are tons of interesting ideas out there, from world parliaments to bio-regionalism to democratic confederalism and doing away with the nation-state altogether. It’s time we start talking about them again so that we can reignite the global justice movement’s rallying cry: another world is possible.

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