Globalisation needs to be all or nothing

© Kkistl01 | Dreamstime.com - Directions for Mexican Migrants

Op-ed piece in the increasingly excellent Quartz which argues that far from relegating millions to poverty, as those voting for Brexit and Trump appeared to believe (and certainly those promoting Trump and Brexit purported), “it is not the idea of globalisation itself that is problematic; it is that its implementation has not gone far enough”. It is an argument that many in the freight industry – which after all has made so much of its earnings through global trade in recent years – will be intuitively familiar with, and explores the central dichotomies of the modern world: that the tools of national politicians and statesmen are simply inadequate to make contemporary economics fairer; in some cases they are the surest way for economies to shoot themselves in the foot. “The trade policies instituted today (in the West) create economic and political instability elsewhere, and this uncertainty is a crucible for the next wave of migrants (economic or political) to the developed West.”