Barely having entered the scene as president, Donald Trump has been busy fulfilling his self-assigned mission of shaking up various aspects of the status quo. In a whirlwind of executive orders and statements, he has wasted no time in attacking what he dislikes, going against the grain of common views. From societal to “cultural” issues, the search for effect is the trademark of this showman and businessman who branched into politics. Beyond matters related to his style, this reversal of gears raises important questions about the current situation and future directions of international politics. Particularly important is the economic issue, at the heart of which lies the problem of globalization.
Globalization is failing
During the last four decades, globalization was an object of worship and an indisputable dogma, but it is today in poor shape. Its flaws are visible to the naked eye. Its drawbacks are openly discussed. Alternatives are sought without equivocation. All this would have been unthinkable before, given the powerful, even stifling hold of neoliberal ideology. Today, the idea of deglobalization is no longer a heresy. Even Western political and economic leaders, guardians of the temple of globalizing neoliberalism, tolerate it, while keeping their distance. They do not echo it, but they do not put it on the index of proscribed ideas. Do they not talk about diversification, reindustrialization that goes against offshoring, regional agreements and “re-shoring” or “friend-shoring“, that is, a retreat towards small and compatible blocks of partners, who would also be political allies? In all these cases, it is the opposite of the globalization that was so vaunted until recently. It would be a return to national production, to the fragmentation of the world economy, to obstacles of international trade flows and to the crumbling of the neoliberal order that all Western policy since 1945, and again since 1980, was designed to make obsolete.
The world ruling class, the international elites, the guests at the Davos gatherings, are far from having given up on globalization. They are still its champions and do not hide their disapproval of Trump, his antics and the blows he is delivering against globalization. But beyond these circles, doubt is setting in and deglobalization is no longer a hypothesis to be dismissed out of hand.
The sources of dissatisfaction
Workers in the countries that were being deindustrialized had understood that they were paying the price of this neoliberal globalization: furthering of the international division of labor, “outsourcing” of production, abolition of relatively stable jobs, unemployment, precariousness, threat to the standard of living, wage cuts, indebtedness to replace lost income and meet basic needs. Industrial regions, the linchpins of national economies, were becoming disaster zones.
Euphoria reigned in business circles, in governments and among the ideologues of neoliberalism. Then came the thunderbolt that discredited globalization and shook the world economy: the subprime crisis and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The world was within a hair’s breadth of a depression as severe as that of the 1930s. Due to the interconnections between countries, the breaking down of barriers between financial institutions (banks, stock exchanges and insurance companies), the deregulation of finance (leading to a thousand and one derivative products) and the withdrawal of states imposed by the requirement of globalization, the purely US financial crisis had repercussions practically everywhere in the world.
The harms of globalization and the dangers it posed to economies and societies became clear. The promises of prosperity were turning into imminent risks of misery. While the worst was avoided, neoliberal globalization and the ideology that underpinned it lost their luster. Millions of working-class families and individuals, as well as small business owners, were impoverished or lost everything. Anger was brewing across the United States.
This is the sentiment that Trump sensed and sought to channel since his 2016 presidential campaign. He expressed a rejection of globalization that had not been heard in official circles. In 2025, he is pursuing the same goals: bringing businesses and jobs back to the United States, protecting American production from foreign competition, making the national economy less dependent on the outside. He did not succeed in 2017-2020 and there is no guarantee that he will succeed in 2025-2028.
Some have argued that the questioning of globalization is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The urgency to have vaccines and masks revealed the disadvantages of distant supply (“value”) chains, hence the requirement of achieving sovereignty on health matters. Others consider that the conflict in Ukraine, more precisely the “sanctions” against Russia, fragmented the global economy and put the emphasis on security factors and the importance of not depending on imports for vital energy needs. These explanations are valid, but geoeconomic and geopolitical reasons must also be taken into account.
A neoliberal globalization that disappoints its designers
The model of asymmetrical neoliberal globalization is falling apart. It was based on a vertical and hierarchical structure: the United States at the top, some developed countries in the middle range, and a majority of producing countries at the bottom. With the US dollar as the de facto international reserve currency, the United States could rule the world and pump its wealth at little or no cost. Such is the form taken by contemporary imperialism.
This structure is unstable because the economic development in the world is calling it into question. The most striking proof is the meteoric rise of China, which was supposed to remain a subcontractor for foreign companies relocated on her soil, but which has managed to maintain its independence, develop its national economy and lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Not only has China overcome the underdevelopment inherited from the colonial era and the “century of humiliation”, it has become a developed country in record time, at the forefront of high technology. Such an outcome was neither expected nor desired by the United States. China has managed to escape American control and take advantage of a globalization initially established to favor the United States and keep it in a subordinate position. China is the world’s largest economy in purchasing power parity ($39 trillion [IMF, 2025]), a competitor to the United States ($30 trillion) and an obstacle to its global domination.
Chinese successes in the very context of neoliberal globalization are prompting the United States to turn away from globalization through deglobalizing policies. The United States is inclined to eviscerate a creation that has been profitable to it but from which it is no longer the sole beneficiary. Pro-globalization speeches and pleas for free trade are shelved when they no longer correspond to the interests of their promoters. It is also a noteworthy fact that it is China that now defends free trade and globalization, as essential supports for this exporting country.
Deglobalization or reglobalization?
As the United States undermines globalization to regain its predominance, one may wonder what could replace it. Economic blocs are an obvious formula, but they can only be transitory. Production is now global in scale (sources of raw materials, scope of markets, size of factories, economies of scale); blocs are too small. There will be a phase of destructuring for the world economy while the actors redefine their place and their relationships before a new globalization takes shape. A precedent can be found during the interwar period, between the globalization that occurred before 1914 and the one that took place after 1945. The present period of rearrangement and reorganization also corresponds to the geopolitical reconfiguration of the world and its transition from unipolarity to multipolarity. These processes are parallel and conflicting.
Liberal globalization has always been hierarchical. Britain was the “workshop of the world” in the 19th century. The United States dominated the world economy since 1945, and even more so with neoliberal globalization since 1980. American-centric neoliberal globalization, that is, the current form of imperialism, has not said its last word and the United States is engaged in a global conflict against China and Russia in order to perpetuate its domination. But this attempt will be futile and US hegemony is coming to an end. De-dollarization is inevitable, and the dollar could be replaced by a unit of account based on national currencies, as is envisaged within the BRICS. Will the future globalization be horizontal, multilateral and, possibly, based on something other than economic liberalism in a multipolar world order? The next few years will tell.
