The United States created modern globalization. Now he has become his main devastating

The world never changes from one day to another, but Sometimes there are inflection points that we only recognize in retrospective. The fall of the wall in 1989, the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971 or the crisis of Lehman Brothers in 2008 marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Today we are facing a moment, very possibly, similar. The phrase of British politician Darren Jones, “globalization as we have known during the last decades has come to an end,” collected by Newsweekmay sound reactionary exaggeration to Trump’s tariffs, but it is not.

We are in something that goes beyond a commercial war. It is the decline of an economic order that has supported world prosperity for three decades. Tara Zahra explains it in The New York Times: It is a moment that reminds the collapse of the first era of globalization after 1913, when the value of global exports went from 14% to 6% of the world economy.

The United States was the main architect of this system, but has become his great devastating. The country that was leveled in the virtues of free trade to grow now applies The same base tariff both to its democratic allies and to regimes and the Taliban. In fact we have higher tariffs in the European Union than in North Korea.

It is not only the capricious policy of a single president, but the final demonstration of a long process. As Zahra documented, the notice arrived in 1999 with those anti -globalization protests in Seattle that had their replica in various parts of the world. In our case it was In Barcelona. Tens of thousands of protesters against the WTO. That intensified with the 2008 crisis and the pandemic completed this cycle: our supply chains were more fragile than we thought. The world was already fragmenting before Trump’s return to the White House.

The alarming thing is what happens on the other side of the Pacific. China is not regretting for anything or waiting for better times with stoic resignationbut is actively building its own independent economic sphere. The case of Huawei It is exemplary: it does not build bridges, cava trenches. Its strategy is no longer going to compete, but to create its own parallel and self -sufficient ecosystem.

Beijing in the meantime has been preparing his countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs, from the climbs to his own to the prohibition of American films. They are not only defensive responses, but the steps of a long -term strategy to reduce its exposure and dependence on the West. Beijing creates its technological ecosystems, but also financial and commercial. Within our possibilities, In the EU we are also looking for the box of the strips. Begin An era of independent islands.

There are changes that can be reversed when Trump leaves the position and the following arrives, but others will be permanent. Once broken, trust is not easily restored. What happened to Huawei and others in 2019 was A lesson engraved on fire: The dependence of any market (especially the American) is a vulnerability.

Praness Narayanan, from the London Public Policy Research Institute, explains it in NBC: “The decisions that make (companies) following this will remodel global trade.” The result will be a more fragmented global system, more redundant and, paradoxically, less efficient that the one that has emerged from globalization.

Aurélien Saussay, from the London School of Economics, anticipates That the price to be paid for this “dysglobization” will be transferred to consumers in the form of higher prices and lower supply variety.

Many of the pieces that have built the imperfect framework that has given the greatest global prosperity in history are being undone. Just now that AI, climate change and demographic complications should demand more cooperation, no less.

The pendulum again oscillate to closed borders and autarchiesto some extent. China wants to be self -sufficient, the United States seeks something similar and the EU, which was to other things, Start wondering what you have left to protect.

Now it remains to know what will happen in the future: not if globalization can be saved – it seems very difficult to undo certain steps – but what we will build on their remains.

In Xataka | There is a clear winner with the 25% tariffs to the car: it is called byd and represents everything that China has to win

Outstanding image | Xataka