First, the context:
“ … people won’t stop trading goods – and depending on how long a view you take, the world has always been in a state of ‘reglobalization’ … The phrase simply describes the constantly shifting circumstances and relationships in global trade.” – economic historian Harold James.
(For Phoenicians, see below.)
Then the essence:
Global supply chains.
Last month’s crash of the massive container cargo ship Dali into the Baltimore Franklin Scott Key Bridge reminded all of the fragility – and centrality – of global trade in the rolling “twenty twenties”. And it added to the doubts of “globalization” still lingering from the Covid pandemic. Significantly, it also nourished the isolationist political community.
Cooler heads may be about to prevail. In addition to Professor James:
“We must push back against the pressure for global fragmentation, which would be costly and could well weaken supply resilience … A better path forward is what we are calling ‘reglobalization’: deeper, more deconcentrated markets, achieved by bringing more people and places from the margins of the global economy to the mainstream.” – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , World Trade Organization director general.
“The old idea about globalization was to some extent naïve.” – Roland Benedicter, editor of “Globalization, Past, Present, Future.”
Our vastly globally interconnected society is, of course, bound by many other macro societal communities and issues. Among them: climate change, science and technology, healthcare and pandemics and immigration.
Reglobalization is the latest chapter in a very long, complex story.
“The Phoenicians (approximately 1550 – 300 B.C.E.) are primarily remembered as adept sailors and cunning merchants. They used their strategic position at the crossroads of eastern and western cultures to build a trading empire that extended from the Fertile Crescent in the east, through the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic Ocean.”