Post crisis, many people at “a natural advantage (read rich nations)” across the world are realizing that globalization is impacting them negatively. Look at Brexit or even Trump.

Though people embraced globalization rapidly (during the peaks of economies), they were not really ready for it (competing with something that they don’t know much about – think about a US factory worker competing with someone in China they don’t know anything about).

Though people are not to be blamed for this withdrawal from globalization, the world was in short technologically ready for globalization but people were not mindset wise. People’s globalization sensitivity to economic changes was very high. This is not only across nations but internally within countries as well.

However, the economies got a taste of how globalization is. Even if the borders were to be enforced as they were before the G (Globalization) happened, the economics will continue to demand the rules of the game be the same as or better than that during the G world.

So, now the world is torn apart by two forces: Political towards pre-G/no-G, Economy towards G. It will be interesting to see who will win. Both forces are irrational, but if history were to testify, Economy’s memory is short lived and that of Political’s medium lived.

Will Economy come to terms with the “no-G” political order? Looks like…but…now comes the most interesting aspect, how will countries counter the slow progression of AI/automation from within. Can you foster innovation but resist automation? Both go hand in hand. Even if countries go no-G, the economy having seen the taste of low costs/high productivity, will keep investing in automation to offset the loss of the open field. This may take some time, but the shots are already fired.

It can be argued that automation will have limited impact on the larger economy. But the monster is still not out of the box! How will technology enable people from trading in freely?

How tangible and globalization-immune are your trade-able skills?