Growing Anti-globalization
In recent years, anti-globalization tendencies have surfaced with the recent developments in the US during and after the elections and the Brexit referendum with people viewing trade, immigration, and multilateral engagements with some amount of skepticism and becoming wary of the benefits of globalization.
In addition to this, studies suggest that despite the reduction in global inequality since 1990s, inequality within countries has increased, especially among the advanced economies.
Similarly, the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (April 2017) states that a number of middle-skill jobs in advanced economies have been lost as a result of technological change since the early 1990s and the distribution of income has continued to favour the highest earners leaving little room for those with lower incomes to advance.
On average, across 21 OECD countries, it is estimated that 9% of jobs are at high risk of automation, while another 25% of jobs are likely to experience major retooling because of automation.Studies also indicate that to some degree this malaise reflects a macroeconomic policy mix that has failed to sustain sufficient demand growth in the world economy.
Rising Trade Restrictive Measures
There is a rapid rise in recent years of many trade restrictive measures including several types of non-tariff barriers (NTBs).
New restrictions on visas and the risk of a backlash against the movement of persons, add to a situation that is of growing concern.
As per the WTO’s seventeenth monitoring report on G20 trade measures (30 June 2017), a total of 42 new trade-restrictive measures were implemented by G20 economies during the review period (mid-October 2016 to mid-May 2017), including new or increased tariffs, customs regulations and rules of origin restrictions, amounting to a monthly average of six measures.
This represents a slight increase over the previous period, but still remains lower than the longer-term trend observed from 2009-2015 of seven per month.The steady accumulation of trade-restrictive measures since the financial crisis has also gradually increased the share of global trade affected by such restrictions.
In mid-October 2016, the share of world imports covered by import-restrictive measures implemented since October 2008 and still in place was 5% and the share of G-20 imports covered was 6.5%.The trade coverage of the trade-restrictive measures affecting imports introduced during the latest review period (mid-October 2016 to mid-May 2017) was US$ 47 billion, i.e. 0.37% of the value of G20 merchandise imports or 0.29% of the value of world merchandise imports.
