Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

At an event in Arizona a few months ago marking the opening of a new Taiwan semiconductor plant,

Morris Chang, the company's founder, stated that globalization is almost dead and free trade

is almost dead and they're unlikely to come back.

Globalization is a term that gained popularity after the Cold War ended and it's used to

describe the growing dependence of the world's

economies, cultures and populations on each other, brought about by international trade,

technology and flows of investment, people and information. It's by no means a new idea,

countries have come together to facilitate these movements over many centuries,

but the world is more globalised today than ever before.

The wide-ranging effects of globalization are complex and politically charged,

as there are, of course, winners and losers associated with any big

economic or social change.

Globalisation has had a significant effect on global growth, poverty reduction and inequality,

both between countries and within countries, not to mention its political, societal and cultural

consequences. It's not surprising that a potential reversal has become a major topic of discussion.

Trade tensions between the US and China had been growing for at least a decade and were accelerated by the pandemic

and the global supply chain disruptions that ensued. The geopolitical fallout from Russia's

war in Ukraine added to these global trade tensions, raising serious concerns about a decoupling

world. Some of the most influential investors on Wall Street, like Larry Fink of Black Rock and Howard Marks of Oak Tree,

have been saying that these issues may be permanently altering the world order.

Fink wrote last year that recent events have prompted governments worldwide to re-evaluate

...