Numerous political-institutional events have foreshadowed for some years that the profound economic internationalization accelerated after the Second World War (what Richard Baldwin called the fourth globalization) is facing a crisis.
Six events fueled the fear: Brexit, the Trump agenda (focused on China and Mexico) in the US, the Covid-19 pandemic (and its impact on supply chains), the reaction against climate change ( which generates more regulations), the War in Ukraine (which -in addition to economic sanctions against Russia- unleashed a crisis of mistrust over potentially affected suppliers -friendshoring?-) and the new geopolitical map in formation (which encourages preferences between allies and restrictions over adversaries -as occurs between the US and China-).
However, planetary business has remained robust.
International trade between all countries scratched 32 trillion dollars (historic record) in 2022. And the stock of global foreign direct investment exceeded the ceiling of 45 trillion.
The international flows of information, knowledge and economic data grow without ceiling: the big-data market reached 300,000 million dollars, having generated more than 80 zettabytes in one year.
And labor telemigrations are expanding in a way that is impossible to quantify.
Furthermore: the sanctions against Russia have affected its economy less than expected.
And the tension due to bilateral sanctions between the US and China did not prevent trade between the two (the two largest players in global international trade) from reaching a record of almost 700,000 million dollars in 2022 (the previous record was from 2018).
It is probable, therefore, that we should move from the point of analysis.
Until recently, politics ruled without major brakes.
A legal norm, a sanction between countries, a simple economic threat closed a market, excluded a country, sank companies.
We cannot say that this is no longer the case (Russia's GDP fell by 2.1% in 2022... but only 2.1%), but there is resilience (pro-silience) in the networks of companies, innovators, workers, investors, financiers worldwide that is operating with its own agenda.
Parallel.
Various means (from triangulations to rapid adaptations in the era of the intangibility of value generation) assist international economic actors who seem to be faster than their political regulators/persecutors.
The technological revolution has given companies a capacity to supply needs that exceeds in value that of any other institution, and they have acquired an unprecedented and legitimized autonomy (a couple of years ago a paper was published announcing that of the 100 largest economies of the world, 69 are companies and 31 states/countries).
The economy based on the fourth (fifth?) industrial revolution plays on a different board from that of the traditional national states (which kept the tools of the 20th century) and the new cross-border networks of companies are based on intangible, connected assets, global.
We come from a global society in which power organized.
When she became civilized, that power was based on law.
But today the winning companies have become the most effective.
And they provide innovative solutions through new technologies, having moved to a supranational dimension where they move faster.
And society validates them.
Adheres.
Buys.
Edgard Morin says that reality can never be divided into parcels and that complexity precisely consists of the unbreakable bonds of the entangled, the inextricable.
Well, apparently, technological evolution has allowed a certain type of division, such as regulatory (sometimes punitive) national states, to be surpassed (at least in part) by the totality.
Thomas Friedman writes that the great change of this time is produced in a globalization that is supported by 4 forces: what each individual can now do (thanks to the technologies), through the new machines (which are not relevant by themselves but by how people can act with them), which generates more -and more diverse- flows among all and therefore transforms society (which is less national).
And nothing more.
Therefore, it is worth asking why events that in the 20th century affected processes in the 21st century do not have the same effect.
For Argentines, the moral is forceful: the way to be successful in the world of the third decade is to have the instruments that allow this pro-silence and adapt to all kinds of "old" obstacles.
Innovative people, inventive companies, adaptive organizations, disruptive knowledge.
While (as now) we continue to believe in the old tools of the 20th century, the world exhibits an agenda of rapids that already fly higher than the traditional ones.
Speaking of flying: Of the nearly 2,000 satellites orbiting the earth, 80% belong to private corporations.
International business specialist, President of the Argentine chapter of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
look too
Data-driven economy: the misunderstood backwardness
Economy 2023: a difficult world for Argentina