Are We in a De‐Globalization Process? The Evidence from Global Trade During 2007–2017

Abstract

Through the analysis of statistical data, some scholars believe that the globalization of trade is declining, and de‐globalization has become a trend, even since the financial crisis in 2008. However, the superficial decline of global trade volume cannot be taken as a corollary of the de‐globalization. It needs go deep into the structural analysis, and “globalization or de‐globalization” should be discussed by analyzing whether the global trade structure has changed. This paper finds that during 2007–2017, the global trade resistances are clearly classified, and trade resistance in the global community has increased significantly. Second, an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is applied to divide global trade relations into two categories: intimate trade relations, whose barriers are mainly related to geographical distance; and unfriendly trade relations with high artificial barriers. Third, the trade purity indicator (TPI) is introduced to describe the trade environment of countries, and its evolution indicates after the financial crisis and for quite a long time, the structure of global trade has not changed much. And it shows some deterioration trend and structural adjustment after 2015, which indicates an opportunity for the emergence of de‐globalization in such an international environment full of uncertainty and challenges.

Export trade structure transformation and countermeasures in the context of reverse globalization

“…The innovation of this paper is mainly from the perspective of country level and compares the differential impact of reverse globalization on the exports of different country categories. This paper holds that reverse globalization hinders the development of export trade in EU countries, which partially supports the research results of Du ¨r et al [8] and Li et al [12]. In addition, this paper concludes for the first time that developing and non-EU countries' exports are more affected by reverse globalization than those of developed countries and EU countries.…”

“…In addition, some scholars have studied the countermeasures to deal with the impact of reverse globalization. James [11] considered that the decrease in cross-border capital flows and the slowdown in world trade growth accelerated the development of reverse globalization, while the effective reduction of trade barriers related to geographical distance and artificially high barriers can better cope with the uncertainty of international trade cooperation caused by reverse globalization [12]. He et al [10] believed that China should improve regional transportation and communication infrastructure, reduce geographical trade costs, facilitate enterprises access to export market, maintain the export scale of existing exporters, and improve the competitiveness of enterprises to explore foreign markets, so as to reduce the impact of reverse globalization on China's manufacturing export trade.…”