Timmy Elsewhere

At the GI.

Globalisation isn’t new, but then you knew that, right? European economies in 1900 were more integrated than they are now?

Tags: Timmy Elsewhere

1 Mark Wadsworth // Mar 27, 2008 at 11:48 am

Ah yes, but that resulted in World War One, so that proves that globalisation is A Bad Thing.
2 Matthew // Mar 27, 2008 at 6:20 pm

It’s hardly news, though it is it? The Economist has been banging on about pre-war globalisation for years.

Also, “it describes quite accurately the EU attitiude to extra-EU trade, something to be feared, something to be protected against”

Are you sure about this? The EU’s external trade is enormous.
3 Jim Winfield // Mar 27, 2008 at 10:43 pm

Isn’t it also a matter that the trade 100 years ago was mostly commodities? Raw wool and cotton, rolls of cloth, wheat, tea, coffee, sugar? When people spent most of their money on bread and sweet tea, they naturally traded globally. When the value-added is in turning the wheat into Danish pastries, and the coffee into skinny lattes, then the proportion of GDP in trade will fall.
Now that so many goods are in huge volumes, and tastes are becoming similar everywhere, many such goods are now commoditised and traded world-wide.
Anyway, the proportion of GDP in trade isn’t important - the presence of laws restricting trade is the really evil thing.

Tim Worstall