I came of age around the time of the Battle of Seattle in 1999, when activists converged upon the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meetings to protest against globalisation. Meanwhile, the internet covered the media spectacle in ways that left a deep impression.
Having grown up during the fall of apartheid I witnessed the SA economy open and its market flood with global goods. I was so happy to try McDonalds burgers when they entered our country in 1995 - as any teenager in Moscow would have been when Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy paved the way for the first McDonald’s to open on Pushkin Square in 1990.
But by the time of the WTO protests in Seattle I had studied politics and international relations. I knew the seemingly innocent pleasures of capitalism were tied up in ideas called “globalisation” and “neoliberalism”.
Back then the protests against globalisation and free trade were mainly a leftist pushback. They questioned the very foundation of economics as set out by Adam Smith in his idea of absolute advantage in The Wealth of Nations. The resistance to capitalism's story arc was set out by Joseph Stiglitz in 2001 in his trendy book Globalisation and its Discontents.
What is different about the current pushback against free trade and globalisation is that it is coming from both the left and the right. In the intervening period since the Battle of Seattle rapid globalisation has seen both China and Russia ascend in economic and political power with a degree of economic openness and strategic co-operation.
This also flooded the global market with cheap Chinese consumer goods and Russian oil and gas. Simultaneously, the Brics+ bloc has exerted more power over Bretton Woods institutions and leaned in on its trade framework in the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT).
So countries like the US that have until now benefitted from globalisation due to preferential trade agreements and domestic subsidies have seen their manufacturing capacity decline and unemployment increase.
In late 2022 I attended a Financial Times global asset management conference, where many chief economists introduced the idea of “deglobalisation” as economic shocks following the pandemic and the start of the Russia-Ukraine war stress-tested the global economy.
I found this emergent doctrine extremely surprising in a free-market setting. But fast forward to 2024 and this scepticism around globalisation, amplified through right wing populism and intractable economic weakness, becomes a key factor in Trump getting elected.
Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, argues that the current convergence between left and right around the brokenness of free trade is an alter-globalisation, but it does not mean everyone who questions the trade status quo is pro-Trump. Moreover, Trump’s America First policy simplifies the concept of a trade deficit in ways that are so blunt and crude that some economists dismiss it as laughable.
But I am interested to see if America First could provide enough disruption - even if unhelpful to developing countries in the short-term - to cause a secular reconfiguration of global trade that is fit for purpose for the complexities of today's global economy. No matter how uncomfortable US tariffs currently feel for SA, they have forced a difficult and necessary conversation that is forcing government out of its complacency on trade policy.
There is no option but to do a detailed analysis of how trade strategy could better serve SA. Now is the time to adopt a multipronged strategy focused on trade diplomacy and diversification, alongside regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). And then implement it by enhancing competitiveness and investing in innovation, infrastructure and skills development.
• Dr Masie is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
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