The theme in front of the World Economic Forum meeting was the rising anti-globalisation trend. Chinese President Xi Jinping who came to Davos like a chief guest, was supposed to led the pro-globalisation camp.
In the opposite was the swearing ceremony of Donald Trump who challenged the world trade order accusing that China is the only beneficiary in the current format.
On the fate of globalisation, only the future can give some answer. This was the concluding point of the summit. Expectedly, Mr XI made a sound campaign for it and defended the benefits of economic globalization and its ability to lift people out of poverty.
But the West was not equally zealous. Rather they seemed a confused group in the context of a divorcing US and a drifting Britain from EU.
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, argued that the gains of globalization needed to be shared more broadly for it to survive. She was disjoining with the Chinese version and obviously voicing the West’s approach. Lagarde’s was the institutionalized voice of the West and China may have got it correctly.
A rather convincing approach of the West came from Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. For him, globalisation will have a less predictable path in future. Here, some countries turned protectionist while others went in the other direction with deregulated markets.
“I don’t think we’re exiting globalization, I think we’re entering a new stage of international global relations where national policies will shape how globalization eventually develops.” Padoan opined.
All discussions concluded that future of globalisation is quite uncertain and national engagements rather than groupings will decide its future. It seems that ultimately, globalisation has been well affected by Donald Trump. The person who set the tone of the summit was not Mr Xi who was present, rather it was the absenetee Trump.
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