The big mistakes of the anti-globalisers
From treating trade as optional to overstating the merits of self-sufficiency, these are errors to avoid as we head into a new world.
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A container ship at dock last week at Riga Free Port in Latvia, a nation of under two million that joined the EU in 2004.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Martin Wolf
(FINANCIAL TIMES) - Globalisation is not dead. It may not even be dying. But it is changing. In the process, the institutions that shape it, notably the World Trade Organisation (WTO), are being forced to change, too. We are moving towards a different and far more difficult world. But, in setting our new course, we need to avoid some mistakes. Here are seven:
1. The first is to focus attention only on trade. As Mr Maurice Obstfeld, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has noted, today's fluid global capital markets have generated waves of financial crises, while bringing little evident benefit. Insufficient attention is paid to this reality, largely because the interests in favour of free capital flows are so powerful while their economic impact is so hard for most people to understand.
