摘要：While there has been a clear anti-Globalization political trend in recentyears, the trade data pains a different picture. Accordin

While there has been a clear anti-Globalization political trend in recentyears, the trade data pains a different picture. According to UN data, trade in goodsand services accounted for a record high share of global GDP in 2024. How can weunderstand these trends? What factors are driving their development?

Ian GOLDIN

Former Vice President andHead of Policy, World Bank; Advisor to PresidentNelson Mandela; Former Chief Executive of Development Bank of Southern Africa

Talk of the death of globalization has been exaggerated. Globalization is not dying, but it is transforming rapidly. Three factors have led to an acceleration of this transformation. First, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to 2022 led to a dramatic change in consumption, trade and work. Second, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is leading to a change in production and services, with robotics and automation increasingly replacing repetitive tasks in manufacturing and services. Third, harmful tariffs imposed by President Trump in 2025 and raising geopolitical divisions further accelerating the transformation.

In addition to these three recent disruptive factors, two underlying secular trends account for the transformation of globalization. The first is the strength of Asian economic growth compared to the rest of the world. Asia is the engine of the global economy, growing at well over double the rate of the rest of the world economy and almost three times the rate of Europe and North America. This means that global trade and investment is increasingly concentrated in the Asia region, and the centre of global economic activity, and along with it globalization, has moved from over the Atlantic to over the Asian region, with almost all the growth in trade in recent years driven by Asian trade and productivity growth.

The second secular trend driving the transformation of globalization is that as per capita incomes rise, consumption patterns change. Manufacturing as a share of GDP is declining relative to services. Many of these services, such as care for the elderly and hospitality services (such restaurants, massages and fitness) are consumed locally and cannot be done remotely or traded internationally). This means that as incomes rises we should expect a decline in the trade in physical products and services, as a share of GDP. AI and technological change is accelerating this, as increasingly robotic and automated processes can do manufacturing and services (such as call centres and administration) which previously was outsourced to low-income locations internationally.

来源：博鳌亚洲论坛