In the book that brought him fame, John Maynard Keynes celebrated the “extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man . . . which came to an end in August, 1914” — the first wave of globalisation, killed off by the Great War.
We have just gone through a second era of globalisation, just as extraordinary as the first. It has made billions of people wealthier and freer. But those who feel left behind by the global economy — above all the native working class of western countries — are now rebelling.
Does this mark another end of globalisation, which we will lament in the way Keynes mourned the open economy of his youth? There are three reasons to think today’s open global economy can withstand the assault