What is happening to Globalization?

 January 2017 

Globalism is a key prophetic marker that is a major component of end-time events. Its maturation has been accelerated especially since the end of the 1980s when the Berlin wall came down. Globalism and socialism have been part of the Roman Catholic agenda, and political leaders have consistently complied with the hidden elite behind the scenes in raising globalism’s infrastructure. Globalism had reached a tipping point after 9/11, or so many thought. 

But now globalism is on its back foot and appears to be in retreat as popular movements have reacted against it and elected leaders that oppose globalization such as Donald Trump, strengthened parties that resist it like the Marine Le Pen party in France, and pushed their countries to leave globalist coalitions like the Brexit vote. 

But “unraveling the complex web of international links that that have been established” to support globalism “would be a long and painful process.”

Pascal Lamy, once the EU trade commissioner and a former director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), speaking at annual Davos meeting of global elites, scoffed at the idea that the world is now going to stop the process of globalization and said “the recent slowdown in global trade was only to be expected after years of rapid growth.”

Roberto Azevedo, the current WTO boss, said: “One difference between the 2008 financial crisis and the 1930s is that today we have multilateral rules and the 1930s did not.” Tit-for-tat protectionism, he said, would result in world trade shrinking substantially. “That would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”

“Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that if Trump went ahead with his trade agenda, it would undo all the growth benefits from his tax cuts and infrastructure spending – and then some. The hope at the big international organisations – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD – is that the new president will quickly work out that there are downsides to putting a 45% tariff on Chinese goods: higher consumer prices and retaliation, to name but two.”

Globalization has creates losers, particularly the middle class, and they are in crisis. Globalists have “done little or nothing to ensure that the benefits of greater liberalization have been equitably shared,” she added. Their reaction is now in play. “In recent years the losers have increased in number – and become more vociferous.”

During the financial crisis many countries have quietly been resorting to protectionist measures. Now, under Trump, the American brokered Trans-Pacific Partnership will be scrapped. And a bilateral deal between Brussels and Washington – the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP for short) is dead in the water.

Now the “cult of the strong man” has brought strong leaders in a range of countries that are “not always that respectful of the rules of the game,” said Mark Malloch-Brown, the former UN deputy general secretary, citing Xi in China, Narendra Modi in India, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia and now Donald Trump in the U.S. These make up a formidable cabal on the G20, the group of developed and developing countries that was set up during the financial crisis to provide better global governance. “Bourgeois democracy is being replaced by a generation of Caesars,” Malloch-Brown said.

This is not the first era of globalization. What might be called Globalization 1.0 was alive and well at the end of the 19th century, an era of free trade, mass migration and liberalized capital flows. While technology is faster and global networks are more integrated today, yet the first era of globalization came to an end in World War I. 

“The unspoken question in Davos was whether 20 January 2017 will be another day that will go down in history for all the wrong reasons.” Will the back-pressure on globalization lead to another world war? Davos elites reassured themselves that globalization will continue with a few bumps in the road. They will bide their time until the angst among the middle class get it out of their system, or the economic realities hit them hard once their anti-globalization agendas are implemented. 

Jesus warned that globalization would lead to “wars and rumors of war” in Matthew 24:7 and through the prophet Daniel and the apostle John. He made it clear that globalization will mature in the last days (see Daniel 2, 3, and Revelation 13). Expect to see some dramatic events in the very near future.