If globalization is good for the global economy, then you might expect the current wave of nationalism to be bad for the global economy. Is there evidence to support that claim?
Consider the two biggest factors that are currently slowing global growth:
1. Russia’s attack on Ukraine
2. China’s zero Covid policy
The role of nationalism in Putin’s expressed goal of recreating the Russian empire is obvious. But what about China?
China faces a dilemma due to the fact that its population was vaccinated with a relatively weak vaccine. As a result it adopted a zero Covid policy, which was actually fairly successful at containing Covid until the highly contagious Omicron variant appeared on the scene. Now China is shutting down entire cities in an almost hopeless attempt to arrest the spread of Covid.
Why don’t Chinese citizens use a highly effective mRNA vaccine as a booster? Because the Chinese government won’t let them. And why won’t they let them? Because that would be tantamount to admitting that their homegrown Sinopharm vaccine was inferior. In other words, nationalism.
Xi Jinping is much more nationalistic than several previous Chinese leaders. People like Hu Jintao and Deng Xiaoping were all about opening up China to the outside world, to learn from others. I doubt they would have made this mistake. (Of course Mao was extremely nationalistic.)
PS. In a comment after my previous post on Paxlovid, commenter Garrett directed me to TheZvi’s blog:
Many have made the observation that if you had told people two years ago that we would have a cure (not a vaccine, but a cure!) for Covid-19 that was free, safe and effective, but that no one wanted to take it, and Congress wasn’t willing to fund further purchases, people would not have believed you. And yet here we are.
Incredible. (As is the lack of news coverage.)
READER COMMENTS
Bob
Jun 11 2022 at 3:38pm
Do you acknowledge there is a difference between economic globalism and political globalism? I think there is obviously a difference. The former is basically free trade. The latter is basically about taking away local/national/individual sovereignty/liberty and subjecting them to the regulations/rules/whims a small group of global elites (i.e. Davos man). You seem to be ignorant or deny a difference when you conflate nationalism that is anti-political-globalism for one that is anti-free trade.
I don’t necessarily take Putin at his word, but his stated reasons for invading Ukraine were about NATO expansion, i.e., political globalism not economic globalism.
Brandon
Jun 11 2022 at 9:01pm
Libertarians have been talking about ways to limit national sovereignties for a long time now. Heck, Mises, Hayek, and Madison (among others) all sought ways to abolish said sovereignties…
Phil H
Jun 11 2022 at 9:42pm
There’s a real question of whether there is (or should be) such a thing as local or national sovereignty or liberty. One reasonable position to take is that there’s individuals; past that it’s all politics.
You may have a preference for local politics over Davos politics. Personally my preferences run the other way – local politicians seem to be incredibly low-quality, and Davos politicians are informed by very high-quality people (though the Davos set themselves aren’t much better than average). But I think both of these are just preferences for different parts of the political swamp. Individual liberty is the only thing that stands apart from the mess of politics, isn’t it?
Mark Z
Jun 14 2022 at 3:40pm
In the US, we defend having a plurality of polities having sovereignty on the grounds that they serve as ‘laboratories of democracy;’ that is, they can compete with one another for citizens. Fewer, more centralized government means less competition and fewer opportunities for exit when a government suppresses individual freedom. But at least as important, IMO, is that what kind of government you want is largely a matter of subjective preference, and people of different states, provinces, or countries tend to have different preferences.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2022 at 1:29am
You said: “I don’t necessarily take Putin at his word, but his stated reasons for invading Ukraine were about NATO expansion”
Two points:
That is obviously a completely unjustifiable reason for invading a country. Finland and Sweden also plan to join NATO–will Putin attack them as well?
You need to become better informed on Putin’s actual objectives, which are to recreate the Russian empire. He is using NATO as an excuse. Ukraine was not about to join NATO. In any case, NATO is no threat to Russia.
Bob
Jun 12 2022 at 3:28pm
Go and read Putin’s February 24 speech. Pretty much every claim made is
factually true. NATO denies Russia membership in the 90s. NATO expands eastward after verbally promising not to. US officials hint at Ukraine NATO membership. The US/CIA instigates a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that overthrows the Russian leaning incumbent. The Ukraine regime/US then start backing/funding literal neo-nazi’s who, since 2014, have killed over 13,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine. For example, Nazis burned alive peaceful anti-coup protesters in 2014. These monsters exist in large part due to US/CIA imperialism/globalism.
Putin: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine…”
Anyway, the point is that I think the recent rise in nationalism (America-First-Trumpism, Brexit, Russia, etc) is more about a healthy response to evil political globalism than it is about free trade. By evil political globalism I mean US/CIA support of radical extremists (eg Nazis in Ukraine, future ISIS fighters in Iraq/Syra, etc), WEF-installed politicians (Schwab publicly brags about “infiltrating” national governments) (e.g. “In the future you will own nothing and be happy.”, social credit scores, vaccine passports), WHO policies (e.g. the next pandemic permits suspension of individual liberties, justifying arbitrary lockdowns, forced vaccinations, etc), IPPC policies that obliterate the energy sector, impoverishing humanity, for the sake of an insignificant problem 100 years from now, etc. You seem to completely ignore these civilization destroying threats that recent nationalism has mostly been against. Instead, you tunnel vision on the foolish and relatively tic-tac protectionist policies that (usually) accompanies it.
I will finally add that, as far as I know, it is the NATO countries who have
instigated/started the massive sanctions. Biden/NATO/Ukraine could have easily diplomatically resolved the war months ago, avoiding sanctions. Instead, they are deliberately prolonging war and death by giving Ukraine billions of dollars, fighting to the last Ukrainian, and furthering anti-free trade policies.
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2022 at 11:56am
I’m not going to even respond to this silly Russian propaganda.
Bob
Jun 13 2022 at 2:11pm
I don’t have the time to spend countless hours determining which news sites I should trust, and which I should not trust. A while ago, I decided to get my news on foreign policy from antiwar dot com which is run by great libertarians like Scott Horton.
At the moment, I trust that site more than the mainstream news sites for foreign policy. I’d be happy to change my mind if someone can give a pointed, direct argument that the general sentiment and claims made on antiwar dot com are misleading or false.
Garrett
Jun 11 2022 at 4:54pm
I’m glad you checked out Zvi’s blog. I’d encourage you to look into his posts on covid in China (most recent here), Ukraine (most recent here), and the baby formula shortage (here). Dude’s a rockstar.
Jim Glass
Jun 11 2022 at 9:06pm
Xi’s wolf warrior nationalism goes way beyond Covid vaccines.
Has China Lost Europe?
And Japan just announced it’s doubling its defense spending after 75 years of semi-pacifism. And Australia…
Jon Murphy
Jun 11 2022 at 10:51pm
This is very similar reasoning to the tariff push the Trump Administration did: Americans shouldn’t buy foreign goods because American goods are superior because they are American. The only way the foreign goods could compete was to cheat.
Nationalism does not much to improve people’s lives, but does a lot to ruin them.
TMC
Jun 13 2022 at 4:24pm
US tariffs are based on keeping manufacturing jobs here in the US. Manufacturing jobs tend to be higher paying jobs for the less educated folks. Basically keeping our money at home. Plenty to argue about with that without new creating reasons.
Jon Murphy
Jun 14 2022 at 5:39am
Jobs was another rationale, yes. It too was shot through with the nationalist rhetoric I mentioned.
Jon Murphy
Jun 14 2022 at 9:47am
Let me be a bit more concrete in my comment:
You highlight the nationalistic argument for tariffs in your comment quite well (emphasis added):
It’s not about providing well-paying jobs. After all, tariffs destroy other jobs. It’s about keeping jobs (and money!) away from foreigners.
To wit, you also say:
That’s true, but not in the United States. In the US, manufacturing jobs typically require higher education, sometimes even Masters degrees. Overseas, manufacturing is much less capital intensive and provides far better pay for less educated people than the alternatives. Thus, if the goal was to let manufacturing provide jobs for the less educated, then one would want manufacturing to go overseas.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jun 12 2022 at 4:57pm
I think the decline in globalization in addition to lower growth will lead to greater on average supply shocks and make the Fed’s job a little more difficult, requiring a higher inflation target
Matthias
Jun 12 2022 at 11:52pm
I’m a bit baffled by the Chinese vaccine efforts.
From what I can tell, they aren’t even forcing old people to get vaccinated. (I’m not in a favour of forcing anyone to get vaccinated. But it sure beats forcing everyone to lock down, by comparison.)
You may be right about nationalism. But it seems like it should be easy to cook up a a vaccine that’s a combination of existing Sinovac and a homegrown mRNA vaccine. (Or even appropriate some existing mRNA vaccine via industrial espionage, but pretend you did it yourself.)
Call the combination Sinovac 2 or so and proclaim it to be an improved version that’s even better. Whether the original Sinovac component in the combined vaccine actually does anything or whether the efficacy would be all down to the mRNA part would be besides the point. Just claim that it does..
I’m just spitballing here. Some trained propaganda writer can probably come up with a better scheme and sell it to the public.
Since we are not seeing this, I assume other considerations than just saving face are at work?
Perhaps the repression justified but zero-covid are useful to the regime in other ways?
Perhaps there’s some limit to the competency of their system?
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2022 at 12:23am
I thought that same about mRNA vaccines, but some commenters tell me that these vaccines may be too difficult for the Chinese to create. I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on that issue.
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