Globalization, petty trade between friends

Since 2010, and even more recently with the health crisis and the war in Ukraine, globalization has entered a phase of unprecedented complexity: the recomposition of global value chains on a regional basis, resulting in the relocation of industrial activities close to markets (onshoring or nearshoring), and “derisking” practices involving the doubling of supplies, go hand in hand with an acceleration in the relocation of service jobs, stimulated by a dominant digital capitalism. The resurgence of tariff and non-tariff protectionism, the call for implementation of “mirror clauses” in international trade, the introduction of carbon adjustment mechanisms at Europe’s borders, and above all massive subsidies to industries in Europe, as in the United States or China, to encourage reindustrialization, are opening new structures for globalization. Decarbonization of economies is also reshuffling the geography of global value chains. Does geopolitics favor a “globalization among friends” centered around NATO member countries, and marked by a “decoupling” of the United States and China? What is Europe’s place in this reconfiguration of globalization, and what is the scope of its new industrial policy compared to that of the USA or China in the strategic fields of renewable energy and decarbonization technologies, artificial intelligence, or public and private financing? Is the North-South geopolitical decoupling between France and its former African colonies a reality, and what would be its consequences for a young continent whose population is set to double by 2050?