As a percentage of global GDP, world exports, which have been on a slow steady decline in the past two years, have peaked. These signs point to the slow death of the form of globalisation that the rich world has invented, refined and patrolled since the end of the second world war. There is a worry that these years resemble the previously most integrated period of world history: the Gilded Age between 1870 and 1914. As developing nations’ share of global GDP rises, the effect will be to shrink the ratio of trade to global income. Trade deals need to show nations are open for business by putting people’s interests, not corporate interests, at their heart.

Source: The Guardian November 20, 2016 19:34 UTC