From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalization

For the past fifty years or so, the global economy has been run on three big assumptions:  that globalization will continue to spread; that trade is the engine of growth and development; and that economic power is moving from the West to the East. More recently, it has also been taken as a given that our interconnectedness—both physical and digital—will increase without limit.  But what if all these assumptions are wrong? What if everything is about to change? Indeed, what if it has already started to change but we just haven't noticed?

Increased automation, the advent of additive manufacturing (3D printing, for example), changes in shipping and environmental pressures, among other factors, are coming together to create a fast-changing global economic landscape in which the rules are being rewritten—at once a challenge and an opportunity for companies and countries.