(De-)Globalisation of trade and regionalisation: a survey of the facts and arguments

The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused some international trade distortions, most of which were temporary, since international goods trade flows recovered their pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020. Against this background, geopolitical factors are gaining traction in shaping cross-border trade, as many countries adopted initiatives geared to influencing the relocation of their international firms’ activity and the reorganisation of global value chains. These recent measures, though, can be seen as part of a larger-scale pre-pandemic process that partly called into question the WTO rules-based multilateral framework. Another process under way prior to the outbreak of the pandemic was the slowdown in international trade in goods. All these elements have spurred an active debate on the direction international trade might take and have called into question the future of globalisation. In this paper we provide a survey of the main arguments put forward in this literature and the key stylised facts needed to frame it.