Have We Entered a New Era of Crisis in Global Political Economy?

Any student who has partaken in a module on Global Political Economy or is indeed enrolled in a course in this field of study would agree that the idea of a crisis under our current climate is quite comprehendible, given various economic and political issues that have arisen before the global populace. Although it would be considerably convenient for me to proceed this basis off the origination of Covid-19 and the subsequent rippling effects that it has inflicted upon the world, I firmly believe that issues pertaining to the impending crisis are rooted in the impact of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Many critics and theorists in the field of Global Political Economy have highlighted this event to have exposed the inefficacies of our global interconnectedness in an economical sense. Whilst this has been a common product of extensive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis, we also witness how the “Great Recession” still had a profound impact on the global economy a decade on from its’ onset (Ravenhill,2016). 

The intention of this essay is to explore how the ramifications of this crisis have combined with rapidly developing trends before the pandemic to formulate a “cauldron of uncertainty” for the ensuing decade.

Throughout my essay, I will delve into the multiple facets of this precarious potion; deglobalisation, nationalism, and the exponential rise of China. I will discuss these factors thoroughly, elaborate on how Covid-19 has accelerated and accentuated these issues and what the Global Political Economy can expect to encounter in the aftermath of this pandemic.

Before I arrive at the concluding stages of this essay however, I am going to begin by dissecting the profound impact the “Great Recession” initially incurred on the global stage.

The convergence of global economy makes all countries and all markets sensible to the happenings in other countries, and this is commonly referred to as the “contagious effect” (Njiforti, 2015). A key concept heavily emitted by contemporary Global Political Economy is the global interconnectedness of finance and trade which has been facilitated by the free flow of capital between markets. The neoliberal doctrine is rooted in this concept and having emerged since the late twentieth century, it had continually assured supporters and opposition alike through producing impressive gains for states and individual actors.

 Nevertheless, fervidness for deregulation and the permeability of states and markets encouraged by neoliberal advocates encountered a devastating blow in the sudden onset of the Global Financial Crisis. A combination of an overinflated housing bubble followed by the subprime mortgage crisis (Bernanke, 2009) lead to the demise of some of the world’s largest investment banks who handled portfolios of some of the highest net worth individuals across the world. The International Monetary Fund estimated that large U.S. and European banks lost more than $1 trillion on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 (Reuters,2009). More than any other financial meltdown in the post-war period, the crisis affected major financial centres around the globe (Reinhart and Rogoff,2009). Because of their difficulties, U.S. and European banks pulled back their international loans, triggering severe financial problems and debt crises in countries that had been borrowing heavily from abroad. International trade credits also dried up, bringing exports and imports to a standstill in many sectors and countries. Financial contagion was felt particularly strongly in countries whose financial systems were already vulnerable because of home-grown housing bubbles, financial excesses or large current account deficits. Countries such as Germany, Ireland, Spain, UAE, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the four countries in the UK were exposed, Iceland proving to be a particularly dramatic example; between 2008 and 2011, Iceland’s all 3 largest private commercial banks failed (The Economist,2008). The impact of the financial crisis also spread globally through various spill overs operating through the “real economy,” such as collapsing exports, commodity prices, and remittance payments (Helleiner, 2011).

A primary yet more incendiary reaction to the following recession was ironically state intervention. Whilst many people actively embraced the benefits of neoliberalism’s free-market ideals, it was evident to even the most stubborn upholders of the doctrine that state intervention was necessary to mitigate the “contagious effect” that penetrated all nodes of the global financial system. Governments bailed out dubiously named “too big to fail banks” such as Goldman Sachs and Citigoup and it was estimated in the USA alone the cost of this bailout amounted to $498 billion (Harbert, 2019). A series of financial sector bailouts in 2008 sparked a full-blown sovereign debt crisis in Europe which has become known as the European Sovereign Debt Crisis (Kr?ussl et al,2017). The crisis started in 2009 when the world first realized that Greece could default on its debt. In three years, it escalated into the potential for sovereign debt defaults from Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain. This prompted a bailout in May 2010, where EU leaders and the International Monetary Fund pledged 720 billion to prevent the debt crisis from triggering another Wall Street crash (Council of the European Union, 2010).

 In the decade since the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis, European societies have continued to struggle how to distribute the costs of the financial crisis. Global debt over the last ten years grew from roughly twice the size of global GDP to about 2.4 times 2018’s global GDP. In absolute terms, the world has $72 trillion more debt than there was back in 2007, on the eve of the crisis (Lund,2018).  

 Strict austerity measures to minimise deficits were implemented across countries such as Greece, who cut back on spending and raised taxes to reduce national debts, which fuelled anger in civil society. Combine this sentiment with the terrifying wave of Islamic State terror attacks and unprecedented refugee influx that descended upon Europe, it can be reasonable deduced by anybody with knowledge regarding international relations that this facilitates the perfect conditions for nationalism and deglobalisation enthusiasm to prosper.

 Recent years’ events have indeed upheld this statement. Far-right political parties and nationalist candidates have gained significant influence in regional and national-level elections, and EU parliamentary elections. Multinational corporations benefitting from favourable tax breaks also added fuel to the growing fire. It is visible from France, where Marine LePen of the National Front won 33.9% votes in the second round of presidential elections in 2017, to the Netherlands, where the Freedom Party has become the biggest opposition party in the parliament and to Italy, where the far-right League Party gained a foothold in a populist ruling coalition in the government. These nationalist forces have been able to shape and reshape state policies as well as the European agenda by either taking positions in the parliament and coalition government. Moreover, ten far-right parties in the European Parliament have launched a new political bloc, called Identity and Democracy (ID), with the mission to resist immigration, increase security, and fight EU bureaucracy. In the past decades, nationalist parties and politicians across Europe have found a common voice and have learned to strategically capitalize on every single possible crisis to influence voters’ frustration with the political establishment, concerns about immigration and security, and scepticism about the porous effect of globalization and Europeanization (Zang,2021).

Whilst one may be forgiven into thinking the growing phenomena of deglobalisation and nationalism have been solely confined to Europe, a key aspect of the global geopolitical and economic discourse in this regard has been Trump’s tumultuous tenure as President of the United States. Writing this essay from a post-Trump administration perspective, it can be upheld that Trump’s period as POTUS was one laden with controversy. Trump’s presidency sent ripple effects not only on a nationwide basis, but also on an international stage.

 On a domestic basis, a central theme to Trump’s reign is what Sartori earlier labelled as “polarized pluralism”, where mainstream moderate views are gradually radicalized and replaced by polarised views (Sartori 1966). Since  Trump’s inauguration, the strife between Democrats and Republicans deepened significantly, even spilling over as recently with the insurrection at the Capitol building in January of this year. Like the prominent businessman Trump was before his political career, Trump utilised his ability in selling an idea to garner significant support and to provide a strong foundation for the basis of his presidency, ideas in which Democrats strongly contested. The theme of US jobs being sent overseas and unchecked immigration increasing competition for remaining American jobs were the key pillars of Trump's campaign (Macgregor-Bowles and C. Bowles, 2017). Trump’s discourse explicitly tapped into the sense of economic insecurity and desire to reverse globalisation (Stokes,2018), intentionally drawing in mass voter support from regions deprived of the wealth generated by neoliberal globalisation, such as the Rust Belt, Midwest and Deep South. Trump’s anti-globalisation rhetoric also paved its’ way into immigration policy, leading to what many would argue America’s most stringent crackdown on illegal immigration since the state’s very inception. He explained that the US “must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs” and protection “will lead to great prosperity and strength” and in having done so this appealed to the rational self-interest of the aforementioned that were left behind by the processes of globalisation (Stokes,2018). Particular targets of Trump’s immigration attacks were Latin America, where he built a 450-mile wall at the southern border (Fox,2021) and Muslim-majority countries, where three months into his tenure he initiated a travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries (Miller Center, 2021).

 All of these policies were perfectly encapsulated under the memorable MAGA slogan, otherwise known as “Make America Great Again”. For Trump and his staunch supporters alike, this represented an “American first” approach, one which he stubbornly believed would serve as a protectionist tactic for Americans from the threats of globalised forces.

On the global stage, the US has played a central role in creating our global rules-based system (Stiglitz,2018). Being at the core of the foundations of several integral global actors, such as the IMF, World Bank and NAFTA, the USA has successfully managed to assert itself as the global superpower ever since the post-war period. Nevertheless, this “American first” approach aforementioned had to be implemented on the global stage for it to serve at the bequest of his supporters. He focused on bilateral trade deficits, promising to reduce those, and by implication, the multilateral trade deficit. The reasoning was simple: with less imports (or more exports), employment and wages of his supportive constituents would increase (Stiglitz,2018). Trump pursued a governing vision that challenged the hard-won policy and institutional commitments of global democratic liberalism. Trump’s predominantly nationalist foreign policy represented a deep ambivalence towards to the liberal international regimes that America has helped birth and sustain since the end of the Second World War (Stokes,2018).

His erratic and impulsive personality often resulted in him openly deriding and undermining major multilateral institutions such as the UN over the course of his presidency. One of his first major actions was withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership, representing his protectionist stance in sheltering domestic companies from potentially more competitive foreign companies. He also withdrew from the Paris agreement, an agreement which is a global attempt to tackle the ever-present and future dangers we face with climate change (McGrath, 2021).

Trump’s economic and political diplomacy was also quite the erratic spectacle and most certainly ignited major friction around the globe. Trump’s political relationships with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea dominated media attention, often for the wrong reasons. The puzzling relationship held with Kim Jong Un sent the world into panic when Trump threatened North Korea with numerous sanctions via his Twitter handle, almost manifesting a nuclear war into reality between the two states. Only then in June 2019, Trump became the first US president to cross over into North Korean territory when he met Kim Jong Un at the DMZ. Regarding Iran, In May 2018 Trump decided to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal which was implemented to contain Iran’s nuclear programme. A year later, tensions ignited between the Trump administration and the Middle East country, eventually boiling over to the fatal drone attack on Iranian General Soleimani in early January last year.

While Trump’s relationship with Iran and North Korea heavily concerned scholars of global political economy, Trump’s relationship with the burgeoning rise of the CCP in China would prove to be the cornerstone of Trump’s instable, volatile foreign policy. In both an economic and political sense, Trump clashed with China on numerous occasions over his period as president. In the first month of his presidency, one of his first moves was launching a trade war against China by slapping tariffs of between 30 and 50 per cent on solar panels and washing machines (Haass, 2021). During this trade war, tariffs were imposed on more than $350 billion worth of Chinese goods and on billions of dollars’ worth of steel and aluminium (Politico, 2021) with subsequent similar Chinese retaliation. Between July 2018 and August 2019, the United States announced plans to impose tariffs on more than $550 billion of Chinese products, and China retaliated with tariffs on more than $185 billion of U.S. goods. A September 2019 study by Moody’s Analytics found that the trade war had already cost the U.S. economy nearly 300,000 jobs and an estimated 0.3% of real GDP. Other studies put the cost to U.S. GDP at about 0.7%. A 2019 report from Bloomberg Economics estimated that the trade war would cost the U.S. economy $316 billion by the end of 2020, while more recent research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University found that U.S. companies lost at least $1.7 trillion in the price of their stocks as a result of U.S. tariffs imposed on imports from China (Denmark, 2021).

Overall, Trump’s “neo-mercantilist” approach to international trade ultimately caused more harm than benefit. In 2019, the United States’ trade deficit with China was approximately $345 billion, roughly the same level as 2016. How did his primary nemesis, China, fare from this trade war and more importantly, how have China risen to compete with the global superpower that is the USA?

A contemporary essay on the status of GPE would be redundant if the accelerating global superpower of the People’s Republic of China were not mentioned. The dynamic rise of China as a global economic and political actor is a major topic of current academic and political discourse today. This global power shift will be one of the most important transformations in international politics in modern history. The direction that China and Western-Chinese relations take may well "define the strategic future of the world for years to come" (Bergsten et al. 2006). So, where did this exceptional rise spring from?

With the demise of the Maoist period in 1978, China transitioned from a closed economy to a market-led economy. Since 1979, the annual growth rate of trade has jumped exponentially and has averaged at being more than 15% (Lin,2017). As extractive industries such as coal mining and farming and secondary industries like manufacturing began to be privatised, China quickly became an export-orientated economy, exploiting cheap and plentiful labour. It became dependent on export-oriented growth thus relying on the global economy and the neoliberal doctrine, which facilitated FDI inflows that continuously propelled the Chinese economy to economic growth (Hung, 2012). Between 1990 and 2005, China contributed 28 % to the increase of global GDP, a remarkable outlier compared to the United States, 19 %, and the rest of OECD,18 %. By 2010, China overtook Germany to become the largest exporting country in the world and 4 years later, Chinese GDP measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) overtook that of the United States, making China the largest economy in the world (Lin, 2017). Rapid economic and infrastructural developments were undertaken with the state’s increasing wealth, such as the Greater Bay Area, a “Silicon Valley East,” in southern China, which grouped global financial centres such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen together.

 By the beginning of Trump’s presidency, China had already exponentially ascended to a podium place in the GPE arena.

 As previously mentioned, China and the United States engaged in a trade war over the past five years and contrary to Trump’s objective and claims, China prevailed. China grew at or above 6% in 2018 and 2019, with tariffs costing about 0.3% of GDP over those years, according to Yang Zhou, an economist at the University of Minnesota (Bloomberg News, 2021). Benefitting from trade surpluses from this trade war and other foreign trading agreements, China hold enormous foreign currency reserves (US$3.3 trillion before the trade war to (Lin,2017)), evoking China’s rapid hold of dominance as a major component in international financial markets. Additionally, China proposed an eventual end to the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency and has taken active steps to internationalize the use of renminbi. The RMB has already surpassed the dollar to become Asia’s new reference currency with the growth of RMB-based trade and settlements in the region. (Wang,2017).

It is evident that China is becoming increasingly less reliant on the USA and are without doubt, now competing with the United States in the GPE arena. John Ikenberry claimed that China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end and whilst many reading my essay so far may see this as a step too far for the CCP’s led state, the “One Belt One Road” initiative certainly upholds this staggering claim.

Many would not disagree with me when I state that the “One Belt One Road” initiative is perhaps one of the most ambitious and revolutionary projects to be undertaken since the beginning of this millennium.

Lauded as the masterpiece of President Jinping’s foreign policy, the Belt Road Initiative (OBOR) is a global infrastructure development strategy spanning over 70 countries that focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among multiple countries spread across the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe (Belt and Road Initiative, 2018) (Seth, 2020). The project has a target completion date of 2049 (PR.com,2019), involving building an expansive network of roadways, railways, maritime ports and pipelines. The project covers two parts, both Belt and Road.

The Belt represents the “Silk Road Economic Belt,” which is land-based and is expected to connect China with Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe, creating a cohesive economic area by building both hard infrastructure such as rail and road links upon historic Silk Road routes and soft infrastructure such as trade agreements and a common commercial legal structure with a court system to police the agreements (Kuo and Kommenda, 2018). Two developments include:

 The New Eurasian Land Bridge, running from Western China to Western Russia including the Silk Road Railway (Berti, 2020). The $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that will connect southwestern China to and through Pakistan, allowing access to Arabian Sea routes. However, construction has been delayed and the CCP has diverted more attention and energy into the Road “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” which is sea-based and connects coastal China to the Mediterranean via Singapore-Malaysia, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea (Seth,2020). Regularly termed the “Maritime Silk Road”, China has particularly targeted the eastern coasts of Africa, which forms as a crucial intermediary between Asia and the Suez Canal. At Mombasa’s port, China has built a rail and road connection to Kenya’s capital Nairobi. To the northeast of Mombasa, a large port with 32 berths including an adjacent industrial area including infrastructure with traffic corridors to South Sudan and Ethiopia is being built. A deep-water port, a satellite city, an airfield and an industrial area are being built in Tanzania. Closer to the Mediterranean, the Teda Egypt special economic zone is being built as a joint Chinese-Egyptian project (Broadman,2007) (Erling,2019).

Additionally, China is participating in large areas of Africa in the construction and operation of key infrastructure. In Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia, dams have been built with Chinese help. In Nairobi, China is funding the construction of the tallest building in Africa, the Pinnacle Towers. China’s involvement with Nigeria is driving massive wealth generation and development for the city of Lagos. With the Chinese investments of 60 billion dollars for Africa announced in September 2018, China’s perspective appears to be that Africa can be utilised as a platform for the expansion of the “Road”, and as a source of unparalleled inexpensive labour and raw materials.

Naturally, one of the biggest infrastructure and investment projects in history requires significant financing. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, proposed initially by China, is a multilateral finance development bank which mainly provides funding for infrastructure projects primarily in Asia. Composed of 103 members, the institution is ranked highly, possessing the highest credit ranking from the three top credit agencies: Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. In the year of 2019, the AIIB had invested $12.04 billion in various infrastructure projects, funding infrastructure projects throughout Africa and Asia (AIIB, 2021).

While China continues to pitch OBOR as an all-inclusive project for regional development, other nations perceive it as a strategic move by China to permanently attain regional hegemony level and to convert global trade flows into a sinocentric international trade network (Seth,2020).

 Western critics were sceptical of the CCP’s communist state and their growing dominance in Global Political Economy, and the emergence of Covid-19 from Wuhan in China has only strengthened their concerns. I could retrieve in-depth analysis and information on Covid-19’s global impact but I contest that sentiment in believing that information surrounding this “pandemic” is hazy to say the least. I can definitively state however, that Covid-19 has certainly accentuated and aggravated the factors I have touched upon in this essay: I have observed since March 2020 growing nationalism in Europe and North America, some laying the fault of the contagion on Asian communities. Cities with many Asian residents such as New York and Los Angeles have witnessed Asian hate crimes (Yam, 2021) even leading to homicides and murders in San Francisco and Atlanta (Ho, 2021). The phenomenon vaccine nationalism has arisen, where states like the UK have explicitly stated that they will vaccinate their population first, before granting other countries the remainder of their vaccines. Some theorists claim we are seeing a return of the state, where major proportions of labour forces are being placed on “furlough”, reliant on the state’s exchequer. Western populaces are questioning how lockdowns will be funded whilst the ECB and the Federal Reserve continue operating the printing machines. This consequentially gives rise to questions over incoming hyperinflation, perhaps leading to another period of austerity. Restrictions on travel are nearly on a global scale, global supply chains have been majorly disrupted; this all feeds into the deglobalisation narrative.

Covid-19 is still an ongoing global health issue, and I believe if I were to elaborate further on its’ potential intricate impacts, I think I will reflect on this literature in the future and disagree. What I do believe is the aforementioned has only made the “cauldron of uncertainty” I previously alluded to ready to boil over.

The question remains; have we entered a new era of crisis in Global Political Economy?

 Yes. As I outlined above, even before the onset of Covid-19, I believe that we were poised to encounter turbulency for the proceeding decade ahead. These facets combine with the uncertainty of Covid-19 to formulate a myriad of dimensions that make this crisis quite difficult to entangle. What I expect from this crisis is a more aggressive relationship between the West and China. (Kennedy, 1989) argued that fundamental global power shifts between 1500 and 1945 resulted in rivalries, conflicts and wars. From my perspective, the Global Political Economy is inevitably orbiting towards a multipolar system. China will arguably be the strongest economy post Covid courtesy of its’ totalitarian yet astute approach to containing the contagion. I feel many states will look to China in their recovery from the pandemic and this will further strengthen the Belt Road Initiative.

 On the Western front, nationalist and protectionist policies may prevail in democracies post Covid. The strength of the EU appears to be weakening in both an economic and political sense, as we observe how “European values” are beginning to be forgone whilst vaccine procurement and disagreements over restrictions creates adversity and tension between states. I consider this tension will lead to a gradual decline of the supranational European power over the next decade, potentially fostering a bipolar environment between the USA and China. It is upon the political compass where these two superpowers will clash and it is more than likely as the Chinese economy’s engine continues to rev up, their political ideals will propagate just how neoliberal capitalism emitted from the USA in the 1970s. China is now a major threat to the accustomed American economic and political hegemony, and I believe the ignition of this crisis will lay upon the mediums Biden’s administration chooses to protect his country’s status as the global superpower.

 Nevertheless, history portrays, the global populace is not unfamiliar with bipolarity and it was only thirty years ago when Japan was supposed to overtake the USA as the leading superpower, which never materialised.

Or will we merely experience a concerted collaborative global effort to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, nurture successful worldwide recovery and possibly emerge into a post-Covid landscape emblematic of the Roaring Twenties?

 It will be compelling to witness how the Global Political Economy conforms to either but personally, I would advocate for the latter.

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