A provocative essay exploring how isolationism weakens the global economy.
Nations are turning away from each other via sanctions, trade wars and real wars. With every shock, governments double down on self-sufficient economics, the global supply chain gets a little weaker. 'Securonomics' sounds resilient, but it's terrible news for individual prosperity, shared equality, national security and international cooperation.
A striving for national self-sufficiency is shaping up to be one of the greatest forces of twenty-first century geopolitics and economics - yet it is a desire that is only hazily understood, both in its nature and its likely consequences. In Exile Economics, Ben Chu lays out the dangers of the current obsession with isolationism. By focusing on some key internationally traded commodities - agriculture, energy, metals and high-technology - he demonstrates just how thoroughly enmeshed and almost unfathomably interconnected our economies have become. Chu traces out the implications on all our individual and daily lives of any serious attempts to unravel this cat's cradle.
Exile Economics will be an essential guide to this new world in all its promise and peril.
'A smart, vivid and humane account of the way the world really works' TIM HARFORD
'This is the book to read if you want to understand what might be about to hit the world economy' EVAN DAVIS
The dangerous race for self-sufficiency has begun. Be warned.
Nations are turning away from each other. Faith in globalisaton has been fatally undermined by the pandemic, the energy crisis, surging trade frictions and swelling great power rivalry. A new vision is vying to replace what we've known for many decades. This vision - Exile Economics - entails a rejection of interdependence, a downgrading of multilateral collaboration and a striving for greater national self-sufficiency. The supporters of this new order argue it will establish genuine security, prosperity and peace. But is this promise achievable? Or a seductive delusion?
Through the stories of globally traded commodities - from silicon to steel and from soybeans to solar panels - economics journalist Ben Chu illustrates the intricate web of interdependence that has come to bind nations together - and underlines the dangers of this new push to isolationism. Exile Economics is an essential guide to this new world in all its promise and peril.
