Global Free Trade After US Retreat: China and the Prospect of Hybrid Globalization

• In Event: 4149 - Current Topics in World-Systems Research

Abstract

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the TPP and stepped up his attack of free trade, many see that the American role as the leader of the liberal world economic order as characterized by trade globalization is ending. Some predict that other big economies, most notably China, will pick up the pieces and become the new leader of the global free trade system, transforming a US-led globalization into a China-led one. I argue that trade globalization over the last three decades, despite the apparent independence of this process from any particular nation-states, has been grounded on the large and expanding U.S. consumer market, its capital export, the hegemonic status of the US dollar, and US global military supremacy. These unique features of the US political economy have developed over long historical period. Any countries that are aspired to replace the US as the new leader of globalization will have to restructure their political economy into a consumption-driven one, to boost its currency’s international usage, and to effectively project its political military power overseas to protect its capital export. Such restructuring is a grave challenge for China. Before China attains these structural conditions, the new multilateral institutions and agreements that China fostered recently will not supplant the existing, US-led global governing institutions. But they could supplement the existing US-led order to create a hybrid of China-led and US-led globalization characterized by complementary or competing spheres of influence.

Author

• Ho-Fung Hung, Johns Hopkins University