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Nicholas Spiro

What ruptured globalisation means for international finance

As recognised by Canada, the fracturing of the global economy is in full swing. Policymakers and businesses should expect it to continue

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Shipping containers are stacked at a port in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on August 1, 2025. While the unravelling of globalisation has been a major theme for some time, the primacy of national security and geopolitics is a relatively new phenomenon that is reshaping the global economy and markets. Photo: AFP
Nicholas Spiro is a partner at Lauressa Advisory, a specialist London-based real estate and macroeconomic advisory firm.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney does not mince his words. Writing for The Economist last November, Carney argued the post-Cold War had collapsed and said the world was “entering an era of ‘variable geometry’” involving “pragmatic coalitions, built around shared interests, and occasionally shared values, rather than shared institutions”.

The essay, it turns out, was the prelude to a hard-hitting speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20. Carney told attendees that it was important to recognise that the international system was “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition”. Great powers were “using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited”.

He urged the world’s middle-sized countries to reduce “the leverage that enables coercion … diversification internationally is not just economic prudence – it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy”. Carney, a former central banker, also argued it would be a mistake to mourn the demise of the rules-based order. “Nostalgia is not a strategy”, he said.

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