Is globalisation unravelling?

As political allies shift, supply chains reorganise, and major powers butt heads, the University of Auckland is bringing some of the world’s most influential economic thinkers to New Zealand to examine what comes next.

On 4 December, two events will feature global heavyweights tackling the big questions shaping trade, finance, and geoeconomics, and what it all means for Aotearoa New Zealand.

The inaugural University of Auckland International Economics Workshop will explore the geoeconomics of the new world order, strategic industrial policy, macro-financial spillovers, and the geopolitics of trade, climate, and critical minerals.

Among the speakers is Harvard University’s Professor Pol Antràs, one of the world’s most cited authorities on global supply chains and trade fragmentation and Professor Stephen Redding, an authority on trade and uncertainty. They're joined by experts including former Reserve Bank Governor Dr Alan Bollard and former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, now Chief Economic Adviser at PwC, Andy Haldane.

In the evening, an event hosted by Juncture: Dialogues on Inclusive Capitalism, Geoeconomic Fragmentation: Challenges and Opportunities, will feature Harvard Business School Professor Laura Alfaro, a globally recognised expert on international investment and former Minister of National Planning in Costa Rica. She’s joined by Haldane, and Business School economics professor and member of the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, Prasanna Gai, for an in-depth conversation about the forces reshaping inclusive growth, financial stability, and cross-border spillovers.

Gai says the two events create a rare opportunity to hear directly from the thought leaders shaping global debates.

“Globalisation is changing in fundamental ways,” he says. “These conversations will help us better anticipate risks, adapt policy, and identify where our comparative advantages will lie.”

Globalisation under pressure

The past decade has seen globalisation buffeted by geopolitical rivalry, technological disruption, and populist politics. With protectionist policies reappearing around the world, some economists argue that globalisation has passed its high-water mark.

Economists are debating whether global value chains are being pulled apart or reconfigured through reshoring, nearshoring, or ‘friendshoring’, where supply chains are focused on countries regarded as political and economic allies.

In recent research, Professor Antràs shows that multinationals don’t just trade with the countries where they have affiliates — they also trade heavily with nearby markets, because sharing fixed costs across their global plants creates deep interdependencies that can magnify the geopolitical spillovers of trade policy. For New Zealand, a small, trade-dependent nation, this shift poses risks and opportunities.

Higher tariffs, US policy swings, and ongoing fractures in global governance all point to a more challenging environment for exporters.

When it comes to trade, climate and migration, University of Auckland Associate Professor Asha Sundaram says she’s looking forward to discussing how globalisation will interact with the rising influence of emerging markets in the world economic order, and the challenges and opportunities that climate change, the race for critical minerals and growing talent flows across borders will engender.

Workshop co-organiser and University of Auckland economics lecturer Chanelle Duley is chairing a panel discussion on trade policy and macroeconomics. She says firms are now at the centre of the story.

“While outsourcing was commonplace in the early stages of globalisation, firms are increasingly expanding their boundaries to secure reliable access to upstream goods as geopolitical tensions and uncertainty intensify.”

These shifts, says Duley, are creating new cross-jurisdictional interdependencies, with important macroeconomic implications.