Revision summary
Globalisation meant deep cross-border production and GATT/WTO-style rules that treated efficiency as first. Deglobalisation names tariffs, sanctions, pandemic reshoring and U.S.–China tech security. The WTO’s weakness and regional rewrites such as USMCA show politics back in trade. Trade and data still move; regionalisation is not 1930s autarky. Comment: hyper-globalisation is being displaced; a closed world is not the completed fact.
Model answer
Introduction
Globalisation after the 1990s meant deeper cross-border flows of goods, capital, data and production, under rules associated with the World Trade Organization and with the spirit of GATT. The claim that deglobalisation is displacing globalisation says those flows are now shrinking or being re-routed by politics. The comment should agree in part. A thicker border is real. A closed world is not yet the fact.
Body
What globalisation was
It was not only more trade. It was production networks, container shipping, multinational firms, and a legal bet that most-favoured-nation treatment and bound tariffs would keep politics off the dock. Wallerstein would say it was the latest deepening of a long world-economy. Liberal institutionalists would say it was regimes lowering transaction costs. For two decades after 1995 that description fitted the data better than a 1930s picture.
What deglobalisation names
COVID-19 exposed single-point supply failure. The United States–China strategic contest turned semiconductors, telecom and critical minerals into security goods. Tariffs returned as ordinary tools, including under the Trump administration and in later industrial policy on both sides of the Pacific. Sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine weaponised finance, energy and technology. The WTO dispute system, treated in 4(b), no longer polices the largest players. Firms speak of friend-shoring, China-plus-one, and national industrial policy. NAFTA’s replacement by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, treated in 2(c), is a regional rewrite of openness, not an expansion of global multilateralism.
This is displacement in the sense that efficiency is no longer the first rule. Security, labour politics and great-power rivalry now sit in the trade ministry.
Comment
Displacement is not a full reversal. Trade-to-output ratios have wobbled rather than collapsed to 1970. Digital services, ideas and capital still move. Regional blocs — the European Union, USMCA, RCEP — are re-globalisation at a smaller scale, or regionalisation, not autarky. India still seeks markets and supply-chain roles even while it defends food stocks and digital policy space at the WTO.
The accurate comment is that hyper-globalisation of the 1990s–2000s is being displaced by managed, securitised interdependence. Deglobalisation as a slogan overstates autarky. As a description of the death of naive openness, it is fair.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD G[1990s globalisation] --> D[Securitised trade] D --> T[Tariffs sanctions friend-shoring] D --> R[Regional blocs] R -.not full autarky.-> W[Still cross-border flows]
Conclusion
Tariffs, sanctions, pandemic shocks and strategic industry policy have pushed against the old globalisation. They have not ended cross-border production. Deglobalisation is displacing the unpolitical version of globalisation. It is not replacing it with a world of closed states.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
What were the limitations of NAFTA? How did its replacement by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement counter them? Explain.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q2(c)). View answer →
-
Is deglobalisation the same as protectionism?
Protectionism is one tool. Deglobalisation also includes export controls, investment screening and industrial subsidies.
-
Did COVID cause it?
The pandemic accelerated it. The U.S.–China contest and the WTO appellate crisis were already in motion.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2024 · Q1(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
The expansionist tendencies of the current Russian regime indicate its intentions for the realization of a Greater Russia on the lines of the Soviet era. Comment. -
2024 · Q2(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
What were the limitations of NAFTA? How did its replacement by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement counter them? Explain. -
2024 · Q4(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
The return of trade barriers and economic sanctions has diminished the spirit of GATT. In this context, discuss the factors contributing to the decline of WTO in recent times. -
2024 · Q4(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Do you agree with the view that the EU has thus far proved to be the most successful experiment in the regional integration processes? Account for its successes and also some of the recent challenges that it is faced with. -
2024 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the rationale behind replacing the "Asia-Pacific" strategy with the new term "Indo-Pacific" strategy. -
2024 · Q7(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
"India and USA have become such strong strategic partners that they need not become formal allies." Comment. -
2023 · Q1(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the crucial functions of empirical political theory in Comparative Politics? -
2023 · Q1(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the difficulties faced by a political theorist in comparing the States?
More from this topic
Q7(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
NonAlignment 2·0 underscores India's unique aspiration to emerge as a site for an alternative universality. Comment
Comparative Politics
NonAlignment 2.0 (2012) restated strategic autonomy for a China-first, post-NAM world: partner the U.S., do not join it. Alternative universality means rules others can inhabit without becoming Western or Chinese tributaries. India’s civilisational pluralism, Global South voice, and issue-based coalitions are the claimed site. The aspiration is coherent; capacity in the neighbourhood and in manufacturing is the constraint. The risk is exceptionalism dressed as universality.
Q7(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Trump's unilateral imposition of reciprocal tariffs on scores of countries poses impending threat to the future of the rule-based multilateral global trading system under the WTO. What options do the WTO members have to salvage the organization?
Comparative Politics
Trump’s 2025 reciprocal tariffs, on top of a blocked Appellate Body, treat MFN as optional and threaten WTO as policeman. Salvage options: restore appeals or widen MPIA, plurilaterals, a subsidy-for-S&DT reform bargain, G20 politics, and FTA hedges. India’s stake is public stockholding, digital rules and a forum in which power is not the only law. A variable-geometry WTO is more likely than a 1995 restoration. Letting the organisation die would leave only tariff nationalism.
Q6(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
The tariff threats have pushed India and the European Union closer. Evaluate the India-EU partnership
Comparative Politics
U.S. reciprocal tariffs in 2025 threatened both Indian and EU exports and compressed FTA timelines. The partnership already includes TTC, climate talk, student mobility and a values vocabulary. Friction remains on agriculture, data, CBAM, Russia and human-rights politics. Directionally closer is true; a finished trade-and-tech pole is not yet true. India–EU is the best Western hedge if Washington stays protectionist, not a substitute for U.S. defence enablers.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.