Forum Debate: Geo-economic competition

We’re holding a series of live webcast debates in Davos. Join our cast debating the following motion:

Intensified geo-economic competition will impede integration and derail global economic growth.

• Add your voice to this Davos debate
• Vote on the motion in the poll below, and comment to support your opinion.
• The poll will close at the start of the session. Results and comments will be available to the moderator to frame the debate.

On the one hand…

• The optimism of the fall of the wall and the End of History has evaporated.

• In its place, some argue, we see retrenchment from globalization, the balkanization of the global trading system, and the emergence of a new facet of global competition: geo-economics.

• Countries are using geo-economic tactics to provide preferential access to markets for their firms, are using the global system to their own ends.

• Preferential access arrangements, state capitalism, conflict, these forces could be contributing to the fragmentation of the global system.

On the other:

• Regional trade agreements are proceeding apace, from Transpacific to Transatlantic.

• Where once there may have been enmity, there is now friendship. Cuba provides a recent example of newly integrating economies.

• Multinational businesses profit to the extent that they are able to adapt to local conditions, many benefit from regional diversity.

• Technology and communication continue to stitch our world together in new ways ripe with opportunity. Online payments, ease of travel, general cultural familiarity and shared experience accelerate commerce.

This debate will consider whether intensified geo-economic competition will impede integration and derail global economic growth.

Below are some resources to provide background.

Resources
Why globalization doesn’t need the West. Blog post by Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader
The ominous rise of geoecoomics by José Ignacio Torreblanca & Nika Prislan in European Council on Foreign relations
Why the WTO still matters. Blog post by Charles Hankla is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University
We shun global trade rules at our peril. Blog post by Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organization and Chair of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations

Author: Mike Hanley is Senior Director of Communications, Digital Content and Editing, at the World Economic Forum.

Image: Flags of different countries are displayed at the Salt flat in Uyuni, some 450 km (280 miles) south of La Paz September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Gaston Brito