What the end of globalization means for our future

Hi everyone, Peter Zeihan here coming to you from high above Birmingham, Alabama. I have a little bit of time before my next presentation. So I figured now it’d be a great time to give you a little bit of a preview on the upcoming book, the end of the world is just the beginning. Dropping on June 14, we’re almost there.

Specifically, today I wanted to talk about the success of the developing world over the course of the last 234 decades, there have been four big factors in play. The first is globalization. When the United States decided to make the safe world for global trade, it wasn’t just for its allies, it was for pretty much anyone. And that allowed countries that had not great geographies, or very little tech or capital to suddenly play with the big leagues as if they were a successful empire. And then suddenly, they could access markets and resources and energy and food the world over major structural support for everything that came after in the 80s 90s and 2000s. Second big factor was the fall of the Soviet Union. When the Soviets fell, their industry collapsed, but their raw commodity and process commodity production did not. So whether it was oil, or natural gas, or timber or aluminum, all of a sudden, an empire hours worth of product was dumped on the global markets, that made the prices for those products, much cheaper, and a lot of countries that normally couldn’t afford them to industrialize in a big way. Third, Chinese labor now there was a lot of problems when you dump a foot, when you dump a million Chinese laborers into the market out competed a lot of the other developing countries. But what it did do was make manufactured products incredibly inexpensive for most. So while the first two factors maybe helped countries develop, the Chinese factor meant that your average citizen of your average developing country could actually have a much more viable and strong lifestyle, the fluids. Fourth, and finally, the baby boomers, not not just in America, but everywhere. As you age, your net worth increases, and the final decade before you retire, you’re the wealthiest you will ever be. And the money that you save and that you invest is what drives capital markets. And so throughout the 2000s, baby boomer capital pushed down the cost of borrowing not just in the United States in the broader West, but throughout the world. If you combine cheap materials with cheap credit, all of a sudden you have the magic mix of factors that have allowed the India’s and the Brazil’s of the world to do very, very well for themselves. Well, that’s all over now. The Chinese labor market has imploded whether the fastest aging society in human history, and we already have labor prices close to 20 times what they were just 23 years ago, the Russian stuff is going off of the market because of global sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine war. The baby boomers globally, on average, retire at the end of calendar year 2022. And the Americans are no longer interested in maintaining the global network. Everything on the external side that has allowed developing countries to be wildly successful, are now turning against them. And if they’re going to continue to succeed, they have to do more or less it on their own, that it will be difficult, and many just won’t make it. A lot of my work. Most of my books have been about the rise and fall of great nations. But the new book is a fundamentally different type of creature, that look at the economics of how we got to where we are, what strategic factors made that possible, how it’s all ending and what everything will look like on the backside. So whether it’s agriculture or manufacturing or finance or energy, there’s a big fat chapter in the book for everyone. Okay, that’s it from me. Until next time, and maybe with one more book, take care