Investments and Innovation in Different Stages of Markets Globalization

What is it about?

This essay shows how markets globalization in its contemporary format has developed and changed since the early 1990s, focusing on the inequalities and conflicts between proponents and opponents in the Global North and South during this development. It describes and compares the three stages of markets globalization occurred, the stance taken in them by the main parties involved and the socio-economic consequences arisen. Against the background of the fragmentation of social and productive structures, the size and role of the middle class in this evolution is explored through an analysis of the social groups behind the conflicts that can help to clarify the future of markets globalization.

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The third stage of globalization is taking the format of friend-shoring. It can foster resilience, but it can also generate strong contradictions in the very nature of global capitalism to the extent that it limits the search for efficiency and, therefore, extra-profit maximization. The case raised by the price strategy of BYD, the largest Chinese company producing electric vehicles, is relevant in this regard. While this strategy is aiming at reducing the car price toward a new equilibrium level in a perfect competition market, it is accused to be a "race to the bottom", "price war", "predatory pricing", "unfair competition". On the other side, similar strategies adopted in the past with the aim of pursuing through a "competition from below" the exploitation of the workers, did not create problems.

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