The broad political consensus around globalisation has turned away from a liberal vision characterised by free trade and open markets, and towards interventionist industrial policy. This is focused on the merging of trade and national security objectives, including prioritising access to key raw materials, ensuring supply chains run through allied countries, and investment in green infrastructure. 

For example, President Joe Biden has responded to growing economic competition with China by attempting to stimulate US manufacturing in strategic sectors, creating coalitions to reduce supply chain dependencies on China, and barring the use of sensitive technologies by Chinese companies. 

While the first part of this approach has at times been controversial with US allies, many are now starting to take a similar approach to industrial strategy. 

An important risk should Donald Trump be elected is that international consensus on supply chain derisking could fracture because the US might walk away from multilateral intervention and return to a unilateral tariff-based approach.

But, regardless of the US election outcome, geopolitical and economic competition over critical minerals, semiconductors, green energy production, and resource dependencies, is likely to accelerate.

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