World War 1 and the Great Depression

When defining globalization, one may think of two entities or countries coming together for monetary gain. However, it's more to globalization than one may really know. As the chapter states, globalization is solely defined as “the greater interdependence between countries and their citizens, which deals with increased international flows of goods and services, people, investments in equipment, factories, as well as non-economic elements, such as culture and environment” (Carbaugh, 2017, p. 3). Due to the mass production of transportation and other goods during the late 1700’s and 1800’s, the rise of global manufacturing started to take place. During 1870-1914, there was a decrease in tariff barriers and new technologies that resulted in declining transportation costs (Carbaugh, 2017, p. 6).

Having a decrease in transportation costs, European and American businesses as well as individuals saw financial gain, making parts of Europe and the United States the richest countries of the world during that time. However, shortly after seeing how accessible goods started to become more countries around the world started to put policies into place that altered the systematic process in the trading of goods and services. Also, with World War 1 and the Great Depression taking place during the early 1900’s, the change in globalization affected certain economies, policies, and systems throughout the world. Some countries experienced a rise on tariff barriers that affected a lot of big businesses, some dealt with the government’s policies and ideas to enforce protectionism, and for some countries they looked into the idea of forming a new trading system, agglomeration economies.

Having no interest in global trade and manufacturing, it wasn’t until the 1980’s when developing countries, such as China, India, and Brazil started to break into the world markets for manufactures (Carbaugh, 2017, p. 7). Years after there were other countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Turkey, Mexico, Hungary, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand that decided to enter the world of global manufacturing. During the late 1980’s there was also the flow of labor and capital. Migration being a major factor in economic changes was more restricted and regulated than the international flow of goods, services, and capital. The more liquid the capital market, the better it is for both lenders and borrowers, especially for efficiency. In realizing the impact of globalization on society, it helps me understand some of the problems which is happening throughout the world today.

For example, Donald Trump’s economic conflict with China to unveil new tariffs to let $200 billion of Chinese products enter the U.S. As stated in the article, “the Trump administration will have levied duties on roughly half of the more than $500 billion in Chinese goods that enter the U.S. each year, a considerable escalation coming amid a series of other U.S. initiatives aimed at overhauling American trade policy” (Davis, Wei, Schlesinger, 2018, para. 4). Not taking into consideration how this may affect other big businesses in our economy, Trump can probably cause major problems in how major corporations will trade in today’s society. All in all, when thinking of the importance of globalization we have to think past monetary gain, but look towards the idea of how we can help our country move forward throughout the constant changes in today’s society.

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