Outside In | Despite Trump’s trade wars, globalisation is Eurasia’s to win or lose
Accounting for a significant share of world trade, Europe and Asia are far more decisive players in the fast-changing globalised economy
I would like to explore some rather interesting data buried deep in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Economic and Social Trends 2026 report: an estimated 15.3 per cent of jobs worldwide depended on foreign demand in 2024. In other words, they depend on international trade.
The ILO report, based on data from 80 economies that account for 85 per cent of global employment, says this amounts to 465 million jobs. Of these, 278 million are in Asia and the Pacific and 96 million are in Europe. This suggests that these regions account for over 80 per cent of the trade-dependent jobs among countries and territories in the report.
So, if trade is a reasonable proxy for tracking the progress of globalisation, the animated debate over its imminent demise starts and ends in Europe and Asia.
Regardless of whether US President Donald Trump and his acolytes have decided to declare war on the globalised economic system that has evolved to benefit most people since the end of the second world war, it seems this is not a war they have the authority to declare. It will be the European Union, China and the world’s long-ignored “middle powers” that determine the fate of globalisation.
As Columbia University history professor Adam Tooze recently commented in his always-astute Chartbook: “As far as trade is concerned, globalization is a Eurasian story”, adding that, “Globalization is ‘over’ when Eurasia says it is, NOT when the USA has a protectionist temper tantrum”.
The picture the ILO report paints is of a United States that, despite its undoubted heft, sits on the margins of global trade. Around a third of its exports flow to immediate neighbours Canada and Mexico. Trade accounts for just 25.4 per cent of US gross domestic product, compared with 79 per cent for Germany, 84.6 per cent for South Korea, 74.6 per cent for Mexico and 62.8 per cent for Britain. Even in China, international trade is significantly more important than in the US, accounting for over 37 per cent of GDP.