Trade has always played a key role in global geopolitical developments, whether in response to shifting power and technology or in driving such shifts. By adding a new technology, which allowed for the exploitation of an alternate route, Europeans were able to cut costs via less expensive maritime travel and bypassing the era's middlemen for European-Asian trade in the Middle East. Successive European powers -- and later, the United States -- would dominate these routes and secure the seas, but it was the Portuguese who changed the structure of trade and launched globalization. Now, though it is hard to see any true retrenchment of global connectedness today, there are growing voices seeking -- and some actions -- to claw back some of the more progressive and modern applications of global trade policies and norms. A focus on free trade is being replaced with economic nationalism and tariffs, reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring...
