During the past year 2020, crucial signs developed that can give us a glimpse of the course of global trade in the whole of the next decade. We will review here several international trade trends destined to leave their mark.
International Trade Trends 2020
It is evident that most of the international trade trends outlined here began to take shape well before the symbolic beginning of this decade in 2020. The exorbitant world of technologies, geopolitical movements of extreme ambition, climate change or transformations related to consumption they were already there from the very beginning of the XNUMXst century.
But the amazingly eventful 2020, full of war risks, health emergencies and divisions between allied countries seems to have given the starting signal in the minds of many to evaluate the essential points that will drive the economy in the next ten years. Even more so, when we observe how from great crises, previously unimagined business opportunities arise.
A decade of uncertainty opens, adaptation in extremis and excessive expansions that will inhabit a very special place in our human history. Nothing will be the same. Our way of exchanging goods globally will have changed forever.
New trends in international trade
To start this journey through the new international trade trends we will have to move first by one of the great factors of collapses and renovations in the contemporary commercial world. We speak, of course, of the technological factor.
The digital revolution continues
This beginning of the third decade of the XNUMXst century has surprised us with a great desiccation of global production costs through methods that we did not yet consider as the core of the commercial system. Traditionally, relocation or outsourcing in countries with easy labor were the usual practices of a company to make its processes cheaper.
But technology is now the sweeping current that sharply levels all spending down, a favorable outcome with dire consequences for manual labor employment that you can imagine. Nor is it necessary to imagine it too much: during the dawn of the Industrial Revolution the same social tremors were felt, driven by popular desperation to Luddism.
This is a higher stage of such a process, governed by widespread automation of the production area. Self-regulation of energy, surveillance through video and sensors, management of telephone networks, transportation of waste, lifting loads, packaging, an infinite series of tasks have been transferred from human hands to robotic hands.
The level of specialization required to adapt to the new reality of the machines has not been affordable for large sectors of the working class, which has generated displacements with great socio-political consequences. The rise of conservative and nationalist populism on a massive level has its origin in part in the irreversible automation of industries.
On the other hand, the very construction of the content is increasingly based on data generated by Artificial Intelligence algorithms, its storage is located in the ethereal repository of the cloud and its distribution occurs through a network with unlimited reach.
All of this is usually executed in partnership schemes that are much more flexible than hiring or buying. This further reduces costs and allows more experimental investment in various areas of development. This also increases the digital revolution.
Not to mention the renewed impulse of transactions based on blockchain technology, more decentralized and dynamic than the banking system, and 3D printers, increasingly accessible and responsible for bringing all kinds of products to the interested party without the time and cost of manufacture. This completely modifies the format of purchases by the consumer and the entire commercial universe, as we will see shortly.
In this short video we can see a 3D printer in operation. It never fails to impress.
The new consumer king
What is the main consequence of all these possibilities placed on a silver platter in front of the customer of any product? Well, the total market changes center.
If in the past the entire flow of goods and services was determined by production capacity, now, with this issue resolved in a large part of the global scenario by technology, the great determining factor is the user's preference. Directly, their ability to consume and their demands when doing so.
The new purchasing power of this client, generated by the same technological development, particularly in the first world, enables him to act as monarch of the mercantile system. He can impose his favorite transaction methods, the speed of delivery and the ethical principles that animate him on the production company. If a brand does not have a sufficiently ecological action and is committed to the Human Rights of its workers, its clientele can organize among themselves and disappear.
Thus, the new competition between companies is based on the struggle to meet consumer expectations and to be available to them, offering clear guarantees of punctuality and precision in delivery. Another world of priorities.
Explosion of services exports
This new customer satisfaction system will expand notably globally thanks to numerous technological, social and natural factors, under the format of exporting services. Although the pandemic scenario seems to have put a perception of suspense in world economic activities, the great changes continue to take place surreptitiously.
These changes consist of variables that have been forming trends since the last decade. Some we already know, such as the immense and recurring impact of digital technology. But the climatic variables caused by global warming, the accelerated population increase and the growth of income in developing countries also influence the market.
How? Emerging countries rise above the market thanks to network technology which, made available to all, largely levels out the inequalities of the past. These territories increase their economic capacity both to receive exports of quality services (and form mixed structures) and to generate exports with local talent.
The high demographics generate an important demand not contemplated before, which will give opportunity to small businesses that level the playing field even more. And this demand will include concerns regarding the ecological sustainability of the industry.
Therefore, the large exports of services will have to do with healthy food, renewable energy, health services, as well as transport, communications and hotels, all with sensitivity Verde. Within twenty years, it is estimated that exports will have increased by 50%.
Weakness of the World Trade Organization
An immediate consequence of a buoyant and horizontal market, with many emerging countries and new-fangled corporations plunging in, in a face-to-face position, with new technologies, is the resentment of the institutional structures of control.
Suddenly, the old arbitrators begin to see themselves incapable of applying sanctions to violators of basic norms and resolving disputes between members and begin to be seen with disdain as obscure organisms, of extreme bureaucratic slowness and, in the end, expendable. Such is the situation of the WTO at the beginning of this decade.
For the sake of global trade, one could hope for some kind of rescue of the institution from the broader society, to restore its authority and avoid paralysis. Only in this way can the free market be safeguarded from anarchy and nationalist unilateralism.
A war between isolationists
Speaking of unilateralities, the current decade that has begun between 2020 and the coming 2021 has had the great political isolationists as protagonists. From Brazil and the USA to China, Russia and the United Kingdom, the desire to survive alone is established, without major cooperation, according to one's own ambitions and cultural atavisms.
Although several of the administrations that have led this type of perspective are on their way out (the Trump case is the paradigmatic case), the legacy of import restrictions, economic coercion, digital intervention, propaganda threats and general arm-wrestling between all countries, especially between those who share borders, will be maintained over time. It will take a lot of effort to restore some sense of bilateral agreement.
For now, given recent experience, companies should dedicate themselves to exploring market alternatives in case they have to retreat in the face of a far-reaching state coup. The opposition between a globalist, mutating, diverse and networked world, and the nations that severely cling to inflexible national glory, will be bloody and will represent one of the great commercial wars of the third decade of this century.
So far this brief review of the international trade trends for the next few years. If you want to expand your knowledge about international trade, you may find this other article useful on international trade books. Follow the link!
