India, May 20 -- The global economy, in the last three decades, became used to free trade under a multilateral framework. It is important to mention the framework because trade was not necessarily devoid of all restrictions: Trade operated in a rules-based framework with the World Trade Organization as the most important adjudicator.

The first attacks on this framework came a decade ago with the 2016 victories of Donald Trump and Brexit. The overbearing message of these two political trends was that globalisation had short-changed many people even in the advanced capitalist world. While the Global South has been complaining about globalisation not bringing unambiguous gains, the Trumpist response to this problem is more transactional tha...