Branko Milanovic on What Comes After Globalization

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:23)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:24)
I have a personal question for you this time.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:27)
Okay, all right.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:27)
Do you think of yourself as a member of the global elite? Do you consider yourself elite?

**Tracy Alloway** (0:34)
I probably should in some ways, because I think a lot of people would say someone who grew up in different countries, went to international schools, went to, I guess, a high-profile university, now works in the liberal media, as people would say would be a classic elite. But does anyone ever actually think of themselves as the elite? No.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:57)
I try to maintain journalistic, unbiased, and I would say, look, Joe and Tracy, they are clearly among the elite. They have good jobs at a Fortune 500 company. They are among the most well-educated demographic to ever exist in history.
We get to work in a nice air-conditioned office, etc. On the other hand, I could say, look, that's nice. The real elite are big tech CEOs, etc. But I, look, I think...

**Tracy Alloway** (1:25)
Everything's relative.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:26)
We're an elite. I think, objectively speaking. But I also think, I was thinking about this, there's really three big things that I think are like, if we think about the second, the rest of our lives, etc., like three really big things that would like cause me to have sort of like elite status anxiety.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:47)
Go on.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:48)
Well, one of them is AI because we don't really know what it's going to mean for our literal jobs or the companies we work for, etc. That's a really big one. Domestic politics. I think, like, you know, I think we're living in the United States. Domestic politics feel like they continue to go off the rails in various ways that could impact a lot of things. And then I think, unfortunately, maybe I'll change this one day. I don't speak Mandarin. And if all of the interesting markets, the finance news, if that becomes like the center of economic activity in like some really big way, people talk about the China shock that they mostly are talking about sort of rust belt manufacturing. There's like a China shock for like sort of service level, financial services, etc.
I don't think like, you know, I don't think I would have as much to contribute in that world.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:37)
You won't need to learn Mandarin, Joe. You can just use AI.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:40)
You know, have you seen the AI translator gadgets?

**Tracy Alloway** (2:44)
I have. Yeah, they're cool. Some of them are really good. Yeah.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:46)
Yeah. And like you had these things as two sides of a screen, and you're just talking to them for the other person.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:52)
Yeah.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:52)
But setting that aside, I don't know how well that would work on the podcast or video medium.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:57)
I got to say, I still watch 90 Day Fiance.

**Branko Milanovic** (3:00)
Do you know that show?

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:01)
No, go on.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:02)
Americans Dating and Marrying Foreigners from Abroad. And there are a lot of translation apps on that show, many of which go very, very wrong. So anyway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:12)
Anyway, on this last point, though, I think we know that probably start, certainly with the first Trump administration, sort of like U.S.-China tension has been sort of on this linear increase, it probably accelerated during COVID. And it's clearly spread beyond the US. It just seems to get more intense by the week, including in Europe, where I think China anxiety, the loss of industrial competitiveness has now really become top of mind for them.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:41)
And it's even broader than China. I mean, we've spoken about it on the show, but it seems like there's a real nationalism to economics nowadays. That too, yeah. Because of the pandemic, because of the war in Iran now and various other disruptions that we've seen, governments are really focused on building up their own supply chains, building up their own manufacturing bases, their own critical resources and all of that. So everyone seems to be trying to bring things in house, which at the moment, largely means taking things away from Asia.

**Joe Weisenthal** (4:12)
Yeah, that would be the goal, right? They want to replace these things. Anyway, I think as, I'm about to turn 46, so maybe if I'm lucky, I'm about halfway through my life. I would say the first half of my life, I have benefited a lot from the certain order of things. And when I look around the landscape, I would say, I'm not so sure that the order from which I've enjoyed any fruits and privileges is going to be as durable in the second half.