The Era of Cheap Globalism Is Dead

For thirty years, the global economy operated on a simple premise: manufacture where labour is cheapest, ship everywhere, worry about the externalities later. That model is over. Not because of ideology, but because of math.

Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical fragmentation, and the rising cost of carbon-intensive logistics have made the old model economically untenable. The era of regional industrial power is dawning, and resource-rich nations like Canada are uniquely positioned to lead it.

The Regional Pivot

The evidence is everywhere. The United States' CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act represent the largest industrial policy intervention in American history. The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is explicitly designed to penalize imports from countries with weaker climate policies. China's dual circulation strategy prioritizes domestic consumption over export dependence.

What these policies share is a recognition that globalization as we knew it—frictionless, borderless, infinitely scalable—was always a temporary condition, sustained by cheap energy, stable geopolitics, and the willingness of developed nations to outsource their environmental costs.

Canada's Opportunity

In this new landscape, proximity matters. Reliability matters. Emissions intensity matters. Canada has all three advantages in abundance. Our natural resources are vast. Our political institutions are stable. Our geographic proximity to the world's largest consumer market is unmatched.

The question is whether we will build the industrial capacity to capitalize on this moment—or remain content as a commodity exporter, selling raw materials to nations with the ambition to add value themselves.

The era of cheap globalism is dead. What replaces it will be defined by the nations with the foresight to invest in regional resilience. Canada can be one of those nations. But only if we move now.