書單: 書評｜全球化是否已成為失敗的賭注？

書評｜全球化是否已成為失敗的賭注？
——一個曾經許諾帶來嶄新世界的理念，為何最終走向失序與反噬

作者：Keith Johnson（《外交政策》地緣經濟與能源專欄記者）
2025年10月3日

在《世界上最糟的賭注》（The World’s Worst Bet）一書中，記者 David J. Lynch 試圖解釋：全球化這一理念，為何從冷戰後世界對「成長、繁榮與和平」的希望，演變成導致失業、分裂與極化政治的工具。

一、全球化的幻滅

Lynch 這位資深經濟記者回顧了過去三十多年的歷史，指出全球化失靈的多重根源：

中國衝擊（China Shock）——25年前中國低價出口的爆發，摧毀了美國許多工人階級社區；
企業逐利與效率極大化；
脆弱的全球供應鏈；
金融化的過度擴張；
2008年金融危機；
新冠疫情；
東歐與中東戰爭。

在這一連串的衝擊下，全球化的理想自然偏離了航向。

昔日被視為異端的觀點——例如「全球化會摧毀美國勞工」、「經濟一體化將淪為零和博弈」——如今已成為華盛頓的主流共識。川普與拜登在經濟政策上幾乎沒有分歧，只是川普回鍋後更加急於拋棄舊自由貿易信條。

二、一個烏托邦的墜落史

Lynch 的核心問題是：這一切究竟如何發生？
他以大量人物與事件交織出一部既豐富又繁複的歷史敘事，描繪了這場從烏托邦到反烏托邦的思想旅程。

書中人物眾多——總統、立法者、官員、勞工、投資人、企業家——共同構成了全球化失控的群像。
從 柯林頓推動中國加入世貿（WTO）、到 小鎮工廠的關閉與社區崩潰，Lynch 用細膩的片段勾勒出這場巨變。

然而，故事的跨度太大：從1990年代的 NAFTA 辯論（「巨大的吸力聲」）、西雅圖反世貿抗議、川普的崛起、到疫情下的供應鏈危機，事件之多使書中結構略顯凌亂。

三、理想主義的幻影

本書最引人入勝的部分，是對1990年代華盛頓擁抱全球化的熱情重現——當時的信念是，與中國、加拿大、墨西哥進行更多自由貿易，將帶來經濟與政治雙贏。

如今，這種「神奇的現實主義」已被全面質疑，但 Lynch 揭示了當年已有不少懷疑者。
他刻畫了如公平貿易運動者 Lori Wallach、創投家 Tim Draper 等人物的掙扎與洞見。

四、從川普到拜登的轉向

書中後段聚焦於今日的轉折：

川普崛起，將反全球化推向主流；
拜登轉變為貿易懷疑者與工人階級的代言人；
川普再度執政，準備用更大的「毀滅球」砸向全球貿易秩序。

（至於小布希與歐巴馬年代，Lynch 以調侃筆法指出：「讀起來就像當年親身經歷一樣乏味。」）

五、新時代的調整

Lynch 對當下「去全球化」的未來有精闢觀察：

「展望未來，1989至2008年間的無限制全球主義不會回來，但也不會回到自給自足。各國與企業將在更複雜的世界中前行，逐一決定每個產業、每項產品，究竟要合作還是自立。隨著地緣政治風險回歸——包括愈發難以預測的美國——國家安全考量將壓過經濟效率。」

這與近期 Edward Fishman《Chokepoints》、David Sanger《New Cold Wars》 的分析相呼應。
但 Lynch 指出，真正讓人民厭惡全球化的，並非安全問題，而是分配不公與社會裂解。

六、全球化的贏家與輸家

正如歷次經濟實驗，全球化的利益從未均等擴散。

美國整體經濟從貿易中受益，但特定地區（郵遞區號）卻被摧毀；
低成本製造使工廠與城鎮消失；
2008年危機與疫情供應鏈崩壞後，全球化的「順暢益處」顯得虛假空洞。

然而，對世界其他地方而言，全球化並非「錯誤的賭注」，而是驚人的成功：

中國使數億人脫貧；
保加利亞、印尼、台灣等國生活水準大幅提高；
貿易與金融流動的爆發，使冷戰後的世界更加富裕。

即使美歐如今充滿悲觀，全球化仍未死。
根據世界銀行數據，全球貿易占GDP比重仍與疫情前相當，甚至高於金融危機前。
歐盟等地依舊擁抱貿易，只是更加謹慎地審查中國投資與傾銷。

七、修正的危險

Lynch 最後提醒：

「當美國試圖糾正對『無拘束全球化』的錯誤押注時，也可能矯枉過正。」

全球化確實讓消費者受益匪淺，經濟體整體——特別是金字塔頂端——獲得的遠超過失去的。

但 Lynch 與前代決策者一樣，仍未給出「讓全球化真正奏效」的解方。
他提到的改革——稅制重整、貿易補償機制、對失業工人的援助——多年來屢被提出，卻未能落實。

他警告，下一波衝擊將更劇烈：

「即便美國能擋下新一波中國製造商品的衝擊，仍將面對其他勞動市場震盪，例如人工智慧的崛起與低碳轉型。那個在全球化浪潮中暴露無遺的美國社會安全網，仍不足以應對未來。」

書籍資訊
📘 The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)
作者：David J. Lynch
出版社：PublicAffairs
出版時間：2025年9月
頁數：416頁｜定價：32美元

譯後短評：
Lynch 的書以美國為中心，既是懺悔錄，也是警世文。全球化並未死亡，而是進入碎片化與選擇性合作的新階段。
問題從來不在全球化本身，而在於各國政府——特別是美國——未曾準備好如何讓全球化「為所有人服務」。

Review

Is Globalization a Lost Cause?

How an idea that promised a brave new world seemingly delivered dystopia instead.

By Keith Johnson, a staff writer at Foreign Policy covering geoeconomics and energy.

Bill Clinton looks up as he speaks in front of a WTO globe backdrop.

U.S. President Bill Clinton addresses a luncheon for ministers attending the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle on Dec. 1, 1999. Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

October 3, 2025, 2:40 PM

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In The World’s Worst Bet, David Lynch sets out to explain what went wrong with globalization—an idea that was once the hope of a post-Cold War world for growth, prosperity, and peace, but instead became a vehicle for displacement, division, and polarized politics.

The book cover for The World's Best Bet by David J. Lynch

The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right), David J. Lynch, PublicAffairs, 416 pp., $32, September 2025

The problem, as Lynch, a veteran economics reporter, makes clear in a trip through more than three decades of recent history, is that so very much went wrong: the China shock, or the sudden explosion of low-cost exports beginning a quarter-century ago that shattered many working-class communities; the relentless drive for corporate efficiency and profits; increasingly vulnerable global supply chains; the increased financialization of the economy; the 2008 financial crisis; the pandemic; and the wars, especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It’s little wonder globalization went astray.

Yesterday’s heresy—fears that globalization would destroy U.S. workers, for instance, or that increased economic integration would turn into a zero-sum game—has become, in most quarters of Washington, today’s conventional wisdom. There is little daylight on economic policy between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and the only change in Trump’s second term is how much more eager he is to jettison any remnant of the old shibboleths.

The question of how this happened is the heart of Lynch’s book, which offers a compelling, if sprawling, history of an idea that promised a brave new world and seemingly delivered dystopia instead.

The tour through three decades of U.S. economic history, which lately has become political history, is both the book’s vice and its virtue. Lynch’s book features a dizzying array of presidents, policymakers, lawmakers, advocates, workers, investors, and corporate executives to explain exactly how globalization went off the rails.

The vignettes—whether of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to rope China into the global economic system, which culminated in Beijing joining the World Trade Organization at the turn of the century, or of small-town factory workers hammered by disappearing jobs and destroyed communities—make for a wonderful read. But sometimes it is all a bit unwieldy: From the “giant sucking sound” of the 1990s debate over NAFTA to the Seattle protests against the WTO to the rise of Trump to the pandemic’s effect on global supply chains, too much has happened in the last few decades to be packaged in a tidy narrative.

Some of the best bits of the book include a present-at-the creation revisiting of Washington’s embrace of globalization in the 1990s, and especially the conviction that more and freer trade with China, Canada, Mexico, and others would bring both economic and political benefits. That idea, taken as an article of faith at the dawn of hyper-globalization, has come under sustained fire in Washington in recent years. But what is fascinating is to see how many people were already skeptical of this magical realism at the time, and Lynch tells that story well with a cast of deeply drawn characters, such as fair trade activist Lori Wallach and veteran venture capitalist Tim Draper.

The other edifying material is found closer to today, with the rise of Trump; the final conversion of Biden into an avowed skeptic of trade and would-be champion of the working class; and, of course, Trump’s return to the White House with an even bigger wrecking ball to swing against the global trading order. (The George W. Bush and Barack Obama years are about as much fun to read about as they were to live through.)

Lynch is also insightful on what today’s recalibration will ultimately look like. “Looking ahead, neither the unconstrained globalism of the 1989-2008 period nor a retreat into autarky is in the cards,” he writes in The World’s Worst Bet. “Instead, countries and companies will be navigating a far more complex world, choosing industry by industry, one product at a time, whether collaboration or self-reliance is best. Amid the return of geopolitical risk, including that emanating from a less predictable United States, national security considerations will take precedence over economic efficiency.”

All true, and reminiscent of recent diagnoses in books such as Edward Fishman’s Chokepoints and David Sanger’s New Cold Wars. But the national-security imperatives—whether Biden’s “high fence and small yard” to protect U.S. technology or Trump’s efforts to use tariffs and trade cudgels to rebuild critical industries—were not what soured people on globalization to begin with.

Essentially, as with previous experiments in economics, not all the benefits of globalization trickled down: While the U.S. economy as a whole benefited from greater trade, certain zip codes got obliterated as low-cost manufacturing drove entire factories and factory towns out of business. Coupled with the financial crisis and then the supply-chain chaos of the pandemic years, all the smart chatter about globalization’s seamless benefits seemed like so much, as it were, malarkey.

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Lynch’s book is very clearly about the U.S. experience with globalization, and its recent reversal by policymakers on both sides of the aisle, despite a few lonely voices still championing greater economic integration and the benefits of trade. In many ways, for many parts of the world, globalization was not a bet gone wrong, but a bet gone spectacularly right. China famously lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty; the standard of living in countries from Bulgaria to Indonesia to Taiwan has soared in recent decades, thanks in no small part to the explosion of trade in goods, services, and financial flows that came after the Cold War.

And for all the post-mortems being written about globalization—entirely understandable given the Trump administration’s ambivalence to trade and bevy of tariffs, and widely shared concerns in the United States and Europe about the damaging impacts of Chinese industrial over-capacity—it’s important to note that globalization is not actually dead yet.

Global trading integration may no longer be soaring as it did in the 1990s and early 2000s, but neither is it in full retreat. According to the World Bank, trade as a share of global gross domestic product remains as high as it was before the pandemic, and as high or higher than it was in the heady years before the financial crisis. More goods and services are being traded than ever before. Some economies, such as the European Union, still embrace globalization, as much as Brussels may vet the odd Chinese investment or fret over floods of discounted goods.

Those different experiences of globalization—ravaged industrial heartlands in the United States and some other developed economies, and better off billions in other parts of the world—hint at what Lynch notes in closing. The backlash against globalization is justified for many reasons, not least the unequal distribution of benefits and the lack of political will or ability to cushion those that lose from it. But it risks going too far.

“As the US tries to course correct from its bad bet on unfettered globalization, it risks overcompensating,” Lynch writes. Consumers worldwide gained immeasurably from the flow of more affordable products and services; economies as a whole, and especially those at the top of the pyramid, gained much more than they lost from globalization.

The one area in which Lynch does not quite deliver, just like an entire generation of policymakers before him, is a nostrum to make globalization really work. He offers prescriptions of the sort that were mooted decades ago but never really panned out, from wholesale reform of the tax code to trade-adjustment assistance for affected workers to a realistic understanding that the factory jobs that vanished will never return in big numbers.

But it is important to figure out why the United States (and many other developed economies, such as the United Kingdom) failed so signally to deliver win-win globalization for all—because what is coming down the pike, he argues, will be much bigger and much more disruptive.

“Even if the United States does hold off a fresh surge of Chinese manufactured goods, there will be other labor market shocks in the future, such as the rise of artificial intelligence and the transition to a low-carbon economy,” Lynch writes. “The US safety net that proved so inadequate amid the tumult of globalization is not ready for what lies ahead.”

Books are independently selected by FP editors. FP earns an affiliate commission on anything purchased through links to Amazon.com on this page.

Keith Johnson is a staff writer at Foreign Policy covering geoeconomics and energy. Bluesky: @kfj-fp.bsky.social X: @KFJ_FP

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書評｜全球化是否已成為失敗的賭注？