AUG 23 — The great gamble of the late twentieth century—that globalisation would deliver prosperity without undermining national cohesion—has come undone. 

The triumphant surge of interconnected trade and finance that began in the 1990s now lies entangled in a world scarred by conflict, populism, and resurgent economic nationalism. 

David J. Lynch’s The World’s Worst Bet captures this drama with a trenchant, fast-paced narrative of how the United States wagered on globalisation, only to discover that its returns were more volatile and more costly than anyone had anticipated.

For a time, the bet looked unassailable. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the liberalisation of financial markets created dazzling opportunities. 

Corporate profits surged, consumer prices fell, and technology firms flourished as supply chains stretched across continents. American leaders, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, embraced the promise of liberalized markets, convinced that freer trade would enrich their country while entrenching US global leadership. 

To many, globalisation was not a gamble but the logical extension of American power at the “end of history.”

Yet prosperity came with hidden costs. Factories shuttered across the Midwest, jobs moved overseas, and communities that had defined the American industrial heartland hollowed out. 

Retraining schemes were underfunded, safety nets frayed, and the social contract that once cushioned the blows of economic change dissolved. 

Lynch reminds us that the anger of displaced workers was not an accident but a direct by-product of choices made in Washington. 

The assumption that dislocation was temporary and tolerable proved to be a profound miscalculation.

That anger exploded in 2016, when the grievances of those who felt betrayed by globalisation reshaped American politics. 

States scarred by industrial decline delivered the presidency to Donald Trump, whose promise to rip up trade deals and punish “cheaters” resonated more than the technocratic defenses of globalisation. 

The populist backlash has not subsided. It continues to shape electoral politics, eroding bipartisan consensus and fueling an era of political volatility.

America’s wager was not just economic. It was geopolitical. By welcoming China into the WTO and assuming that economic integration would produce political liberalisation, Washington underestimated the resilience of authoritarian capitalism. 

Beijing used globalisation to its advantage, mastering global supply chains, climbing the technological ladder, and projecting influence across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 

The United States, in contrast, dis covered its own supply chains were fragile, its workers vulnerable, and its middle class squeezed. 

The “China shock” became a political and economic earthquake, undermining the very premise of America’s globalisation strategy.

The 2008 financial crisis deepened the sense of betrayal. Wall Street was bailed out while Main Street languished. 

For many Americans, globalisation no longer looked like a rising tide lifting all boats but a system rigged in favor of the wealthy and the well-connected. 

The legitimacy of free trade, free capital, and free movement of goods collapsed under the weight of its inequities.

Today, tariffs, industrial policy, and export controls—once dismissed as relics—are back in vogue. Economic nationalism is no longer a marginal impulse but a bipartisan reality. 

Trump weaponised tariffs against allies and adversaries alike, while Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act signaled that Democrats, too, have embraced industrial policy to secure supply chains and restore domestic manufacturing. 

The ideological divide is no longer over whether to rethink globalisation, but how far that rethink should go.

Yet to dismiss globalisation entirely as a failed project would be shortsighted. 

Lynch argues persuasively that what went wrong was not integration itself but the failure to manage its consequences. 

The United States gambled that it could pocket globalisation’s benefits without addressing its collateral damage. Ignoring the fate of workers in Ohio or Michigan was never sustainable, and the political blowback was inevitable.

The lesson, then, is not that globalisation must be abandoned but that it must be rebuilt on firmer foundations. Supply chains need resilience, not just efficiency. 

Workers need support, not rhetoric. And policymakers must recognise that global interdependence cannot be managed solely through corporate boardrooms and trade negotiators. It requires a political compact that reassures citizens they will not be sacrificed in the pursuit of global profits.

The pandemic underscored this reality. Shortages of masks, medicines, and microchips exposed how fragile global supply chains had become. 

At the same time, Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrated the dangers of relying on adversaries for critical energy and resources. The old model of globalisation, which prioritised efficiency above all else, no longer fits a world of strategic competition and recurrent crises.

As Lynch makes clear, trillions of dollars are at stake in deciding how to reconfigure globalisation for a new era. 

The United States cannot afford to retreat into isolation, nor can it pretend the 1990s can be resurrected. Instead, the challenge is to craft a balanced system of global integration that sustains prosperity while protecting the social fabric. 

That means investing in education, retraining, and infrastructure at home, while pursuing fairer rules abroad.

The World’s Worst Bet is more than a chronicle of what went wrong. It is a guide to what must change if globalisation is to endure. 

The populist backlash, the rise of China, the financial crisis, and the pandemic are not isolated shocks but signals of a systemic breakdown. 

The future will belong to nations that learn from these lessons and craft a globalisation that is both inclusive and resilient.

The United States, once the greatest beneficiary of the global order, now faces a stark choice: to double down on flippant protectionism, or to recalibrate globalisation in ways that restore confidence among its citizens and allies. 

As Lynch argues, this choice will determine whether globalisation remains the greatest engine of prosperity—or is remembered as the world’s worst bet.

*Phar Kim Beng is professor of Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia and director of the Institute of Internationalisation and Asean Studies (IINTAS)

Qin Qining is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.