Eswar Prasad

In fact, I'd say it infects domestic politics, which in turn has an implication for how the U.S.

deals with the rest of the world, as Trump is doing.

No, I think what is the problem is that globalization worked very well on the aggregate, but there were two things that we did not pay enough attention to.

One was distribution of benefits within each country, and

whether there were adequate safety nets in place to catch those who fell and give them a sense that they had an opportunity to clamber back the economic ladder.

Now, in a market economy, it is natural that some industries do well, others decline.

Some firms do well, others don't do so well.

But the sense that the system is stacked against you and the only way you can reform it is by blowing it up

which is basically Trump's message, got a lot of resonance.

The second issue is related to the rules of the game.

You know, there was a sense that every country could benefit from globalization if there was a commonly accepted set of rules.

But it turns out that while some countries like the US by and large played by the rules, there were others like China

that took advantage of the rules.

So essentially, China got access to export markets around the world, but did not reciprocate by providing access to its own markets.

And the interesting thing, how this came to a head in Davos, is that Trump was talking about

receding from globalization and basically pushing other countries away from the U.S.

through tariff barriers and other ways of pushing aside longstanding alliances.

China tried to play the adult in the room.

You know, China wanted to make the case that it has become the defender of the rules-based order of multilateralism of globalization.

The problem is not many countries want to buy that story.