Exile Economics

A provocative essay exploring how isolationism weakens the global economy.

Nations are turning away from each other via sanctions, trade wars and real wars. With every shock, governments double down on self-sufficient economics, the global supply chain gets a little weaker. 'Securonomics' sounds resilient, but it's terrible news for individual prosperity, shared equality, national security and international cooperation.

A striving for national self-sufficiency is shaping up to be one of the greatest forces of twenty-first century geopolitics and economics - yet it is a desire that is only hazily understood, both in its nature and its likely consequences. In Exile Economics, Ben Chu lays out the dangers of the current obsession with isolationism. By focusing on some key internationally traded commodities - agriculture, energy, metals and high-technology - he demonstrates just how thoroughly enmeshed and almost unfathomably interconnected our economies have become. Chu traces out the implications on all our individual and daily lives of any serious attempts to unravel this cat's cradle.

Exile Economics will be an essential guide to this new world in all its promise and peril.