8.8C Membership of Organisations & Trading Blocs

• Nationalism identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations e.g. Donald Trump and MAGA
• Isolationism a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, especially the political affairs of other countries

  -> e.g. North Korea is not involved with other countries
• • Sinicization = spread of Chinese culture and ownership
• • Fundamentalism = movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles e.g. Afghanistan 
• Protectionism = government economic protection for domestic producers through restrictions on foreign competitors - US vs Chinese imports
• Foreign Direct Investment = overseas investments in physical capital by TNCs

  -> Apple in China
• Internationalism belief that it is good for different countries to work together

  -> IGOs, TNCs, UN, World Bank etc.
• New International Division of Labour = divides production into different skills and tasks that are spread across regions and countries rather than within a single company - outsourcing of jobs
• •  As a result of the dominance of these organisations, membership of global trade and financial IGOs is almost universal
  • However, regional groupings have emerged in the form of trading blocs such as NAFTA, SEATO, ASEAN, Mercosur and COMESA
  • Critics argue that economic sovereignty has been removed to some degree 
  • Economic sovereignty is the ability of a country to control its own economic policies and resources
• Protectionism:

  • has become increasingly popular
  • Countries have argued that free-trade agreements are unfair and disadvantage some others
  • Trump argued that protecting US jobs through bilateral, not multi-lateral, trade agreements was a better option 
  • For example, keeping US coal mines open rather than importing coal from overseas
  • This attitude was one of the ways that Trump won the election but also swayed the British population and the Brexit vote
• Brexit:

  • Protection of UK trade markets was through the withdrawal of the UK from the EU on 31 January 2020
  • The UK and the EU eventually agreed on a new trade deal that came into effect on 1 January 2021, which allows tariff-free and quota-free trade between them
  • The UK is free to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries, such as the US, Australia and New Zealand
  • Northern Ireland remains aligned with some EU rules to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, which is still an EU member state