There and Back Again

For the past thirty years or more, the global economy has been run based on three big assumptions: globalisation will continue to increase; trade is the route to growth and development; and economic power is moving from West to East. But what if all these are wrong?

From Global to Local shows how the world trading structure has already begun to shift, with irrevocable consequences for the global economy. Volatile oil prices, the pressures of sustainability and the availability of new technologies - such as 3D printing and automation - mean that companies, from General Electric to Apple, are beginning to move production away from distant countries and back home. If robots can make everything, why would companies use Chinese workers? Power is shifting, trade is shrinking and making things is revolutionising.

Finbarr Livesey explores the making of this new world economic order, revealing the processes that lie behind it and showing how no one will be left untouched by its arrival.